Who are these people

I must confess that after a little fiddling around to figure out what the heck was going on I quickly became addicted to Twitter. Of course you've heard of it already so I won't bother to describe. Earlier today on the way to work a subject popped into my head that I thought might be interesting to "tweet" about. I knew my rant would go on for awhile, but that was fine because I'd only be posting in increments of 140 characters (including spaces and with minimal regard to grammar) or less at a time. Even those with the shortest of attention spans could tolerate such miniature bursts of prose if they chose to pay me any attention at all. Below is my sequence of 46 concise comments on the state of modern day celebrity, in case you missed a few on Twitter and wish to follow my train of inane thought from start to finish. Enjoy!

* I’ve decided 2 rant a series of tweets about the current state of American celebrityhood, if not for your amusement than @ least for my own.

* Preface: Years ago I chose not to closely follow college sports. Reason – too many damn teams to keep track of.

* I can handle the # of teams in AFC/NFC – American League/National League, Eastern Conference/Western Conference.

* But there’s like a million colleges in the USA. Too many teams, too many divisions, too many players, too many bowl games to keep track of.

* I figured the players who were good enough I’d eventually see in the pros. In the meantime, ESPN highlights of college careers sufficient.

* Celebrities are now like college teams IMHO. Too many damn many of them. The requirements for admittance are ridiculously lax.

* It used to be that to acquire pop culture fame you needed to regularly appear on TV or in movies or have a few hit songs.

* Celebrities once did things worth noting and paying attention to, which is how they became celebrities in the first place.

* Nowadays it seems about as easy to be considered a celebrity as it is to get a 500 SAT score. Talk about lowering the bar.

* The celebrity bar is on the friggin’ floor. Make a YouTube video, you’re a star. Appear on a “reality show”, you’re a star.

* Be related to at least one person who actually did something to become a legit celebrity, guess what, now you’re a celebrity too.

* Being a child of Rod Stewart for example should not be enough to be called a celebrity. At most it’s a good line to help get you laid.

* Being the child of 2 whole celebs like Bruce Willis & Demi Moore should make you WAY better looking than Rumer, but not worthy of a Wikipedia page.

* How many half actual celebrity parented – half groupie parented kids must there be out there? Do they all qualify for celebrity status too?

* If an NBA All Star has a dozen kids by a dozen random women, are there now 12 new people to potentially be on the cover of People magazine?

* For a few months for some godforsaken reason I became a regular reader of Perez Hilton’s blog. Hilton became a celebrity in his own right by “writing” about and obscenely doodling on photographs of so called celebrities.

* I’m not knocking Hilton’s hustle. He no doubt worked damn hard to put that blog together. He actually accomplished something.

* In fact, ridiculous as his existence may be, Hilton was doing way more than many of the people he was either fawning over or ridiculing.

* I’ll grant Perez his fame, but why should the guy who came in 10th on America’s Gotta Dance While Eating Prawns be considered a celebrity?

* The word “celebrity” has become totally devoid of legitimate meaning. Shouldn’t a talent and an accomplishment be involved?

* Gossip columns were intended to be devoted to people who did something worthy enough for us to actually care about what else they did.

* Is the married Spencer Tracy hooking up with Katherine Hepburn or is she still involved with Howard Hughes? Now THAT’S gossip.

* Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and Howard Hughes were each monumentally famous in their own rights, even more in collaboration.

* Is a cast member from Survivor Season 17 dating a cast member from The Apprentice Season 12? Maybe, maybe not, but who sincerely cares??!!!

* Apparently plenty of people DO care about mating rites of insta-celebs, which makes the appropriate question – Why? That one has me stumped.

* These hotel heiresses & reality show participants & game show contestants & kids of the formerly famous get all mixed together in my head.

* I stopped reading Hilton blog because I had no idea what Heidi Montag's done 2 make her worth repeatedly mentioning & didn't care 2 find out.

* What I do know is that there are a whole bunch people nowadays who are famous for being famous. That’s absurd, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

* Perhaps I’m just getting old. I want to remain in the loop of contemporary culture, but not if the loop is so flimsily constructed.

* I don’t mind reading about emerging movie or pop stars doing films & music I don’t care 4 because I can at least respect that they’re making something.

* Remember the flack Anna Kournikova took for getting way more endorsements & attention than her level of success warranted?

* At least Anna played tennis, won far more matches than she lost, even a couple titles. She didn’t just hold racquet & pose for camera at 1st.

* Being a Big Brother cast member is just sitting there holding a racquet. Nothing wrong with it but can we hold off on the Walk of Fame star?

* I’ve yet to see Zac Efron in anything but I know he acts/sings while being ridiculously pretty, and I can tolerate having this knowledge.

* Before he was Zac Efron he was Rob Lowe. Keith Partridge is now Hannah Montana. Different generation same principle, I get it.

* But why should I care about Jon & Kate and their 8? I’m 1 of 5, my mom 1 of 9, my dad 1 of 13. Not a single TV show resulted from any of this.

* And even if you do make it to TV, or to the internet which accepts everybody, that alone should not be enough to be considered a celebrity.

* Doesn’t the word celebrity imply that something is worth celebrating? Why would I celebrate someone becoming known for becoming known?

