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The last issue of The Pulse contained an article that featured a man and his book, Now and Then, critical of the American media system, among other things.

James Leonard Delaney believes our culture is more concerned with celebrity than issues that matter, and to an extent, he’s right. Our nation does seem to have a preoccupation with young female celebrities who subsist primarily on alcoholic beverages and whatever fruit or vegetable is served with them.

Nobody can seem to take their minds off of these women’s personal lives. I presume we’re all just waiting for the next drug scandal or sex tape. The Paris Hilton sex tape was recently in the news again because Paris threw a fit when she saw her picture advertising it in a Toronto porn shop. I have never seen the tape, mainly because I have never found myself watching porn and thinking, “Oh yeah, this needs night vision.” Apparently, a lot of other people have, though, and can’t get it out of their heads.

And I think Delaney has a point. The media doesn’t help curb our attention to this. Like one professor said, what a news channel shows on their station for five minutes was their five minutes to choose.

There’s a reason these decisions are made?people are tuning in, and if people are tuning in, advertisers are buying space at a premium and the stations will continue to make money.

So who is truly at fault?

But there is hope. Last week, NBC celebrated their “Green Week” which, according to their website, was “a week of green-themed programming aimed at entertaining, informing and empowering Americans to lead greener lives.”

This was obvious by the normally rainbow-colored NBC logo appearing green on the bottom of America’s television screens, and the color scheme of the website was a plethora of varying shades of green.

NBC did not stop there. All of their shows, those big-budget, prime-time shows, sported some sort of energy-saving, earth-friendly theme.

This week’s latest installment of Scrubs was no exception. It’s really great NBC decided to shell out the funding to power an entire abandoned hospital to shoot a sitcom. Those guys are changing people’s lives with their message.

The most prominent display of commitment to the cause was when the advertisement to Howie Mandel’s (who continues to find opportunities to talk) Deal or No Deal came on with its usual spectacle?the large studio packed to capacity with an audience, the flashing signs all over the set guaranteeing that no matter where you looked on the screen?you knew what you were seeing, and the waving spotlights rocking back and forth as an announcer rattled off something over a band playing a standard advertising jingle.

I’m glad NBC spared no expense on their “Green Week” programming. If it hadn’t been for the entire attention-grabbing grandeur, I might have missed the message, saying “Oh, wait, they aired those during the commercials.” Mute.