Infame
The silly season is definitely in remission at least on the basis of what I found in my RSS feeds this morning. Since they number ~ 100 this gives us a confidence of at least one 9 and close to two 9’s.
But having muttered that, I take some note of an article “The Online Legacy of Professor Pausch” [Link] in the New Yawk Times. What was notable about the article was not so much the article itself, which is a list of links to other informations of the man and hence a rather outstanding piece of traditional journalism, but that the tag line shown in the accumulator referred to the man as “an accidental celebrity”. This description immediately riveted thought and consideration.
Early into this I found myself needing reassurance of the meaning of celebrity and hence I consulted by OS’ dictionary, giving me,
“3. A person of distinction or renown; — usually in the plural; as, he is one of the celebrities of the place.” [1913 Webster]
from which I could proceed with my consideration. This consideration almost immediately took the direction that “an accidental celebrity” would be the only worthwhile kind.
By this I mean that most celebrities these days are celebrities not for who they are or what they have accomplished but what they have done to become celebrities. In effect, the norm is an unaccidental or, perhaps, deliberate, celebrity. Most celebrities today can be categorized as politicians, entertainers, or those we used to categorizze as “members of society” but which now is simply those who are rich and desire to be celebrities. One of the singular commonalities of all of these is that they have become celebrities by means of publicity and the attention of the media.
This is not to say that some of these people do not espouse “good causes”, but that attention is given to the good causes not because they are inherently good but because these people are celebrities. Hence we have people who have become celebrities not because of what they have done but becuase of the publicity they have engineered. And what they do then becomes of note in a rather vapid paroxism of adulation.
Randy Pausch is the exception. He became a celebrity for what he did, because publicity attached itself to his accomplishments. And this is what makes his departure so bitter sweet, so much an indictment of the bankruptcy of contemporary society that his celebrity had to occur because attention only came to his actions when he was dying.
Perhaps we should say Kaddish for him and society together.
