It seems I
find myself more and more frequently in places (such as when making visits to
elderly friends or family) where the television is nearly always ‘on.’ And at
the times I make my visits it always seems to be tuned in to some talk show or interactive
show between the host and a guest.
Inevitably I find myself then assaulted by
programming, conversations, and commercial advertisements that are jarring,
inane, banal, frequently crude, and often (a favorite legal phrase) ‘utterly without
redeeming social value.’
What
astonishes me most, though, is the almost reverential response the audience
gives (maybe encouraged by the cue-boards, or maybe not) to the host of the
program and any celebrity featured. The veneration is encouraged beyond the
television studio as the sycophantic and parasitic ‘paparazzi’ do their
work.
Especially was that the case in a couple of recent
episodes of the Ellen DeGeneres Show that I politely and sufferingly sat
through. I felt embarrassed by the uninhibited
screaming and squealing and excited antics of the audience but more so by the
women/young women who were telephoned by the host as the recipients of a money
gift she was giving them. The celebrity
was talking to them! Another celebrity
hostess, Oprah, previously did something similar, as I recall, as she deigned
to ‘bless’ her admirers with her largess. It was hard not to get the feeling that these celebrities were ‘buying’ the
adulation of their audiences. It was pathetic.
In my part
of California, every year, is the AT&T National Pro-am Celebrity Golf Tournament. It is the same thing here. Thousands of spectators throng the venue so
they can see, hear, maybe even touch (swoon) some celebrity—athlete, musician,
actor, politician-- who is more likely than not vain, arrogant, rude and
probably very rich. For a spectator to
get an autograph, make eye contact, or have a photograph taken with the
celebrity is a great coup.
Why? Because the follower is somehow, for a
moment, being recognized just as the celebrity is being recognized. They feed
off each other. People crave
recognition.
I wonder if
there is not some commonality among these various audiences, spectators,
admirerers, or camp-followers? Are the
celebrities, the object of the fans’ veneration, perhaps the incarnation of
their highest values? To be rich, to
have one’s name known by thousands, to
have some surpassing skill or gift, or fortune, is it not perhaps the
acquisition of a lifetime that some lesser-endowed commoner values above all
things? Psychologically does the common
man/woman, boy or girl, subconsciously even think that mere proximity to or
acknowledgment by one of the idols the sought-for qualities of the idol will
rub off on them?
No, it will
not rub off. And no, I do not see
evidence that the admired one becomes even more worthy of their followings’
esteem by being fawned over. To the
contrary. Where I work, a golf
tournament is held annually featuring professional baseball players. As a group, they are the most arrogant,
foul-mouthed and obnoxious category of people I’ve ever been around. And they are all millionaires.
These
people—these idols—become even more distorted in their self image and in their
‘need’ to gain more fame as they gain
more fame. It is unquenchable—it becomes
an addiction. I am not conversant with the moral cesspool of
Hollywood (the newsstand tabloids that I pass in the supermarket checkout line
constantly parades that), but I have been a follower of some personalities of
the sports world and see what has happened there. Witness the sad fall in the
last decade of some of the biggest icons in sports world: Barry Bonds, Tiger
Woods, Lance Armstrong, and now Oscar Pistorius. Besides baseball, golf, cycling, and track
and field, as represented by these athletes, other sports have been seriously
besmirched. Decades ago boxing and now
professional basketball as a whole, as far as I have been informed, are beyond
the pale. Discredit seems to be descending upon the whole world of sport—a
terrible shame in my view.
Politics is
increasingly being viewed through the same lens in the public eye as a
president and some congressmen have had revealed their flawed character and
moral bankruptcy over the past couple of decades. We could go on to other celebrity groups, but
to what avail? I hope the point is made.
The long and
short of it is that fame, money, and power corrupts.
The warning
to us—to the common man/woman—is that we are hard-wired to emulate what we
worship. If we worship the worldly, that
is what we will get; the celestial will move beyond us and the worldly, in the
end, will become a pile of ashes. The only way to stay uncontaminated if we get
into the public arena, as a follower or a participant, in my opinion, is to
“put on the whole armor of God,”—every day—and become spiritually very well-grounded. Short-circuits
will inevitably follow if we do not.
