THE BLOG is one of the most disappointing technological advances of the past ten years. At their inception, blogs — online diaries — promised finally to give the quotidian experience of people like us the same global reach as that of statesmen or stars. However, it swiftly became apparent that the potential of the blog was going to be used, in the main, to chronicle uneventful dinner parties, sunsets, and a series of mediocre dreams about former classmates.

The thing about quotidian experience, it turns out, is that it is unfortunately very . . . quotidian. The quotidian almost never faces having to authorise a nuclear retaliation in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco; or meeting and falling in love with charismatic Richard Burton while playing the title role in Cleopatra.

Indeed, the uneventfulness of most blogs has become so widely recognised that the most popular one on the net is called “The dullest blog in the world” (www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/). This has such entries as “Scratching My Knee”, and the classic genre-standard, “Restarting This Blog Again”.

So the news that Arianna Huffington, the US columnist, would-be governor of California and socialite, is to launch a “celebrity group blog” should initially be greeted in much the same way that you would greet the announcement that a pigeon had been born, or that more gravel had washed up on Chesil Beach.

As someone who has read a lot of celebrity blogs (Britney Spears: “My dogs are still having problems with their potty training, and we have white carpets!”; William Shatner: “I’m preparing for our annual charitable paintballing event.”), I can confirm that even the stars have pretty quotidian blogs. Let’s face it — the only person who has ever really done enough interesting things to justify a daily public diary is God; and even that was just for one week, 10,000 years ago.*

Still, in the absence of God, Ms Huffington has pulled together an impressive list of bloggers. When the website huffingtonpost.com launches on May 9, it will eventually see contributions from Norman Mailer, David Mamet, Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Harold Evans, Tina Brown, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the woman who played Elaine in Seinfeld. They will offer a “round the clock commentary on our life and times” — which, in Warren Beatty ’s case, judging on his past form, will probably be: “Can I get a screw out of this?” Gwyneth Paltrow, meanwhile, will be able to break down into tears in the event of both disasters and pieces of markedly good fortune.

However, while it is easy to be cynical about the idea of a crack team of international celebrity diarists — primed to write “why oh why?” entries within hours of a suicide bombing — that cynicism is exactly why huffingtonpost.com is an ultimately worthwhile endeavour. Quite evidently, the majority of the Western world does not care about current affairs. British and US voting statistics demonstrate that we are the pioneers of political apathy. In particular America, home of the huffingtonpost, barely has a conception of global news.

My favourite story of American insularity was the case of the British teacher working in the US who reported that her entire class believed that the countries of the world were arranged in alphabetical order. Ireland, obviously, was a neighbour of Iraq and Iran. I suppose it is all a little confusing for Americans, what with having Alaska and the Atlantic Ocean so close.

Of course, the reason Western countries are so generally ignorant and blasé about vexing hard news is because we have the option of enjoyable soft news instead. We can, if we wish, live our entire lives in a world where Sienna Miller’s boots are headline news.

There are studies that prove pessimistic people are, generally speaking, simply people who are realistic about how ghastly the world is. Given this, I can only assume that Western blitheness is the result of our option to completely ignore the Marburg virus in favour of thinking about Elton John’s wedding instead. Personally, I pity the flowerboy at that event. He is going to have to drag the bouquet in on a flatbed truck.

Indeed, if you then go on to ponder the technical nightmare of the seating arrangements — will Donatella Versace and George Michael’s fake tans clash with the hibiscus thrones? — you could easily wake up on May 6 still unsure of where to place Ant and Dec, and having completely forgotten to vote.

This is why, in an initially perverse manner, the idea of a mass celebrity blog tips the scales back in favour of hard news. The only way that most people, myself included, will ever start a discussion about the realities of the Chinese economy is if the woman who played Elaine in Seinfeld has written something sappy about it, which I can then sneer at.

Indeed, if the huffingtonpost is serious about setting a hard news agenda, it should forget about David Mamet and Norman Mailer — who are just going to go “blah, blah, blah, exegetic paradigm” for the benefit of the usual ten readers — and try to get Britney Spears to blog. Two hundred words from her on the US trade deficit would make headline news around the world.

It might even make it into Heat magazine. And, dear God, it is better than her blogging on and on about sunsets.

*According to The Bible, which also pretty accurately nailed the trustworthiness of gays, women and snakes.

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