Why do Americans care so much about their celebrities?

There are dozens of Forums, Yahoo! videos, magazines, TV programs even talk shows about American celebrities. In each Yahoo! "commentalbe" article about them there are literally thousands of people commenting while in other articles you see far less comments, even in economy issues! They're not just the girls, the teens or the housewives... Maybe it's not their fault,the mainstream media gives far too much importance to them, much more than they actually deserve...