While celebrity entrances...

I wonder if anyone could produce a comparative study of media coverage of just Britney, Madonna and Tom Cruise against coverage of post-earthquake Kashmir.

On Nov. 8, Salman Rushdie wrote in the Toronto Star that up to three million people are homeless as the Himalayan winter sets in. 70,000 injured wait for help on the Pakistani side. Aid continues to arrive, but not nearly enough to avoid unimaginable disaster. Time is running out for international emergency funding.

In the meantime, Rushdie writes, "India and Pakistan are still mired in mutual suspicion, as the saga of the Indian helicopters reveals: India offered them, but Pakistan refused to accept them unless they were flown by Pakistani pilots, which India in turn refused to accept. Meanwhile the quake victims went right on dying. Moreover, as the recent murder of a moderate Kashmiri politician showed, and as the bombs in Delhi would seem to confirm, there are Islamist groups who remain determined to sabotage any improvement in Indo-Pakistani relations."

Rushdie says that the final death toll could be greater than the tsunami's (i.e., over 290,000) and that this could become the greatest natural calamity in human history.

Meantime, back on celebrity TV... What was it again that George and Laura served Charles and Camilla for dinner?