I’m tempted to rip them for wasting precious bandwidth on such a trivial subject, even during a painfully slow news week, but it’s late Friday afternoon and I’ve run out of content and here we are, my friends. Here we are.

You will be tempted to respond, “They never would have done that for Laura Bush.” Resist. Do you really want semi-serious news outlets devoting more resources to feting America’s aristocracy, if only in the interest of equal time?

My favorite part, incidentally, is that they list “shop at Target” twice, once by itself at number 20 and again “with sunglasses on” at number 33. So slapdash was this slobberfest that they couldn’t be bothered to double-check that they actually had 50 discrete reasons to swoon over FLOTUS before publishing. Good work, ABC.

6. Call the president, “Barack”

7. Plant a garden

8. Buy a Jason Wu dress

9. Drink lots of water

10. Get bangs

11. Shop at J. Crew

12. Play with Portuguese Water Dogs

13. Grab a burger at Five Guys

14. Lend a hand at a homeless shelter or food pantry

15. Laugh out loud

I did in fact laugh out loud at one point today so consider the First Lady duly honored.

Maybe ABC simply felt obliged to keep pace with the New York Times and NBC, both of whom also paused to recognize FLOTUS’s 50th in glowing terms but treated the occasion as if it’s some sort of quasi-news event. ABC was too honest for that. No news treatment here; no, to do this “story” properly, they had to go full BuzzFeed on it with an endless listicle punctuated by shiny-object photos to hold the attention of the easily distracted. It’s almost a clever parody of fawning politicelebrity coverage and the formulaic “viral” format. Almost.

Exit question: How much worse can it get? See John Nolte’s post about what CNN has planned tonight for the answer.