On Sunday, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie became the proud parents. Big deal. So did approximately 11,013 other couples across the planet.

Yet one would be led to believe that the world had come to a screeching halt. Every major news outlet, from CNN to the AP, has run a story on the entirely routine Caesarian section birth of these twins. The owner of a London celebrity photo agency estimated the first photographs of the children would carry a price tag ranging from $15 million to $20 million, saying that the only photograph that could compare to that would depict “Britney Spears giving birth to an alien.” Another London publicist was quoted as saying that “These kind of pictures sell lots of magazines.”

Therein lies the heart of the problem.

Infatuation with celebrity is not a new concept. The Romans were, after all, able to easily pacify their subjects with the simple combination of “Bread and circuses.” We Americans, however, take it to a new level.

We see them on television, in the movie theater, on the covers of our magazines. We read about them in tabloids, watch “news” about them on “Entertainment Tonight” and obsess over their love lives as though it were high school. We even give them bizarre sobriquets like “Brangelina,” which honestly sounds like a health cereal.

Many would blame the media for the celebrity craze, but they’re simply supplying a demand – economics at its finest. No, the issue is bigger than that. It’s a societal thing. Rather than dealing with or choosing to care about tangible and real-world issues, we are content to be pacified and captivated by the lives of our celebrities. Unlike the Romans, we don’t even require bloodshed – we’re beyond captivated by the mere event of a birth. Nero and Justinian would be proud of how effective our modern day “circuses” really are.

Perhaps one day we, too, will succumb to our own entertainment the way the Romans did. More people already vote for American Idol than vote for any single candidate for president. For the Romans, the end came in the form of Goths and Huns descending on a Rome whose native population was setting new heights of apathy.

For us perhaps the outlook isn’t quite that bleak, yet. The wall-to-wall news coverage that followed the attack on the World Trade Center seven years ago proved that we’ve not yet entirely lost our serious side. Here’s hoping we as a society can re-evaluate our priorities before Attila comes knocking.