I'm sure many of you have seen the recent bruhaha over Britt McHenry at ESPN bitching out a parking attendant. However, there's a bit more to the story than first told. See: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/17/opinions/drexler-espn-reporter-britt-mchenry/index.html Focus: What is celebrity? Are we as a society just as responsible for the bad behavior as the celebrity? Alt Focus: If you could be a celebrity, what would you be known for? How would you act?
The idea of celebrity now is ludicrous. Andy Warhol must be having giggle fits in his douchebag grave. People famous for being famous. That's some Catch-22 shit right there. "How did you get famous?" "Well, I was famous." They don't even have to produce any viable art, no significant offerings to society except histrionics and some idea of beauty. If you are photogenic and can be a shitty human being, you're in the club. Though, I do appreciate Hobbit Kardashian and Paris Hilton. They fucked on film for profit, but managed to parlay public interest into careers. I don't give much of a damn about celebrity or the public who funds it. I'm still not so sure people watch reality TV for any personal reason or it is just a bunch of women wrapped up in a great spectacle drama and the men who want to fuck them all. In a perfect world the corpse of Hemingway rises from the grave to swig gin and start bar fights while TMZ films it. What I want celebrity to be is more like what Sinatra got away with. Bad behavior, then everyone loving him for it. There is bad behavior, then there is being a piece of shit on TV. Huge difference to me. One is the stuff of legend, the other forgotten a week after it airs. Focus: I could probably manage being a writer. My behavior would not change. If anything I could finally get away with being so much worse. People would accept the absolutely silly, outlandish, or rude shit I say as, "Oh, he's just a writer, he has to be eccentric." That's exactly it, dear. Now excuse me while I wear filthy pajamas everywhere for a week. My sperg lord moments would finally go unnoticed, or dare I dream, relished as art. The writer's celebrity has fallen significantly since the 80s. As big of loud drunks they typically are nobody pays much attention to them anymore. Which is a shame.
That girl is pretty hot so Im guessing the attitude has been a life time in the making. Alt Focus: Man I'd love to be a famous comedian or actor, who wouldnt? I'd bang so many fans I'd end up fucking the ugly ones too. I'd probably buy a nice big farm in the middle of nowhere when I didn't want the attention and just get on with the same random hobbies I have now, besides jacking off which would be done by star fuckers.
I gotta say, I have no problem with Kim Kardashian. She seems pretty into herself, but like a more or less decent person who has made a lot of something out of almost literally nothing. So, good on her? Plus she has a nice ass and she likes showing it off. I like looking at it. This transaction makes a lot of sense for all involved. I would hate being extremely famous, but would enjoy moderate fame. The kind of fame where only your fans have heard of you, but they really like you.
It's like we need royalty in our lives. To me, modern American celebrities are like our version of royalty.
Celebrities should be allowed to behave the way we behave. They should be able to do drugs, fuck like libertines, say they love guns or berate towing companies-- which I might add we have had threads dedicated to directing our scorn at. What that woman said WAS condescending bullshit, but considering the type of business she was dealing with there's a chance some of those words may have been deserved. However, being a celebrity does not bestow on you God-like powers that means you deserve to walk on rose petals and talk down to the Normies. Be a fucking human being, it's not like you forgot how. You're a performer. You're faking somebody's words, and you do a good job at it, but is that harder than writing code, or flying an aircraft, or assembling break parts over and over? Do you CREATE anything? No. You're an entertainer who gets paid and astronomical salary because you were in the right place at the right time. Or, tits (see: Jenn Sturger). Famous people are allowed to be famous, but when they shit the bed level the playing field and punish them like us. Enough of this 24 Strikes And You're Out bullshit.
That's what lawyers are for. I would be surprised with all her run ins with the law if someone like Amanda Bines isn't actually insolvent based on legal fees alone. Happens all the time but most of the time the people have been out of the limelight so long their foreclosed homes and bankruptcy filings never make more than a few lines on TMZ. Except for the Biebs cosmically that kid can be an annoying twit in all sorts of random trouble and still bank 30 million a year.
That is one downside to being famous though. If your average person goes off the handle like she did in that video they storm out and there's no backlash. She gets suspended and has to deal with swarms of the angry public bereating her. With sentencing for real crimes I wonder how much of it is being a celebrity and how much is just having the money. I'm reminded of that afluenza kid who killed 4 people drunk driving and got off with just rehab. He wasn't a celebrity, but you can bet that was one really fucking persuasive lawyer. You see other (poor) minors get tried as adults with much harsher sentencing for petty crimes. I've thought about it before and I'm not sure I would even like being a celebrity. Yes, I would take the money all day, but losing anonymity and having strangers point and talk about me everywhere I went would weird me out. I also wouldn't want my personal life under a microscope, nor have to deal with the bizarre overly zealous fans who obsess over it.
I think a big factor in this is age and gender. We as a society give a lot more public opinion leeway to people who are perceived to have paid their dues - which in most cases means age. The two guys you mentioned were in their 40s or older, while I bet if a young, 20 year-old Hemingway swigged gin and started bar fights public opinion would be calling him a spoiled punk and worse.
I cannot think of a more horrifying, hellish existence than being widely famous and recognized everywhere. The bad behavior existed long before celebrity became what it is now. News organizations were just more discrete and, you know, legitimate. But to be fair, it's only gotten this way because people are buying it, so I guess it's a symbiotic relationship. If fame ever did find it's way to me, I would prefer it to be as low key as possible. Kafka. I would like to be Kafka. Anonymous and eccentric in my own time but famous after death.
We are responsible for creating celebrity, but not for the actions of that celebrity. If anything, we're setting them up as celebreties because we can't wait to see them fail... because we find their failure entertaining. They always forget that part... they just assume they are "making it big" and are "too famous and better than you to fail". They lose their humility. We no longer ignore the pitiful, we focus in on them and wait for their eventual self-destruction. In her case, I think she's too stupid to realize that her tits and ass are what made her, and the condescending bullying trumped it; people got more satisfaction out of hating her personality than they got from enjoying her looks. The very elements that can help make people "celebrities" in today's social media world can just as quickly turn and bite them in the ass; celebrity is made or broken by out of context sound/video bites. Unfortunately, the overly developed sense of self-entitlement that accompanies these idiots kind of hides that reality from them, and they become their own worst enemies. It's all about being aware of your surrounding context, and acting appropriately. Very, very few idiots that are "tabloid famous" are capable of that. And even bigger than that, the overly concerned parent corp that doesn't want to poke the stick at the Online Social Justice Warrior that is easily offended felt they had to take action in order to placate those morons. If they just said, "we don't fucking care" and left everything alone, this wouldn't even be a story. People are just too fucking worried about other people's shit, and the internet is doing nothing but enabling that.