Tarnished Tinsel

Celebrity status might arguably be called America's favorite religion.  The amount of energy, money, time and trouble invested in the adoration of celebrities surpasses almost any public display of religion in America.  Secularist and humanists may vince at the shenanigans of religious fanatics, but the sort of hoopla that accompanies the cult of celebrity makes even Pentecostals look like Stoics.  Americans scream at their celebrities, imitate them, stalk them, read about them, adorn themselves with their image, canonize their every saying and generally make entertainers and athletes every bit the equals of the gods of Olympus.

Oddly, Americans also like their celebrities to crash, burn and self-destruct and otherwise go through as much hell as possible. How many of our pop diva's are depressed and disillusioned.  What we've seen this year is a large number of our diva's spiral into mental illness and hospitalization.  As I have listened and read, it appears to me that somewhere in the buzz is the interesting truth that most diva's are certified workaholic's, control freaks with extraordinary talent.  But they have discovered that the Emerald City is, alas, an illusion.

Yes, folks, Oz is just a lot of curtains, lighting crews and special effects.  It's a city of press releases and "Making of..." specials.  After the multi-million dollar contracts and the obligatory film roles, it's all a sham.  That's right folks.  Tinseltown is, uh tinsel and hopefully the word is out of the box.

One of my more intelligent friends once uttered the truism that "Sanity is whoever has the keys," or to state the converse, "Crazy is what the people with the keys say it is."  Increasingly, the keepers of the cultural illusion of celebrity have attempted to say that the ridiculous images of celebrity superiority sent across the world are reality and you are crazy.

Is it possible that it's actually a relatively healthy urge that keeps us watching the endless versions of "Behind the Music" that rehearse the decline of celebrities to the level of savages before finding salvation in rehab.  Are we secretly telling ourselves "hey, I'm actually doing better than those famous guys!  I've sorof got it together in comparison to those who are in hoc to the IRS or are addicting themselves into heroin rehab. As painful as it is to admit, I think the public fascination with the self-demolition of celebrities may serve a good purpose: we see the truth that money, power, fame movies and headlines don't rescue you from being a miserable idiot.

These celebrities are discovering that life is not money, fame and talent.  Many have gone public with the "rehab" treatment and present to us the public how they have been to hell and back.   And guess what?  They have now figured out how life really is.

There are a lot of people like that, and most of them aren't celebrities.  They are the guy who fixes your car, the lady who serves you at the local store, the elderly woman next door, the young man installing your kitchen cabinets.  Unknown to you, they have made it through all kinds of hell that will never be on television.  They will never write a song about it. They simply discovered life is a gift, an incredibly resilient gift.  It bounces back, and often gets a lot better.  

The music biz, the celebrity cult, the illusion of diva-hood and all the rest of it is a lie telling all of us we need applause, attention and money to be really happy.  Fact is, a good hot tea with pie does it for me.  And hundreds of things that cost a lot less than that.  Happiness is what ever you decide it is.  And it can be very simple indeed.

Those of us who know something of true happiness need to remind the screaming tattoo-covered cultist that misery loves company, and happiness does just find alone.  All the props we've placed in our attempt at artificial living are useless and the media the great deceiver of our souls is empty when it comes to real life and its meaning.  Celebrities beware; life is more than the exploitation of your talent. While us the public need to be screaming that the "Emperor has no cloths".