* Story on the ass size of daughter of the guy who defended O.J. appears directly next to story about volcano eruption that kills 2000. WTF?

* If side by side coverage was not the norm, existence of faux celebrities would fail to register & I’d have no complaint. But it is, so I do.

* The Maytag Repair man was on TV all the time but at no point did I know a damn thing about his sex life, and I was totally cool with that.

* Or maybe I really did want to know. Maybe I am subconsciously interested in the doings of those who have done little to nothing of note.

* Nah, that can’t be right. I’m much deeper than that. After all, I tweet therefore I am of significance.

* In fact, as of this tweet I declare myself a celebrity. Come see if you can snap my photo without getting slapped upside the head, paparazzi.

     

Don Imus sticks foot (and leg and torso) in big mouth

I do not listen to Don Imus' radio show, other than catching a few minutes of the televised version here and there. So I found it interesting, though certainly not surprising in lieu of recent events, to learn upon doing a google search that over the years Imus and characters on his radio show have:

* compared the appearance of black NBA players to apes
* called award-winning black New York Times journalist Gwen Ifill "the cleaning lady"
* referred to award-winning black New York Times journalist Bob Herbert as a "quota hire"
* referred to residents of Harlem as "molignans" (the Italian equivalent of "coons")
* referred to the black wife of former Secretary of Defense William Cohen as a "big-haired ho"
* called tennis players Venus and Serena Williams "animals"

And in a July 19, 1998 interview on "60 Minutes," Imus admitted to hiring a producer specifically "to do nigger jokes" for the show.

Somehow he managed to get away with all of this relatively unscathed. He may be the only "shock jock" with name recognition reasonably equivalent to Howard Stern, who is no friend or fan of Imus, but also no stranger to censorship. As a writer, I'm not a big fan of censorship myself. As a human being, I'm not a big fan of racist, anti-woman rhetoric. As a guy who appreciates a wide range of humor, I understand that insensitivity may not be politically correct, but it can often be damn funny and not especially mean spirited. I'm not a big fan of women's college basketball (I don't even watch the men. When it comes to sports, I typically stick to watching professionals), so perhaps I cannot speak intelligently about the Rutgers team. But if I was to make a blind guess, I'd say that probably not every one of their nappy headed players is a ho, that not every ho on the team is nappy headed, and that a pretty high percentage of them are probably neither nappy headed nor ho'ish. In fact, my research shows that the team includes includes a class valedictorian, a future lawyer and a musical prodigy.


Repercussions are coming fast and furious. Sponsors such as American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors Corp. have pulled ads, the televised simulcast was dropped, Imus has been suspended without pay for two weeks, he has suffered the indignity of issuing a multitude of insincere public apologies, and he has become precisely what he likes to deliver - a punch line. Yet this is not considered by some to be ample punishment. They want Don Imus to be fired. His apologies ring false to them, and the assertion that his cruelty was unintentional holds little credibility. Perhaps Mr. Imus has a point. We all know how easy it is to accidentally refer to someone as a nappy headed ho. I'm sure I've done it at least three times today. And someone who merely gets paid an enormous amount of money to speak on public airwaves can't possibly be expected to pay attention and be held accountable for every little thing he says, right?

Don Imus may be too much of a money maker to be fired by CBS for a faux pas they're surely praying will quickly go away once something even more ridiculous takes place, like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton becoming a televangelist duo. Or the resurrection of Anna Nicole Smith to proclaim that her daughter has no biological father, but was the result of an immaculate conception. And if enough outside pressure is mounted to force the network's hand, Imus will no doubt land on his feet with someone else in no time flat. He has already stated that he's sick and tired of apologizing, the one piece of honesty that I'll give him credit for. But if he expects me to believe he isn't a bigot, he may as well try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge while he's at it. And if he expects anyone to side with his decision to make derogatory comments about a group of college girls who were fresh off the sting of defeat in the NCAA championship game, he may need to search long and hard among his most ardent supporters.

I bet he thinks that if a black comedian said something equally offensive about white people, not merely as much grief would result. And you know what? He'd be right. Is this fair? Maybe not, but plenty in life is unevenly distributed. Call it reparations or affirmative action or whatever you wish, but after being dragged from Africa, enslaved for generations, followed up by decades of separate and unequal treatment that has black people perpetually scrambling to reach equal footing in this country (great strides have surely been taken to date, but have we arrived in the Promised Land that Martin Luther King Jr. saw in his fantastical dream? Not quite), the right to tell a few jokes at the expense of the oppressor has certainly been earned. Just try not to overly paint with too broad a stroke.

Don Imus does not have any problems catching a cab or being offered a job after acing an interview, and he probably does not make little old white ladies in the elevator extremely uncomfortable simply by his proximity. He is not considered to be less intelligent or articulate or even an inferior swimmer simply based on his melanin count. So no, he has not earned the right to call someone he has never even met and whom he knows next to nothing about, someone who could be my mother, or sister, or daughter a nappy headed ho and expect to get a laugh from me.

The line between playful tease with comedic intent and a personal hang up about members of a different sex and race is not all that fine. My advice to Don Imus is this. If you're too blind to see the line and distinguish which side you're on, don't go anywhere near it.