I have to admit, I truly delight in the miseries of the rich and famous. Class warfare, envy, shadenfreud celebé, call it what you will. I take few simpler pleasures than that of the humiliation and loss of those more popular, talented and financially endowed than myself. Brad and Jen break up? Good, screw ’em. Prince Harry gets a picture of himself dressed as a Nazi plastered all over the tabloids? Ha! Stupid upper-class twit. Britney gets married and knocked up? Excellent, no more albums for at least a year or two.
To be honest, I have come to truly despise these people. It might be odd for me to say
that because I don’t personally know any of them, but then again people fall completely in love with celebrities without ever meeting them. So why not a little
irrational hatred?
Anyway, something needs to balance this craven celebrity worship that has once again infected our culture. I thought base materialism and the celebration of obscene wealth ended in the 1980s. Next thing you know our President will be talking about how it’s morning again in America and a giant Kool-Aid pitcher will smash through a wall while A Flock of Seagulls plays its latest hit. This just gets better and better.
So why the sudden upswing in celebrity worship? Or maybe it has always been this way and I just haven’t noticed it as much in the past decade. In any case, the stuff we’re seeing now has to be a new low. Paris Hilton? One crappy porn film gets scattered all over the Internet and all of a sudden we’re presented with this demon spawn splattered over every available medium. I swear there is nothing going on behind those eyes. Yet we are endlessly exposed to this brain-dead zombie’s undernourished skin sack as if it were a matter of great importance. And that “catch phrase”? “That’s hot”? Here’s a catch phrase for you: “Heavenly Father, please strike away my senses so that these demons may hound me no more.” (I’m not a religious person, but a little brimstone every now and then sure makes me feel better).
What really gets to me about this fixation is the greed it expresses in our country today. You don’t even have to be an actor or a musician or an athlete or at least in possession of a tiny iota of artistic talent in order to get this sort of adulation. You can just skip it and go straight to the rich part and that’s enough to make you
worthy of coverage. Donald Trump got his own TV show where he gets to be a despicable bastard day in
and day out, and somehow that’s
supposed to make him interesting.
I’ll just have to resort to laughing at the misery of others and dreaming about a special place in Hell reserved exclusively for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (you might have broken up but you will spend all
eternity rotting together for the
pain you have caused). Affleck
alone should be cast into the pit of darkness just for the absurd amount of awful movies that never would have been made had he not signed on to them. There is no way he’s
digging himself out of this hole, so why do we still care about him?
Celebrity fixation exposes greedy nation
Daily Emerald
January 19, 2005
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