Thanks Jade Goody, Whoever You Are

One of the best ways to spot the differences between Americans and Brits is to look at what seems important to them. If you look at a list of the most popular news stories on any given day in America, the rundown tends to look like this:

Kidnappers/pedophiles/murderers live in your garage

Everybody hates Hillary Clinton

Cute animal that survived some crazy ordeal, saved an old lady's life or is mothering its natural predator

Ultra-rich celebrity purchases Third World baby (they are the new Prada bags, apparently)

In Britain the rundown goes like this:

Celebrity buys Third World baby

Americans are lovely people, but they're probably the doom of us all

Celebrity-you've-never-heard-of does something

Crikey, immigrants are a bit frightening, aren't they?

Celebrity-you've-never-heard-of somehow sparks international diplomatic crisis

"Celebrity" takes on a strange meaning over here. You don't actually have to be famous. If you've been on TV more than once or are connected to someone famous, that's good enough. Britons love to make television programs about these "celebrities" doing things.

Imagine a TV show that takes Flo from 1970s sitcom "Alice," NFL referee Ed Hochuli, some bloke who dated Carrie Underwood in high school and a handful of other people you've never heard of and pits them against one another in competitive bass fishing. There would be shots of some pretty girl squealing, Flo using her catchphrase unnecessarily and Carrie Underwood's ex hooking himself several times. After each task, the judges -- including Byron Velvick, the pro fisherman who was on season 6 of "The Bachelor" -- would complain that the "celebrities" had used the wrong test, didn't know a darn thing about jig fishing and couldn't cast to save their lives. This would be top-notch entertainment to a British person.

There are shows here about celebrities dancing, cooking, ice skating and even running a nature reserve. Arguably the most popular show in this genre is "Celebrity Big Brother," which involves celebrities sitting.

You might be familiar with the concept: Put people in a house and film them.

The show over here features Face from "The A-Team," Michael Jackson's brother, Jermaine and a load of people you've never heard of even after it's been explained who they are. Chief among them, until last week, was Jade Goody.

You have almost certainly never heard the name Jade Goody. And if you have, you're not going to win any culture points by admitting it. Jade is human form of the argument against Gwyneth Paltrow's statement that the British are much more intelligent and civilized."

This is an actual recent quote from Jade: "How comes Eskimos haven't turned into icy-cubes? Like, ice people? ...When they die where do they go? They can't get buried under the grass like we do... It's a whole new world this Eskimo world, it really is."

I know this will shock you, but somehow this dumb lady managed to say something dumb about another one of the people on the show. Unfortunately for Jade, she said it about a woman who is, we are told, The Most Famous And Beloved Actress In India Ever, Shilpa Shetty.

As this was happening, some sort of rift in time and space caused our planet to slip into a Bizarro alternate universe. In the United States, the only side-effect appears to have been that Payton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts were suddenly able to win an important game. Elsewhere, however, it meant that the blurted comments of dumb ladies were suddenly taken really, really, really seriously.

There were riots against Jade in India, thousands of complaints poured into the offices of Britain's television regulating body, accusations of bullying and racism headlined every media outlet, religious leaders weighed in with opinion and appeals for calm, and Prime Minister Tony Blair found himself addressing the issue in Parliament. It was ridiculous.

Jade was booted from the house, but all this is still going. To be honest, I find it really difficult to care about. What I find interesting about the whole thing, however, is how it underlines that things we think are so important in our lives are, in fact, shockingly unimportant.

Most of you reading this had no idea who Jade was. Most of you will not remember her past Thursday. Somehow, babies will still keep getting born and the world will keep spinning.

I've written about this before; there is something beautiful in the meaninglessness of so many of the things we pay attention to. The fact that they don't matter means you don't actually have to pay attention to them. Imagine how awful life would be if you really did need to know about Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump.

Unlike a lot of people who suggest that they are somehow important by telling you to stop paying attention to unimportant things, I am in favor of pointless things. The trick is to know the real value of these things, so we can focus on what does have meaning.

If you sit down and think about all that doesn't truly have meaning in your life, you are left with only a handful of things -- the people you love, your health, and your copy of "Blues Brothers: The Definitive Collection."

We can get lost in the meaningless, so it's nice when someone like Jade Goody comes along to show us how little she matters.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.