Changing Channels

Celebrity has been described as “The cult of personality.” I don’t believe that this is far from the truth. It is pitiful what we value in our society. Pitiful. These swollen bags of self-important protoplasm & ego that we choose to worship truly sadden me. It would be simple to name names but why? You probably already have a list of pop culture figures dancing through your mind. We have elected the beautiful, the rich and have lifted them onto pedestals with our time, money and attention – why? Just because someone has amassed a fortune by inheriting it, sleeping with someone who has money or power or actually earning it does not mean that they deserve to be worshiped. Some celebrities have been elevated to a position of veneration and they, most certainly, have their disciples. Never forget that it is we who do this. Oh we can blame the media but they are only giving the public what it wants; and what we want is drivel. They are happy to supply.

I weep for the future.

I’m going to describe a scene that happened yesterday morning. I’m not naming names – these meat puppets already get entirely too much publicity. I was getting ready for work and turned on "Good Morning America." They ran out of news and started discussing a shocking celebrity battle. The story concerned a celebrity who put his hand across the mouth of another celebrity, which in turn caused another celebrity from another waste of time TV show to become upset at the celebrity who was physically accosted. This celebrity (the one with her mouth covered by the other celebrity) phoned the waste of time TV show of the other bloated celebrity to complain. And this is news? Really. So I changed the channel over to the "Today Show" and just guess what they were covering. Yup, the same celebrities in the same non-issue incident. Now here we have two major networks covering the same “story” at the same time. Why? Because this pabulum is what we as a viewing public choose to care about – it’s what we choose to worship. Have no doubt about it worship is the right word.

I stopped changing channels and just switched the TV off. As previously stated, I intentionally did not use any of the people’s names involved in the “incident” because they get entirely too much press as it is and here, in this blog at least, I control the names of those I choose to venerate and remember. Art for art’s sake does not mean that we have to worship at the feet of a group of talking heads. The above example is just the tip of the festering boil; there have been, are and will continue to be such important newsworthy stories to capture our collective attention and dumb us down once again. Fortunately we now have hundreds of channels to choose from to keep us up to speed on the big issues of celebrity life. Even better – all televisions are still equipped with an on/off button.

Switch it off.

No celebrities were harmed during the above diatribe… unfortunately.