Question of the day (or week, or month)...
Would somebody tell me why in the name of Zsa Zsa Gabor I'm supposed to give a rat's patoot about Paris Hilton?
There I was, standing in line at Albertson's (again) and saying to myself (again) that if I see one more picture of Jennifer Aniston or Britney Spears I'm going to toss my lunch.
And then I turn around and see, on the cover of some weekly fish-wrapper, the one that trumps them all, a pasty-faced, wasted little blonde who just happens to be named after a hotel. (Okay, it's vice-versa. Who cares??!!)
Jennifer Aniston and Britney Spears make me sick to my stomach, both of them. But as sick-making as they are, at least each of them has some trade she has plied in order to get the public's attention. Britney, as I understand it, makes records (although you couldn't pay me to listen to one of them.) Jennifer...what, used to be engaged to Brad Pitt? Something like that. No, seriously, I understand she makes movies (ditto, you couldn't pay me to watch one of them) and she used to be in some TV show called Friends in which (as I understand it--I never watched Friends either) a group of young "friends" occupied a New York apartment that none of them could conceivably have ever actually afforded.
So Jennifer has some claim, anyway, to being an "actress," while Britney has some claim (however tenuous) to being a "recording artist." That's something, at least. But Paris Hilton? What has she ever done that anyone should care about, other than inheriting money? Donald Trump is famous for being rich, but at least there's some story there: he became rich largely through his own efforts. If he had just waited around for his father to die and gotten rich that way, would he be hosting a reality show? I don't think so.
Yes, we Americans have always been fascinated by wealth and the wealthy. Understandably: with the founding of the republic, we became the first society in the western world in which it was theoretically possible for nearly anyone to become rich, provided they were lucky enough, smart enough, unscrupulous enough or whatever. Ours is a fluid society in which material gain is king: of course we're fascinated by wealth.
But do we have to be fascinated by it even when it's boring?
Paris Hilton illustrates a creepy phenomenon which has come about just within the last generation: she's "famous for being famous." What is it with this? I don't know, but I do understand, now, why I mentioned Zsa Zsa Gabor at the beginning of this screed. In all of my experience, she's the closest example I can think of, from an earlier generation, of the kind of phenomenon Paris Hilton is for ours. Yeah, she appeared in a few films, but her sister Eva did a lot more in front of the cameras than she did (the immortal Green Acres comes to mind.) Zsa Zsa was famous simply for being one of the "Gabor sisters," those flamboyant imports from the old world. She was last seen around 1990, belting a traffic cop.
I'll bet if he were still alive, Andy Warhol would have a field day with this "famous for being famous" stuff. It's one thing to hoot and jeer at people whose own lives are so vapid that they live vicariously through those of celebrities, whether by watching soap operas or grabbing Hollywood Globe at the grocery store or just cruising the web sites of the glamorous.
It's another thing altogether to realize we've become so overwhelmed with the cheap glitz pouring at us from all directions that all someone has to do to get our attention is have a lot of money, and then maybe have word leak out that they posed in the nude somewhere.
Come on, folks. there are plenty of famous people out there who have darn good reason for being famous, and are much more worthy of attention than a spoiled heiress with no discernible talent for anything except getting snapped by paparazzi (and not much for that.) Case in point: I openly admit that Reese Witherspoon is one of my guilty pleasures. I haven't seen the new film in which she plays June Carter Cash yet, but she was irresistible in Sweet Home Alabama, even if it didn't have much of a script (ten minutes into the film I knew how it was going to end.) OK, so I'm old enough to be her father. Who cares? Reese is talented, beautiful and even (yes!) interesting. I read an interview with her in Reader's Digest a few months ago and she seemed like a very lovely, gracious person in conversation. She gives this old geezer some hope for the under-35 crowd, anyway.
But can there really be anyone out there for whom Paris Hilton is a guilty pleasure? Or for that matter, any kind of pleasure? Or is it just that those very paparazzi who won't stop snapping pictures of her, and the trashy tabloids that won't stop printing them, have foisted her off on us, in much the same way the television networks decide, for all of us, what's news and what isn't? If so, it's a case of marketing run amuck, a monster feeding on itself.
I have an idea. If the only thing Paris Hilton has to do to become a celebrity is inherit money, maybe we could start a new reality show: Secrets Of The World's Most Boring People. Contestants would compete to see who could come up with the most idiotic reason why they should be on the cover of People magazine.
And at the end of the show, there would be this disclaimer: "If you actually watched this, we recommend that you go stand in front of a mirror, take a good, deep breath and ask yourself WHY."
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