Posted by
Corthell on Sunday, December 06, 2009 3:15:18 PM
''Narcissistic riffraff, most of whom start out being loved and end up being hated, and never understand why. Octomom and her battalion of stunt tykes. Kate and Jon Gosselin and their luckless octet. The Heenes, proud parents of Balloon Boy. The White House gatecrashers.''
In 1968, Andy Warhol wisecracked that in the future everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame. He did not say this would be a good thing. Nor did he say that everyone was entitled to, say, 16 minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes seemed like a nice round number – but 15 was the absolute limit.
You got onstage by doing something stupid or amusing or insolent that briefly tickled the public’s fancy – and then you got off stage. You were not Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao or anybody else that Andy Warhol silk-screened. And you knew it.
All in all, this was a very democratic arrangement that guaranteed everyone one, but only one, brief shining moment in the spotlight. If you blinked, you missed it.
Then things changed. Thanks to cable TV and the Internet, Warhol’s formula went woefully awry. First came a wave of famous-for-nothing celebrities like LaToya Jackson, gold-diggers who lurked in the penumbra of fame, often accompanied by people named Tito. After that came bargain-basement reality TV “stars” like the cast of “Survivor” and “The Hills,” whose principal claim to fame was that they consumed oxygen on a daily basis. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/12/06/2009-12-06_off_with_their_big_empty_heads_why_all_the_famousfornothing
_celebs_should_go_awa.html#ixzz0YuKVtgKX