In the course of a month, Paris Hilton was sentenced to jail, released due to illness, then imprisoned again. Now, after finally "finishing" her sentence, she's describing her prison "journey" as being a "very traumatic experience," full of anxiety and endless nights of lying on her prison floor in the fetal position. Claiming, now, to be a better person, she's already begun pursuing her many philanthropic passions by setting up charities, seeking religion and giving her personal account of what it's really like to be on lock-down, as if she actually knows.

Is any of this new to you? Probably not. Did you know about Paris' release within hours of it happening? Probably so. Are you up-to-date on every other celebrity imprisonment, marriage, break-up, pregnancy, eating disorder and scandal? Of course, you are, because the media makes sure to keep us plugged in to Hollywood's ins and outs, whether such news has any real significance to our own lives or not.

There's no doubt that we all, occasionally, take pleasure in dabbling in a little gossip. I cannot deny that at least half of my phone conversations involve some sort of update of what's going on back home, on campus or in the life of my favorite celebrity. But when gossip leaks from phone conversations to television channels, radio stations and newspaper headlines, we have to be more critical of our consumption of it. We should then begin to question whether or not it's really as important as the media makes it seem before we carelessly indulge in its essence.

Some forms of media were, quite clearly, created for the sole purpose of uncovering Hollywood's juiciest secrets and highlighting celebrities' best and worst fashion statements. Consequently, they're the first places we turn for our daily doses of gossip. But such media, which was once limited to E! Television, VH1 and MTV, have now crossed boundaries, pervading the headlines of CNN, Fox News and CNBC. Channels that could once be relied upon for constant updates on the latest events of international crises are now filled with footage of Paris' high-profile strolls from limo to door to courtroom to prison cell and back to limo again.

This isn't to say that the media should be condemned for the headlines it tends to dwell upon. Who can blame them for covering the lightweight news that viewers are most interested in? Still, there is room for concern that we, as a nation, may be drifting toward an unrealistic view of life in which celebrity news is most important to our existence.

Anyone who has witnessed families bereaved by the loss of a loved one at war knows that Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and T-Pain are way down the list of pressing issues in our world. There's nothing wrong with occasionally indulging in the events of these and other celebrities' lives, but problems may arise when this is the only news we bother reading at all.

So the next time we peruse the pages of a newspaper or flip through the channels of our television sets, we should try to get a sense of what's important and what's not, what's superficial and what gives an accurate depiction of what's really going on in today's world. Staying up on Hollywood's latest headlines may be fit for entertainment, but keeping abreast of the issues and events that will affect our nation, our world and our lives is still very essential. The bottom line is that we can't keep our eyes wide shut forever, even if today's media makes it incredibly easy to do so.

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