Because he's 'cute'? The prisoner who received even more such mail was Charles Manson and even his mother couldn't call Charlie 'cute."

We respond to celebrities, and try to somehow enter their lives, because there is an inner vacuum we desperately need to fill. Imagine if all that core emptiness was to focus on concerns other than famous: on volunteering to help homeless and poor, on reaching out towards world peace and human dignity, on adopting lost children and giving them a future, or on visiting sick and dying.

The problem is that there is no glitter in rubbing elbows with needy no-names. It takes too much time and energy to get involved in charity works when we can simply show up as a celebrity circus and make believe that we are actually part of scene.

The tabloids are not interested in publicizing programs and people out of spotlight because they know it won't sell. So we continue to devour every rumor, every snippet of gossip, every carefully placed picture and article about our stars, and assiduously avoid self-examination that would reveal hollow values and personal desperation that lurks inside.

We burn down rainforests, clear jungles, despoil environment so that we can create new soil-poor farms to feed more mouths. There are just too, too many of us but our leaders ignore problem at root of world's burgeoning troubles: overpopulation.

And in Rome, new Pope will continue traditional church doctrine against contraception. How ironic that horsemen: death, disease, famine, and pestilence, should be loosed on world by City of Faith.