I'm convinced that when people move to Los Angeles, they aren't merely moving to another locale, they are joining "the cast."

The entire city is like this on-parade news event where its local celebs are in fact national celebs, and nothing proves this better than the Paris Hilton event this week. I call it an event because, essentially, her incarceration, removal and reincarceration had nothing to do with justice or a lack thereof.

It had everything to do with pop culture.

At the center of pop culture in 2007 is the 24/7 news cycle, particularly the cable news cycle. When Hilton was made to appear in court after her initial release, there was an O.J. Simpson-like spectacle to the story. It was covered non-stop by CNN, MSNBC and FOX, while it garnered only a mention on ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.

In the Tulsa World, it only drew a 18-inch story on the last page of Section A.

Cable news coverage, especially FOX, but really everyone, is less about newsy-news and more about infotainment. I'm forthputting the obvious, I suspect. However, for those of us who enjoy newsy-news, to look down on infotainment without a closer look at our own habits is disingenuous at best.

Truth is, Washington politics is every bit as scandalous, igniting the same types of gossiping that stories on TMZ.com produce. We presume the political news of the day is important because it's politics and it presumably affects lives.

That's not entirely true. Truth is, the War in Iraq doesn't affect me, personally, one iota in the here-and-now. None. You can make deductions about the price of gas, the stability of the world, etc., and I can tell you that I still ate on Friday, still watched some TV, still went to work, still drove my car, still slept like a baby, still consumed like almost nobody on Earth consumes.

So, we see the divide between cable news and network news. There was a time when news organizations took pride in acting as a gatekeeper of what's important and what isn't; however, somewhere along the way, business dictated that news organizations report on what people care about, what they're interested in.

Heck, this even took Ms. Hilton by surprise. She said, "I must also say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things, like the men and women serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world."

Either that sentence was written by a PR person, or Hilton is much smarter than we've suspected. I know what my hunch is.

However, that doesn't mean we won't cover such events with the fervor we devoted to Paris on Friday. Why? People are interested. It's the same reason people like car wrecks, car chases and severe weather. They're diversions.

Frankly, the government would be foolish ever to discourage cable networks from peddling such trash because, again, they're diversions. I've said for months now that the immigration issue isn't really an issue; it's a mere diversion planted by the federal government through it's television voice -- Fox News -- to induce the public's eyes off the ball, which is the War in Iraq and our general policies and actions throughout the Middle East.

Get everybody riled up, excited, diverted, and we won't give a crap about what really is important. Sure, the war doesn't affect me today, nor did it affect me yesterday, nor will it affect me tomorrow. However, we as Americans really, really have to get some perspective.

What happens in the world, er, what's reported as "hard news," absolutely affects us indirectly and long-term, which if applied over the course of four scores, or the average lifetime of a human, is actually very significant.

Nevertheless, the Paris Hilton story had us all going on Friday, and frankly the only one whose opinion I agreed with was, yikes, Ann Coulter. Coulter said Paris' sentence was bogus and that the maneuvering between the Sheriff's department and the judge was all about the spectacle.

Truth is, and I draw from my years of writing stories about such things, the typical sentence for such an offense, even with the DUI on the back-end of this, is about 20 days suspended. That's not a scientific measurement on my part; it's a guesstimate.

However, letting her out after about four days was probably about right. I mean, I think that would have been the release point for almost anybody else. Of course, Al Sharpton opens his idiot hole to protest, raising populist ire by saying that it was an injustice that Paris didn't have to fulfill her entire term. Blah, blah, blah.

Of course, I'm convinced at this point that Mr. Sharpton works for the Bush administration because he works hand in hand with perpetuating nonsensical, unimportant causes for the purpose of diverting us all from bigger issues.

Nevertheless, he raised a stink. The judge blew off some steam. Paris freaked out, and we watched. Bottom line, to the television news industry, only one measurement there means squat. Like it or not, we the consumer told the news business that coverage of Paris Hilton's court date on Friday and her jail escapade all week was important.

You can't blame news organizations, gatekeepers or not, for listening to their customers. It's still a business.