Celebrity worship annoying? (was: Re: Colin/Dennis Crevey)

[Ebony AKA AngieJ]

Jen and Michela's posts on this were very cool!  

Colin in canon annoys me.  Celeb worship bothers me because it's 
dangerous to put mere human beings up on pedestals... too often they 
end up unwittingly desecrating their own temples.  Within my own 
religion, I get annoyed when people say their faith has been shaken 
by some uberpastor or another who was caught doing something naughty--
now I do believe that ministers ought to walk worthy of their calling 
(as all Christians should) but I personally think the faith-shaking 
is largely the fault of the folks shaken for deifying a fallible 
human being.  (Even the angel who John attempted to worship in 
Revelation stopped him from doing so.) 

For similiar reasons, the media hype over the Clinton/Lewinsky 
scandals made my teeth hurt just as much.  I'm so tired of the public 
demanding of their dignitaries and entertainers what they often do 
not do themselves.  We scream about the specks in the eyes of those 
in the public view and are quite content with the boards in our own.

I don't think celebs are any more degenerate than the rest of the 
population.  They're not a special class of people.  They're just 
people whose talents and/or fortune thrust them into the spotlight.  
Why should we demand they be role models for children?  The question 
we ought to ask is why aren't *we* role models for them?

People put on pedestals more often than not fall off.  Gravity, 
baby.  Didn't you see the first *Survivor*, where the final 
contestants actually had to *stand* on one of those things?  It's 
extremely uncomfortable for living flesh and blood to be a picture-
perfect statue, and yet this is what we demand that our notables be.  
And then when they fall down, we become like spectators of the games 
in old Rome, demanding their blood... when all they did was succumb 
to the laws of physics... or of human nature.  Whichever you prefer.

I don't think I've ever gone through a true celeb-worship phase, but 
in high school my closest girl friends *all* had HUGE celeb crushes 
that were serious.  One friend was in love with rapper Kid from Kid 
N' Play (the light-skinned one with the high-topped fade that made 
his head look like a pencil eraser), another was in love with Deion 
Sanders, and the third was sweet on Rick Fox back when he played for 
the Boston Celtics (he's now an L.A. Laker and married to 
singer/actress Vanessa Williams).

During our teen years, I was dragged to concerts and basketball 
games, involved in schemes to get us backstage with or without 
passes, etc.  We succeeded in meeting each of the above famous guys 
and quite a few others. 

I say "dragged" because I never crushed easily, and almost never on 
folks I didn't know.  My crushes always were on guys I knew and who 
knew me.  Even when I've met famous people, I haven't been all that 
impressed.  This is because my parents demystified celebrities and 
dignitaries quite unceremoniously... whenever we exclaimed over a 
movie star or singer or even President Reagan, we were told "he/she 
goes to the bathroom, sleeps, eats, drinks, picks his nose, and farts 
just like anyone else breathing--and after their 15 minutes, they'll 
be just like anybody else again".  

We were never allowed to think that celebs were like the peri of 
Persian myth, perfect creatures who subsist on the scent from 
perfumed flowers and thus never need to eat, drink, or excrete.  I 
used to *hate* when Mama or Daddy would say this, but after a while I 
believed it.  So when I finally got the chance to meet some of these 
folks, I guess I felt a little let down because I was usually less 
than thrilled.  *Where* was the magic?  After all, these people 
*were* called stars, right?

As a teacher, I've had a few local and national celebrities' kids in 
my classes.  Most of these kids are NOT qualified for a TAG program--
their parents are just too cheap to pay for private school and use 
their connections to wiggle their children in and deny spots to other 
poor and truly bright kids whose parents don't know the entire school 
board or the mayor.  These "star kids" are as a rule badly behaved 
and poor students... they could all use a dose of Hillaire 
Belloc's "Cautionary Tales", and then a lot of love, because often 
their parents don't spend a lot of time with them.  It's so sad.

Now that I think about it, in all of my fiction writing there's a 
critique of fame and the famous hidden somewhere.

But even I'm not immune to getting weak in the knees over certain 
ones... there is always some famous guy who I sigh a little over 
before shaking my head and telling myself to get real.  Right now 
it's Boris Kodjoe, an actor-model of African-German heritage.  He's 
cameoed in several movies, and just landed a permanent gig in the 
spinoff series for my absolute favorite grown-up movie of the 
1990s, "Soul Food" on the Showtime cable network.  He is simply 
*gorgeous*... from what I've seen of him in interviews and on his 
self-maintained website, it's not just skin deep either.  

Now, *he* doesn't eat, sleep, or excrete.  Impossible.  ;-)

--Ebony AKA AngieJ