We've officially reached a new level of banality!

According to our ushers of culture -- those who decide what's newsworthy and what isn't -- someone making a silly face like the one above is news.

Of course, there have to be offensive racial connotations to it at the very least implied. And for Heaven's sakes, it involves one of our cultures most beloved figures of the moment, Miley "Hey, I'm a Disney-owned franchise!" Cyrus. If someone who wasn't famous made the face, we wouldn't even have seen the picture.

I'm sorry, but my common sense must make me proclaim this:

"Give me a damned break."

Three points of order, everyone.

1) First, doesn't Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana get enough exposure without having to worry about her pictures from private moments (Whoops! Excuse me, there is no such thing as 'privacy' for celebrities these days, according to those who decide what's newsworthy!) getting snatched and made the latest topic of discussion or debate?

2) Second, as far as being 'racially offensive', is she offending the human race somehow? I bring up the fact there are ethnicities, not races, dividing Humanity according to the Human Genome Project. My way of being clever, yet serious.

All right, point blank: this doesn't even enter the same offensive ballpark as "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and Mickey Rooney's 'yellow face'. Whoever in the blue Hell still calls that movie 'classic' when in fact it's boring, except for Audrey Hepburn looking fetching like she always did, needs to see more movies...even my mom, who adores Audrey, didn't like that film. Strange that a so-called artistic, liberal mecca like Hollywood has given the American public images that offend through the years, ever since "Birth of a Nation"...hypocrisy can truly travel a long way.

3) Again, in this day and age where politics rule...and I hate politics...it's demanded that we have to be so damned sensitive. We have to apologize for everything that even threatens to be offensive, or we're told by someone else that it is. Especially if someone of one ethnicity does something that might even on the outside chance offend those of another. In fact, don't those who decide what's news or not have to look for such things in our supposedly more enlightened times? The law was changed for the better long ago, and if any hearts and minds still haven't it's because those who call themselves parents aren't teaching the right things, if they're there for their kids at all to pass important lessons down. To pass down what's right. To have their kids do unto others as they'd have others do unto them, regardless of ethnicity, belief, or any other tertiary difference between us.

But I wouldn't count on those who tell us what's news to pass along anything that matters...they're too busy trying to find things that are offensive to get attention. Because in the end, the news like so many things in our society, is also a business. And attention-getting banality like Miley Cyrus making a dumb face makes them a profit if there are those dumb enough to stop, look and get offended.