Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Well, I guess it’s because they don’t have an integrated, mature society in which others care for one another.  I often have heard Obama talk about values American cherish, I’ve heard him embrace Reagan and so on, but you just know his heart isn’t in it.  You know that Americans don’t believe it, either.  It’s the hollow chamber when the bullet’s gone and the stag has scampered away and you’re left with the grey sky and the chill echo and the dry brown reeds and your buddy’s silence around you. (Girl in the trailer, she wouldn’t know for shit.) It doesn’t take a village to raise an individual; it takes one man and an inheritance.  It takes dubya and some draft-dodgin’ tough talk.  And jogging with a gun. Trust Americans to bomb us back to the caves of pre-civilization.  I’m not sure the last time I went jogging with a gun, but I’m guessing, oh, 5 million years, give or take.

Such thoughts occur to me after watching tv and movies.  Say you like music, or movies, or anything popular in general.  Say you wonder: “what ever happened to. . . ?”  Odds are, if it was someone outside America, that person went on to have a functional, productive life.  But in America, you can’t.  Call it the _insert name of person or Scott Baio here_ syndrome.  All over the world, people go in and out of the celebrity business with _relative_ ease.  But in America, you are defined by your momentary fame, and you can never escape it.

Well, ok, let’s say I’m wrong about this.  Off the top of my head, I’m thinking about that John Tesh guy—I think he had an entertainment show, or something.  You could land a jet on his face.  I think he went on to become a singer with some success.  Ok, fine, so now I’m wrong.  Or am I right X2?

But wait—let’s stop blaming the Tesh guy; let’s not even try to get teshphobic about this.  Let’s blame it on the people, the people who really ought to be blamed.  Blamed for what?  Loving celebrity?  Well, yes, because if you turn every tesh into a celebrity, then you can’t even grow a radish to feed yourself.  You can’t adjust to reality.  The center cannot hold because there is not a center—you’re Tesh, he’s Tesh, we’re all famous and . . . .

Tesh.

That’s what the end of the world looks like: not a whimper or a bang; just a puff of ~tesh~ in the distance as leaden dreams reground in the far-off desert of the soul; a ~tesh~ of your grandmother wondering (no, really wondering, what you were thinking); a ~tesh~ a ~tesh~ as you flap that magazine back in the supermarket and the line advances.

Well, kudos to Tesh, unlike Jon Stewart (Johnny Leibowitz), for having the conviction at least to keep his own name (I’m sure it must be), instead of calling himself Rock Mayrifle or Mascotty Merican.

Motto: Celebrity is wise, for those who wish only to live and contribute for 15 mins.