for one night only: Laura comments on celeb gossip!

Most people who know me know that I hate celebrity gossip. I don't read Perez Hilton or the Superficial, I don't care who got a nose job or who's getting married, and I groan and roll my eyes when I'm at work and hear someone shrieking about the latest scandal. However, I do have entertainment news filtered into my RSS feeds, so I do see a lot of the headlines and occasionally read the actual story to see what's up.

Like most people, I was shocked when I read that Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister is pregnant — or should that be "preggers"? "prego"? — but after seeing story after story, my biggest issues have more to do with how the situation was covered than the fact that the "good" Spears daughter who always meets her curfew apparently is "not that innocent."

Every story focused only on Jamie Lynn Spears being 16 and pregnant, whether or not Nickelodeon will still air her TV show, and what other people think about it, with almost no mention of the father. Yes, we know who it is (longtime boyfriend 19-year-old Casey Aldridge), but it wasn't until today — two or three days after the story broke — that anyone cared to run a story about the legalities of the situation, since Jamie Lynn is a minor and the guy is 19.

Today I found this story, which essentially says the Spears family would have to press charges against Aldridge for anything to happen (very unlikely), but the point is that everything only focused on the girl and it makes it sound like it's all her fault. Sure, she's the famous one, but it bothers me that almost every news outlet practically ignored the fact that it takes two people to have a baby, other than mentioning the father-to-be's name.

In addition to that, I think it's sick that the Spears family allegedly sold the story to OK! magazine for $1 million, with a promise to have the baby and give the magazine rights to the exclusive first photos of the baby. Seriously?