I consider celebrity a cultural venereal disease – a nasty infection that, like syphilis, in time can often induces madness. And I don’t know if there’s a cure.
The most prominent example of this insidious malady is Donald J. tRump, a man whose lust for media attention prompted him years ago to call New York City journalists and pretend the he was someone else, a publicist named either John Miller or John Barron, to sing his own praises (it’s bizarre that he would later name his youngest son Barron). A key factor in his rise to national fame was his “reality” TV competition “The Apprentice” and its infected offshoot “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I don’t have to explain to readers of this publication how his celebrity dementia has cursed the nation with unspeakable ugliness.
Another case in point is those celebrities who are famous for simply being famous – a modern media-driven phenomenon that’s a real head-scatcher to me. The worst of the lot is the Kardashian clan. I will happily admit I’ve never seen their (again) “reality” TV show, though obviously many others did watch it and I assume enjoy it. The family were initially infected with celebrity when their father, lawyer Robert Kardashian, represented O.J. Simpson in his murder trial (an affair that boosted Simpson’s celebrity suck-up friend Kato Kaelin to celebrity himself).
As Google’s AI program Bard says, Kim Kardashian “is one of the most successful celebrities in the world. She has used her fame and platform to build a multi-billion dollar empire,” earning her an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion. One symptom of the celebrity disease in addition to the lust for fame is a craven desire for money. Others include narcissism, vanity, entitlement, pretension, believing they are better than the rabble that made them famous, arrogance and further distasteful if not disgusting attitudes and behaviors.
An interesting sideline to Kim Kardashian’s celebrity is the speculation that she had her tush surgically enhanced (she denies it) as well as parading her butt – a sexual behavior common to lower primates – in public for paparazzi. Lots of class, all of it low, if you ask me.
Celebrity can also be fatal. The tragic death of Lady Diana is the saddest example of that.
As much as I obviously loathe celebrity, I will have to admit that sometimes I do enjoy some people becoming one. In the early 1980s, I did publicity for Ozzy Osbourne, who I’d already become quite fond of after interviewing him twice, as he’s a sweet and immensely likable fellow who is utterly honest about himself and his foibles, and completely without pretense. His family’s “reality” show – admittedly actually real in how he’s exactly who he is in the series – made him into the nutty uncle of the extended celebrity clan, mocking such fame by simply achieving it. Gotta love it.
Fame doesn’t have to result in celebrity. One night at the Manhattan music club the Lone Star Cafe, its owner brought over two fellows and seated them at a table with me and some friend. One of them, who sat down across from me, was Robert Duvall, one of the most celebrated actors of our time. Yet not a celebrity, as underscored by being in his company and finding him pretty much a friendly regular guy, unpretentious, warm and friendly.
Another famed, exceptionally talented and accomplished thespian that, in the early ‘80s, I both interviewed and a bit later ran into and spent time delightfully talking with at a another New York nightspot is Diane Lane. Back then, at 17 years old, she was a preternaturally mature woman rich with grace, poise and class, as well as a very keen intelligence. Admittedly, celebrity was what enabled her while underage to be admitted into a drinking establishment.
She wowed me so much as a person that I’ve followed her ever since, and I’m further impressed that she seems to have largely avoided being mentioned in gossip columns and the celebrity news media (other than when, sadly, she had to call police during a domestic abuse incident with her now ex-husband Josh Brolin). The way she has managed to evade celebrity has only enhanced my esteem for her. But it’s likely that eschewing celebrity is one reason why, for all her consistent excellence in every film in which she’s appeared, Lane has but one Best Actress nomination and hasn’t yet won a golden statuette that her work suggests she richly deserves (because, perhaps, a significant factor in winning one is having a consistently high media profile and assiduously working the proverbial room of the film industry).
It would seem that what can inoculate famed personalities against celebrity is innate class, a well-grounded sense of self, personal modesty and the smarts to perceive and avoid its dangers. I must admit to some small part in spreading the celebrity virus as an entertainment journalist. But that also gave me a front row seat at the largely gruesome sideshow of modern fame that led me to what I feel about celebrity. And my conclusion that the world would be a better place without it.
Album & Book: Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart & “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You” – Americana pioneer and icon Lucinda Williams emerges from her 2020 stroke with her powers at creating emotive and eloquent roots music largely undiminished. Her well-written memoir in its first half delivers a compelling and revelatory look back at her nomadic youth through the American South as well as Peru and Mexico City as the daughter of a poet and college professor followed by her journey and struggle to achieve the music business career her musical gifts merit. The latter part of the book, from my perspective as someone who knows her personally, has some quixotic gaps as well as gaffes in what she writes about some people who passed through her life. Yet it remains a unique and engaging account of a fascinating artistic life. And the album shows how well she has bounced back artistically from her malady.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email robpatterson054@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2023
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