There's lots of silly stuff in the news this week. Not just silly stories, but the way they are presented. Here's just some of the latest:

* A story published Monday about the legal fight over the body of the late Anna Nicole Smith bore the headline "Anna Nicole 'ready for viewing.'"

Nothing has changed since her demise and even in death, some can't help but to still exploit her. This is good news to hear, though. There hasn't been a Fox News update on her condition for over seven minutes now, and I was wondering how she was holding up.

In other news, General'simo Francisco Franco is still dead.

* "Silly" comes in all forms and frequently crops up in the strangest places. For example, a New York Times piece run Monday about Islamic bombings in the southern part of Thailand contained the following:

"Officials said eight people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the bombings, which seemed intended to cause death and injury, and disruption of government services."

"Seemed intended to cause death and injury." Gee, thanks for clearing that up. I was undecided about what the intent was, thinking they were the type of high explosives that cause widespread giggling and a general sense of euphoria.

* Other silliness develops when news writers go out of their way to make sure that no one is offended when dealing with various kinds of touchy subjects. An area story is a perfect example of this. Over the weekend in Nashville, a cab driver allegedly tried to run over two students visiting Vanderbilt after a discussion over religion became heated.

Ibrahim Ahmed was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. While the first two stories related some basics about the incident, we were never told about the gist of the religious argument, nor the faith of the accused party.

Well, with a name like Ibrahim Ahmed, we can be sure that it was one of those radical Amish separatists that was responsible. No, wait ... he must of been one of those Lutheran ninjas, or the fanatical Quakers that we are constantly hearing about in the news.

Later on Monday, Fox News ran the story and included the religion of Ibrahim, which was Muslim. However when the Tennessean published its version of events on Tuesday morning, they managed to avoid revealing this vital nugget of information. However, the faith of the two young victims was published by the Nashville paper.

Here's a idea -- how about news writers giving us the whole story accurately instead of trying to cloak it in a mish-mash of politically correct omission and misdirection. Tell us the truth -- we can take it.

* Watch out -- first it was cigarettes, then it was trans-fat, now the latest demon to your health and well-being is "stealth salt." An article by Sally Kuzemchak, RD on the Microsoft Network, says that nearly everything we eat is loaded with a mineral "that some experts fear may be slowly killing you." It's called sodium, or salt to most of us.

"Our national 'salt tooth' is so bad that the American Medical Association recently asked the FDA to remove sodium from its list of food additives generally recognized as safe," she writes.

Here we go again. "Some experts" are letting us know what they are coming after next. "Some experts" seem to be those that don't want us to make our own health decisions. Will "some experts" go after caffeine next? And wait until you hear about the dangers of second hand salt.

If memory serves, the last person that ever died of an excess of salt was Lot's wife. Life itself slowly kills you, with or without salt. The way things are going with these silly Nanny State control freaks, we soon will be unable to eat pinto beans unless we purchase CO2 emission credits.

I liked this country much better when the threats to our freedom came exclusively from abroad. Meanwhile, you can have my salt shaker when you pry it from my cold, dead, fried chicken grease-coated hands.

* Another silly item comes once again from the world of the vapid, namely the media's continuing obsession with bimbos, floozies and young ladies with poor moral character. Case in point is the latest tale concerning the fall of Britney Spears, who shaved her head this weekend, causing much speculation about her mental state.

"Spears is 'on the verge of a nervous breakdown'" said one gossip rag. And which psychologist weighed in with this diagnoses? None -- it was a tattoo artist witnessing Spears' shearing who gave the dread pronouncement. We are currently waiting for a second opinion from her hair stylist.

Seriously, constant stories like this says something about our society when the objects of many of our media-promoted fantasies turn out to be women in incredible pain and the late stages of a nervous breakdown. Women like Spears and the late Ms. Smith have been lured into a mindset that all they are, what their life is and what matters the most are fans who look at them as nothing more than a life support system for a couple of breasts.

It says more about us than it does about them. The word I would use in this case is not "silly."