August 14th, 2008

Here is why we should stop getting angry at all those celebrities who think we (the general populace "we") are interested in every little piece of their lives, from the quality of their breakfast eggs benedict to the mild pains experienced when they stood in soft pampered feet on rocky beaches during long tedious promotional photo shoots for their next movie or fashion launch.

As it turns out, there is a lot of interest in the minutiae of the lives of celebrities. Here is a fairly common random sample of support for Britney Spears going apeshit upon herself and the world:

I AM SO HAPPY FOR BRITNEY SPEARS....SHE FINALLY GOT HER LIFE BACK AND ON TRACK.WAY TO GO BRITNEY AND GOOD LUCK WITH RAISING YOUR 2 LITTLE BOYS,YOU ARE A NICE PERSON THAT JUST GOT SICK AND GOT THE HELP THAT YOU NEEDED .... THANK GOD,I WAS AFRAID YOU WERE NOT GONNA MAKE IT FOR AWHILE.
POSTED BY: busymomma, found on a Yahoo! message board.

So she's "a nice person", huh? Maybe, maybe not; but how would you know, busymomma? Why is Britney's plight so important to you anyhow? Don't you have anything in your life that's interesting to you? Wouldn't you prefer to forge your own destiny instead of hang off the whims and whiles of someone else's?

Here's something from an article about a well-known socialite getting tossed in the slammer for a month or so:

Ms Hilton's jailhouse fan mail is said to total 5,000 letters since she went down three weeks ago. In a reply to one fan, published by the showbiz website, E! Online, she thanked her correspondent for writing, "especially at such a difficult and scary time in my life".
Simon Tisdall, guardian.co.uk

Who are all those people writing to Paris Hilton while she is in jail? So she got nailed for DUI ... that's a pretty commonplace crime, isn't it? What makes her jail sentence so much worse that she needs 5,000 letters consoling her than any other run-of-the-mill petty criminal's servitude in the slammer?

OK, deep breath.

When it gets high time to become agitated and intolerant of something, let's bypass the noise and ranting against the celebrities themselves. They are the symptom, not the cause ... and though many people hate celebrities like that for their sheer ... uselessness and pointless extravagances, I also think the most of us are at least a tiny bit envious: Why are we little people and they such famous and rich people?

So instead, let's focus on the real problem: The sheep-like barely-human personality-lacking morons who really are so interested in these iconic lives that they swoon and cry, write letters, hold candle-light vigils, and otherwise let their lives be affected by the images of someone else's. They are the real enemy: Without 5,000 letters of support pouring in, Paris Hilton as an icon wouldn't exist. Take Ms. Hilton out the picture and someone else would elbow her way in and take her place. And, believe me, anybody who had the opportunity would take it. No, the problem isn't the icon, it's the congregation.

Here's where things get difficult, but it's a nut that must be cracked if ever we are to even out the disparity: How do we solve the problem of icon worship? I don't know, but I'm going to think about it.

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