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Jewish World Review July 5, 2005 / 28 Sivan, 5765 Celebrities gone wild By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I have been following Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's marriage
closely. Not because I care about the state of that particular
union, but because I have little choice. At the newsstand where I
buy my newspapers, the celebrity magazines are displayed right next
to the register, and I can't avoid the blaring headlines about the
fortunes of the two reality-TV stars, who occasionally also sing.
Star magazine asks on its latest cover, "Nick & Jess: Over by Xmas?"
By now, I know to expect next week's cover line to be "Jess & Nick:
Back Together by New Year's?"
As an exercise in sociological inquiry, I bought the whole rack
of the latest issues. People magazine was the pioneer in the genre.
But now a host of competing publications have sprung up that are so
lowbrow they make People — because it has occasional blocks of
relatively uninterrupted text — look like The Paris Review or The
New Yorker.
They all chronicle the ongoing sagas of Tom & Katie and Brad &
Jennifer (scratch that — I mean Angelina) and Paris and Britney and
Justin & Cameron and Charlie & Denise. All the people belonging to
these first names are famous for something or other. If it used to
be an insult to say that a celebrity was "famous for being famous,"
now it's almost as if no one is famous for anything else. These
magazines have a favorite punctuation mark; and it's not the
semicolon. It's the exclamation point, used nearly as often as the
rest of us use the period.
I still have much to learn. The cover of Celebrity Living Weekly
declares "Kirsten & Jake ready to wed!" All I can think is: OK,
great! Who are Kirsten & Jake? As far as I can tell, celebrities are
always either ecstatically happy or desperately anguished, about to
break up or get together, gaining weight or losing dangerous amounts
of it. They apparently have time for little else.
Tom & Katie, for instance, are about to get together, at least
until such time as they break up. People magazine has a report on
"How Tom Proposed," including "details of a Scientology wedding"
(readings of L. Ron Hubbard are optional) and a romantic sidebar on
"Tom's past weddings." But wait! According to Star, "Katie's Friends
Plead: Don't Marry Tom!" And it trumpets a worrisome sign that this
relationship will never work: "Even Oprah's Upset With Tom." Worse,
according to US Weekly, "Rosie Turns on Tom." Oprah, Rosie — can
Barbara or Star be far behind?
US Weekly promotes on its cover, "Brad & Angelina: A New Secret
Romp." Wait a minute. How secret can it be if it's on the cover of
US Weekly and Life & Style Weekly, too ("New pics show they're one
big happy family")? US Weekly talks of the "secret strife" in Nick
and Jessica's marriage. Secret? Like the tree falling that no one
hears in a forest, a celebrity secret that no one reads about
doesn't really exist.
These magazines are geared, of course, to women. No one can
blame them for picking the magazines up for tips, say, on how to
accessorize or diet. And men's magazines are just as insipid, only
with more cleavage. It's the obsessive interest in celebrities that
is creepy. What does it say that so many of us live vicariously
through a set of people who generally are weird, shallow and
uninteresting, no matter how many exclamation points you put on the
end of it?
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
