The Celebrity Life
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or taping a season of Survivor, I’m sure you’re well aware that last Thursday, the world lost quite possibly the most famous musical entertainer ever — Michael Jackson.
I’m sure somebody will comment about the quality of his music and name some other acts that were much better, but I will go out on a limb and say there was not a single person who was a bigger international celebrity than Michael Jackson.
But this isn’t a blog entry about his music, his level of fame, or what did or didn’t happen in the Neverland ranch. This is a blog entry about the ensuing media coverage.
In the past weeks, I’ve found every person who barely knew him give their take about his private life. I’ve seen “never before seen private pictures of the Jackson family.” I’ve heard various experts give their take on what concoction of prescription drugs he may have been on. (Geez, wait for the autopsy!)
I won’t beat around the bush. I think our obsession with celebrities is ridiculous. When I bring things like this us, someone is usually quick to rebut with an argument similar to this: Boo-hoo! I make millions of dollars a year and I have to have a few people with cameras follow me around.
I guess my argument isn’t that I necessarily feel bad for the celebrities. Its more a question of “Why do you care about them so much?” How meaningless is your life, that you are this obsessed with Angelina’s new baby, or Britney’s latest antics, or whether Lindsay Lohan is secretly a lesbian?
A few years ago, the likes of TMZ and Perez Hilton gave us a front-row seat into watching Britney Spears devolve into some serious problems triggered by her bipolar condition. Some of us went off the deep end with our sympathy, like this person. Some of us, like me, probably felt a little bad for her, but were mostly indifferent. Some of us took some happiness in seeing a teen pop princess finally, “get hers.”
I guess this blog entry is aimed at that last group. How meaningless and empty is your life that you actually get pleasure out of seeing the suffering of some random person? If you really think Britney and Michael and Paris make a mockery of people with real talent, then you should just stop paying attention to them and they’ll go away. But then you’d have to obsess about your own unhappy life.
