THIS is what we get worked up over?

Apparently during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics some little girl was supposed to sing a song, but Chinese authorities decided she wasn't cute enough for the world stage, so they found a cuter girl to lip-synch.

This is quite the cause celebre today. I belong to a number of bulletin board sites, Mama Drama, Moms Who Think, MotheringDotCommune, etc. Members are in a tizzy about this on each of those sites, and undoubtedly many more across teh Intarwebz, being that my mother (who visits totally different websites than I) heard about it too.

It was even talked about quite a bit on KTSA this afternoon.

I've just got this to say about it:

How fucking superficial are we?

Seriously.

Two million Chinese were kicked out of their homes to build the Olympic village. Several former homeowners were jailed ahead of the opening ceremonies to ensure they could not protest. They've even jailed at least one person who applied to protest legally.

But this is what makes the news?

Girl babies are aborted regularly in China. Throughout Asia, sixty million girls are "missing" due to sex-selective abortion. I can't find stats right away for how much of that number China is responsible for, but according to this article, "Even families that violate the one-child policy usually make sure that their second child is male...parents who already have one daughter and discover that their second child is also a girl abort the baby 92% of the time." But we're worried because a lucky-to-be-alive little girl is deemed not cute enough?

Seriously?

And, c'mon. Let's be honest here. This is America, after all. We send out CONSTANT media messages that a given female doesn't look right. I make fun of women's magazines because of their ever-constant diet/dessert cover format. There's always one of each on the cover of everything from Woman's World to Good Housekeeping. There is a constant barrage of which celebrity has cellulite, as if it's a matter of Earth-shaking importance. Ninety-nine percent of the magazines aimed at little girls (who have been morphed into "tweens" by marketers and idiot parents) have fashion and "beauty" advice.

But we're worried about one little girl in China, rather than hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of girls here who receive the exact same message day after day?

Seriously? This is what it takes to knock John Edwards out of the news?

To be totally honest, I'm not exactly taking the high road myself, as I'm talking about this instead of that silly little dust-up in Georgia. But hey, at least I realize how ridiculous it is. Everyone else seems remarkably sincere.