Who is to blame for the vapid nonsense of celebrity journalism?

To some extent, you are.

When I write about things that are really important, about space or futurism or how our lives are changing with cellular, few notice. This is normal service.

When I step on the tail of Tina Brown, suddenly the blogosphere pays attention.

Partly as a result our most popular blogs are the cattiest, the most like the worst of the Main Stream Media attitude I criticized.

Is this an attack on Jeff Jarvis? (That's him on CNN.) No, it's not. He's responding to the market, to the audience, to you.

We are lazy people in a lazy age. We don't just want instant, constant gratification. We demand it.

That's why our culture is superficial, and artificial. Our expectations for ourselves are just too low.

I believe there's a generation of Americans who were burned in their youth in many ways -- by war, by the war against the war, by the struggle of taking life seriously -- and are just burned-out. We have taught cynicism to our young, and practiced it in our lives.

It's OK to be skeptical, and to ask hard questions. It's not OK to be cynical, to assume they're all crooked, and let the biggest crooks take the pot.

We've failed ourselves, our society, and our children. We. Us. Not the media. Not Tina Brown. Not Jeff Jarvis. Us.

And nothing is going to change until we, or those who follow us, start to care again, deeply, about things that matter, and stop caring about things that don't.

This week, this month, this year, fight some small battle. For a park, for a school, for your block, for a neighbor, for a cause. A small battle, a winnable battle. A battle that's out of the limelight. Something like normal service.

And when you win that small battle, relish the feeling you have inside. Listen to what it's telling you. To fight again, to help someone else fight again, to build instead of tear down.

Doing that is the key to happiness. I'm happy with normal service. I'm happy in my community.

You can be, too. But to be happy you've got to do something more than just turn off the TV, open the window, stick your head out and yell at the top of your lungs I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.

You've got to live again.

Until Americans do that, as a people, we will continue to die -- fat, happy, entertained, but already dead inside.