High Cost of Celebrity

It is not easy being a celebrity. It might seem magical to the uninitiated – the lights flashing, cameras clicking, public excitement as you enter a room, face recognition in public media, adoring fans – that sort of thing. The celebrity surely feels loved. Respected.

The attention may seem nice at the beginning but it must wear on the celeb’s privacy, quiet and serenity. On a bad day a brave front is needed for all to see, a grand smile and polite nature helps in almost every situation. But get caught with a sneer or frown and watch the media react. They will turn on the adored one.

It’s almost as though our social template requires us to build up a celebrity’s persona and place him on a very high pedestal just so we can tear them down in a grand whoosh. This model is followed time and time again. Just think of Tiger Woods. He is perhaps the greatest golfer of our age, yet he was attacked unmercifully and brought down. Why does the public believe it has this right? Who are they to judge the other person? Are each of us so perfect that we deserve to be slapped down?

I don’t think so. I think this temptation shows a raw base of our human condition. We are flawed so this is accepted. But we are referring here to us, not the judged.

Tiger Woods is a good, decent and talented person. He deserves our respect and acceptance. His personal life is his own. He needs to own it and live it as best he can. It is not the public’s right to sit in judgment of him and his family.

Bruce Jenner was idolized as an Olympic Champion. A decathlon ideal. Young and vibrant then. Handsome and wholesome. Now decades later we learn his youth was troubled by sexual identity and orientation. As young as 5 years of age Bruce felt at odds with his male identity. He felt more a girl but suppressed those thoughts and expression for decades. He assumed the mantle of a rugged, talented athlete. And man was he successful! He was idolized as such.

Now he is transitioning to becoming a woman! Amazing in it own right. Even more so that our society has evolved so far to talk about it and adapt to it.

Between his athletic career and his new sexual identity, he became known as a ‘Kardashian’. How that came about I do not know. Nor do I care. As a Kardashian, however, Jenner became a celebrity without portfolio. There is no earthly reason that the Kardashians are famous. They have produced very little and are no better or more beautiful than anyone else on the planet. Why America has made this family famous is beyond my imaginings. They obviously have terrific publicists who made this all possible, and all for money.

Because of this, however, Bruce Jenner is caught in a multiple of public images. The media feels he is fair game. He has an auto accident and a person would think this is the most important facet of his life. Was he to blame for the accident? Who knows? Not one of us could possibly know. It is not our job to re-engineer an accident site and determine what actually happened and who is to blame for the event. Indeed, blame belongs to many people and circumstances. Most likely the blame will not settle on one person. The media however would like you to believe otherwise. It’s good for their ratings that we pay attention to this.

Look, this is an auto accident. One of thousands happening every day in America. The trend line of auto accidents are interesting and ought to be if we understand them and improve driving skills and auto design to lessen accidents and their outcomes. But to focus on one person in detail is nuts.

Bruce Jenner has been dubbed a celebrity. So he is a public target. That’s a high price to pay for celebrity whether asked for or not.

I think we need to tone down our public adulation of celebrities. Most of them don’t deserve all the attention. And in private matters they deserve privacy.

Then again there are more important matters for us to attend to. Scan the headlines of what passes as news. The life of celebrities is ranked quite high. Next comes weather events. Then war and chaos in various spots on the globe.

It’s time for Americans to get serious about their nation’s role in the world. Are we serious people? Are we doers and accomplishers of good and big things? Or are we the custodians of the mundane and tediously unimportant?

I fear the latter has the upper edge. The former – big things – is over due for a comeback. Perhaps the media could play this up for a time?

February 27, 2015