I thought I would take a break from all this political jib jab and write a short informal commentary about what is really important to me, and this God blessed nation... Celebrities. How great do we have it in this country? Who needs to go experience life when we can just live vicariously through all the actors and athletes who are living their lives? (or attempting to)
Please ignore the single tear dripping down the Indian's face. Let me be clear, celebrities exemplify many great things about this nation; creativity, success, aspiration. However, we need to be clear about something else, they're not our friends, oh sure I saw Jennifer Garner once, but I didn't have her, Ben and the family over to my place for dinner later that night. Now the question is, as with most things in life, how much is too much. No one is innocent of being fascinated with the life of a celebrity, have you seen a movie before? (yes) Did you like it? (yes)... you're guilty. There's nothing wrong with it, they're entertaining, but there comes a point where we need put down Us magazine and listen to Them (whoever may be in your general vicinity at this time).
People are so fascinated because major celebrities become larger than life and they stop seeming real. They're human, same flesh and blood as the rest of yes. They eat, sleep, have sex (more than the rest of us... damn), breathe, and now we have pictures of them doing all of that and more!
Though my annoyance with the "celebrities have lives just like we do!!!" obsession is nothing new, something sparked my desire to openly address the issue. At risk of sounding pompous, I'll quote myself "The President just announced that he's sending 30,000 more of our brave men and women to a sandbox shit hole, I'm really not concerned who Tiger Woods is screwing". I'm beginning to wonder if we ever had a grip on reality, or if superstars have more inadvertent power than any President ever could.
I'll ask another series of questions, if the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then you deserve to be concerned about the Tiger Woods issue.
Are you a Tiger Woods mistress? (no)
Are you related to Tiger? (no)
Are you Tiger's wife? (no)
Are you Tiger Woods? (no)
Then leave it, the hell, alone.
So should we blame the network that shows 5 hours of Tiger coverage out of their 24.6 hour day? Or the individual who will simply turn to another network if they're not covering it? For all the blame of "corporate media" and "liberal journalism" people really REALLY need to look at themselves more often. Not to diminish the responsibility journalists sometimes lack, however the overproduction of the 26.2 hour news cycles is a result of a given demand. This is capitalism bitches, same reason we're obsessed with where Tiger Wood's penis is in this given moment. It begins with yourself, and sadly, sometimes that's where it ends.
If you haven't noticed by now this post is about 80% questions (i know, right?). Point being is I'm too guilty of this myself to really come down too hard on the issue (I'm the guy obsessed with music, remember?), so I'm playing the Socratic role. You can't force people to look away from what is deemed to be entertaining and focus on real world issues, if that were the case I feel we would see a few more hits on this blog and a few less on Miley Cyrus' twitspacebook page (she's with the Jonas Sister or something, right?). I will not sit here and tell you to stop concerning yourself with the lives of people that have no direct impact on your own. I would, however, suggest making the effort to concern yourself more with the lives of people that do.
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