What is the nature of celebrity in society? Is it to enlighten? Darken? Distract? Dim? Is any morality owed to the sycophants who adore celebrity? How do we explain and frame Keith Richards’ recent admission he snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine and then his quick recantation of that confession?
Former president Gerald Ford died last night at 93 and, based on the non-stop media coverage, you are led to believe he was the most important president in the history of the United States.
Continue reading → Private Life, Public Death: The Perils of Inappropriate Veneration
Yesterday I was surprised when a friend said the following in a comment for my Lindsay Lohan Proves Her Illiteracy article:
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Continue reading → Lindsay Lohan Makes This Blog Super Hot!: Moral Depression Follows
Young people look up to other young people. Unfortunately, many of the role models young people choose to use to model are not worthy of imitation or the attention. If you ever needed proof of why young people should not look up to celebrities and imitate their morality and their behavior in the classic Aristotlean way of learning and mimicry, please read actress Lindsay Lohan’s incoherent — and frankly, illiterate — public sympathy card to genius film director Robert Altman’s family she released on Tuesday to see the sad, living proof, of a Long Island public education and the perils of false celebrity.
One of my favorite scenes in “Singin’ in the Rain” is one in which leading man Don Lockwood confronts Kathy Selden over her alleged lack of interest in him as an actor. At first she denies knowing anything about him, citing a total lack of interest in anything to do with the film arts, with the theatrical arts being the supposedly superior art form. She soon comes to admit that she has seen all of his films and has read all of the magazines in which he is portrayed. To think, if this film were to take place today, how much more information she would be able to access about her favorite film star.
In the graduate school class I teach, I open the semester examining moral homilies — stories that are used to manipulate behavior in childhood for the greater good of society — and, I ask my students, why are most of those homilies rooted in religion and culture instead of the law or the economy and what were the moral homilies that formed you growing up?
Here’s an interesting survey from Ipsos:
Washington, DC – Debate continues about the effect that blogs are having on politics, media and public opinion in the United States. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos reveals one in three of Online Americans had read a blog at least once. More than half of blog readers say blogs influence public opinion (68%), mainstream media (56%) and public policy (54%). Updated periodically throughout the day, they provide online commentary on anything from politics to religion to celebrity gossip.
Three In Ten Online Americans Claim That They Have Read A Blog Thirty percent of the online population said they had read a blog at least once. Among those who read blogs, 38% do so at least once per week. More than two in five of those aged 18 to 34 (41%) and those with a college-education (41%) have visited blogs at least once. Geographically speaking, blogs are most popular in the western United States where 37% of residents reported visiting a blog.
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