I've got another book to recommend

I just completed Andrew Breitbart's and Mark Ebner's Hollywood, Interrupted : Insanity Chic in Babylon -- The Case Against Celebrity (see the side bar for an Amazon link). The book tackles Hollywood's insane family values; drug abuse; touchy-feely, cult-like religions; sexual perversity; McCarthy-like PC politics; etc. It's well and amusingly written, but I never felt the urge to laugh, since the content was so disgusting. Reading a book like this has its pleasures, of course: You get to feel smugly superior as you read about the antics of narcissistic people who lack any value system. It is also a window into a life that (I am thankful to say) most of us don't live. I'm recommending the book, though, because I think it's important. These horrible, morally-adrift, undereducated, mean-spirited people control much of the public agenda in this country. It's their agenda that ends up in the TV shows and movies that we (and our kids) watch, and in the music our kids listen to. Because of their fame, they have access to politicians, leaving many of those star-struck government servants with the sense that they've just had an audience with a divine "voice of the people." Knowing who these people are, and what they believe in, is important, if only to understand what agenda is behind the movies, the TV shows, the celebrity benefits, etc.