Celebrities

It seems that an integral part of American culture is, quite frankly, shallow. Yes, the love of "celebrities". Those rich, smart, and beautiful people that we can't help but admire. Not. At times some might be simply eccentric, but most are just shallow. Yes, I realize that is stereotypical, and I hate stereotypes as much as you. It just seems to be an underlying theme.

One must only look at Hollywood: yes, a lot of the dumb things they say about celebrities in tabloids are made up, but there is still the fact of the extremely high divorce rates among celebrities.

Not all of them are shallow, of course. There are some celebrities that are honest, generous, hardworking folk which one can admire. But even if I admire someone who is famous, maybe because they stayed true to their beliefs, or because they are generous, would I want any of them for a role model? No, no, a thousand times no. Role models should be someone in the community around you, or at least someone you actually KNOW personally, not some famous person.

There happens to be a show on television these days called Celebrity Apprentice. It's filled with supposedly famous people (I've hardly heard of any of them. I still have no idea who Donald Trump is...) that are separated into two teams, and they work to complete some sort of task. If a team wins, they give the money prize to charity. The losing team gets a person "fired", yadadadada.... You might think that giving money to charity is noble. And, indeed, it is. But, how many people are on that show mainly because they want to help charities? I can assure you, very few. As can be expected, the drama factor is unbearable. Part of me wants to believe that a portion of the yelling, arguing, and temper tantrums are fake. and they simply want to make an "exciting" show. Because if not, many have an identity disorder that makes them think that they have the maturity of a toddler.

Now to be fair, either 1. the drama is fake or 2. the directors purposefully picked contestants with anger issues. Thus, I don't want to make that the stereotype of all celebrities. Because that's simply not true.

Why do we care about celebrities? What's special about them? They're often talented, sure. But that doesn't mean that they are better than anyone else. Okay, many celebrities don't have arrogance problems, and are actually quite humble. But there are still so many that do.

Also, we really do need to give them the same respect as we would give anyone else, because it is easy not to when criticizing them. See, maybe it isn't the celebrities that are the problem. It's possible that the problem is the managers of these celebrities, and the media too, that give them this possibly deserved, possibly not, image (and yes, I know that once again I am speaking in general). What I wish is that we appreciate their talents, and recognize that, but not go so far that we care about every detail of their personal life.