Fame

I wish that we could go 3 minutes without some TV show, magazine or newspaper telling us some meaningless piece of information about a “celebrity” and what he’s up to. I don’t care! I don’t care what any of these people are up to. If Brad Pitt ripped off Angelina’s skeletal arm and beat her to death then drowned all the kids in her blood I wouldn’t care. If the guy from Twilight was once a gay porn star using the name Pierce Everyman I wouldn’t even be able to feign interest. I realize this isn’t a new thing and that we’ve always been voyeuristic but can we start drawing some fucking lines?

What lines? First, can we say that unless you have a demonstratable talent that you can show without the help of money or producers you cannot ever be known as a “celebrity?” Every reality show contract should have a “shine box” clause where once they’re off the show they have to go the fuck away forever? Actually it wouldn’t even have to be forever. Thanks to the same kinds of shows that made them famous we have the ability to remember people for about 4 days after they leave our attention sphere. I’m humiliated as a human that these shows exist. 400 years ago Shakespeare was writing Hamlet to perform for the undereducated masses and now we’re watching high school dropout date rapists try to “marry” women who Flavor Flav wouldn’t fuck. Getting that small smug sense of superiority isn’t worth the tiny bit of our soul that dies every time we watch someone with a verb for a name talking in a confessional.

There are literally millions of talented and good people who are nowhere near famous that should be broadcast. I get to try and develop a comedic voice with people who are so fucking funny that it intimidates me to think of how much work I need to do to get there. (Speaking of if you’re reading this check out www.quietd.com to see what they’re up to.) There are artists, singers, actors, teachers, entrepreneurs, therapists, social workers, and chefs who aren’t assholes and who don’t think they need to be shitty to be interesting. Put them on fucking TV.

As a people we so minimize the importance of authenticity and kindness that we have no chance of developing empathetic children. I am a dickhead. I literally hate about 2/3rds of the people I see on a daily basis. I will tell jokes about hating them, I will mock their political ideology and their social identity, I will lampoon them and I will think of horrific ways in which they could die when they turn right from the left lane. That being said if there was a show where what I thought was actually done to these people I wouldn’t watch a minute of it. The reason I can be a dickhead and say horrific things is because I have zero desire to actually see any of them come to harm. Non-skill based reality shows by definition require the foibles of the contestant to be exposed and exploited by the arrogant fuckers behind the camera and in the editing room. We watch them and witness a character type that has been fun house mirrored to the point where they are literally less than human. The reality of their existence has been warped to the point where they become morlocks and we laugh at their animalistic struggles. When we turn off the television that disconnect remains and when we talk about social programs or universal healthcare (remember when we used that term as the ideal? Public option is bullshit, but better than nothing) we do not feel connected to people we can help. Worse we become unable to see ourselves as the same kind of person so we do not even recognize our own need for help. This loss of connection is the unwitting blood sacrifice that feeds Fox News and the other propagandists who reaffirm our sense of superiority based on name calling and “othering” everyone. THEN, to make it worse, the People Magazineistas put these same reality show assholes on the cover so that if you are able to avoid watching these shows you still know who they are. They must be stopped!

That being said, Top Chef is a hell of a show.