Fame is more than just a river in Egypt

I am of mixed emotions. I want to write about the recent celebrity deaths, but I’m tired of the attacks I’ve been getting for stating my opinions (and making my jokes). Perhaps I can write about a more general subject without offending those supposedly riddled with grief. Perhaps, but probably not.

Bill Maher once said that “fame is a drug.” I don’t disagree, but I think it is other things, too. It is as though fame is a unique person, complete with his own complex pathology. One peculiar recent addition to the pathology: One does not need to have done anything to become famous.

The first person I remember who was famous merely for being famous was Zsa Zsa Gabor. Don’t get me wrong; she was not the first, just the first in my memory. And before someone goes on IMDB or Wikipedia to correct me, I am keenly aware that Zsa Zsa Gabor did do various things. She just wasn’t famous for any of them. She became, for lack of a better word, a “personality.” She appeared on talk shows and variety shows – and was just Zsa Zsa.

I see a lot of it now, with the advent of reality television, but I can’t blame reality TV for the increase in famous-for-being-famous people. “Jon & Kate” had kids. “Joe the Plumber” asked a candidate a question. “Jared” ate sandwiches at Subway. Kato Kaelin heard three bumps in the night. And, in what may be the oddest circumstance of them all, Terri Schiavo gained fame at a point in her life when she was in a vegetative state.

Like an ouroboros, fame feeds upon itself, and it is often difficult to tell exactly how it began. There are two distinct camps of famous people: those who seek the fame and those who do not.

There are businessmen far more financially successful than Donald Trump, but they choose to go unnoticed and let Trump, who is all too eager, thrust himself into the spotlight. Some stars of the stage and screen can walk a busy street unmolested, while others would generate a mob scene that would make Kent State seem like an unruly bridge club.

There are famous people who can go to a mall without it becoming a media event, not because they are unknown, but because of the way they handle their fame. The names of celebrities I have encountered at the Pavilions in Burbank or the Ralph’s in Santa Monica would astound people. They come and go without incident, while others enter with 25 members of the paparazzi and turn the purchase of breakfast cereal into a circus.

Celebrity gossip has been around since the dawn of history, but new media has allowed the niche style of reporting to reach record highs (and lows). And with so many reporters covering the famous (and infamous), the field of who gets treated as a celebrity has widened exponentially.

In the early part of the 20th century, an unusual figure gained fame. He walked the red carpets at movie premieres. He had adoring fans… groupies, if you will. He was hounded by the press, who scrutinized his appearance, as well as anything he said or did. The person I’m referring to is Albert Einstein. And, though the names of some scientists (Richard Feynman, Norman Borlaug, Kary Mullis, and Richard Dawkins, to name a few) have gained notoriety in recent years, none have achieved the level of fame – of celebrity – as Einstein.

Back to the present day, and I know of many famous intelligent people, but can think of few who are famous because of their intellect. I know of many famous talented people, but an overwhelming number of them are not known for their respective talents. Not to dwell on this for too long, but, in the last decade, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were most famous for being the butt of jokes. Whatever fame they gained for the talents they possessed earlier in their careers had been replaced by a different kind of fame – the fame that comes from being a famous person. That leads me to another ouroboros, that of the media and the public.

When OJ Simpson dies, his claim to fame will not be that he was a football star, sports pundit, or actor in B movies. OJ Simpson will be known as the guy who was found not guilty of a double homicide. His public persona was transformed, and, though his culpability in the aforementioned murders is all but certain, I don’t think you can really place the blame for his change of fame on his shoulders. A Los Angeles news director chose to break into the regular broadcast day to televise the slow speed pursuit of AC and OJ in a white Ford Bronco, but he did so knowing his audience would be glued to their TV screens. So who gets the blame for the circus that followed, the media for putting it on the air (and in print) or the public who consumed the media?

It is my sincere hope that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are in a place where they can reconcile the positive and negative aspects of their lives (and subsequent fame), and I wish them peace. I am not angry at them for the way the media and the public overreacted to news of their deaths. But I am angry. Our nation went down a very dark road over the last few days, the darkest I’ve seen it since “People vs. Simpson.” We surrendered ourselves to fame. Fame became our drug, our compass, and our god. It happened fast and it happened without warning – and that scares me.

We have elevated fame to the be-all-end-all of existence. As Steven Weber recently wrote, “So bombarded are we with comparable examples of what is supposed to constitute Success, where the only worthwhile life is lived in public, new generations are raised thinking ‘This is life’s imperative. You only live if you’re seen’. Like the light inside the refrigerator.”

I do not mean to diminish the talents of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, but their talents were not what all the fuss was about this week. We were not mourning their talents; we were mourning their fame. When the whole world (myself included) was captivated by the OJ Simpson trial, our interest had nothing to do with justice or the victims. We were watching someone famous in the darkest moment in his life – and we were loving it. Farrah Fawcett allowed a documentary crew to record her failing health – and we loved it. Helicopters circled the UCLA Medical Center as the world awaited word on the health of Michael Jackson – and we loved it. It was exciting. It was thrilling. It was sickening.

I keep thinking back to 1998, when I was a very low rung on the entertainment industry totem pole. I was in my Geo Tracker, trying to cut across Santa Monica Blvd. to get to work, but the entire stretch of road had been closed to the public and access was blocked by police officers. After waiting a small eternity, I became frustrated and begged one of the cops to let me cross so I would not be late and lose my job. He graciously removed the barricade, which allowed me onto the street, but he failed to inform his fellow officers on the other side of the road to let me out. As a result, I found myself in the funeral procession for Frank Sinatra. And though you would be hard-pressed to find someone of my generation who is a bigger fan of Sinatra, I did not belong there. I was sad that he had passed away, but, as a fan, I knew he had lived a long and extraordinary life. I liked the guy and respected his talent, but I wasn’t in mourning. By being where I was, I felt like I had disrespected the man and those who genuinely cared for him.

We do celebrities a disservice by seeking their autographs and worshipping them as false gods. We do ourselves a disservice when we get caught up in media hype. We do the nation a disservice by allowing fame to dominate our national identity. We have no shame. We have no dignity. All we have is an obsession with knowing all we can about those who have achieved fame, and, in pursuit of that knowledge, we elevate the fame. Then, once we’ve learned all there is to know – once we’ve placed them on the highest pedestal – there is only one thing left to do.

I’ve written about this before, so I won’t exhaust the subject, but our society cannot resist deconstructing its heroes. The current price of fame is to be violently knocked off the pedestal. We build them up, and then we tear them down. And, in this, I am admittedly guilty, with one proviso. I do not build them up, and I greatly resent those who do. And, most of the time, when I figuratively pick at the remains of the dead, it is, in large part, to pop the puss out of those who chose to elevate them to godhood in the first place.

In a society without a tradition or mythology of its own, we look for our heroes in the most unlikely (and often undeserving) of places. So it should be no surprise that, under scrutiny, these new heroes are found to have more than a few chinks in their armor. We need to be able to appreciate the contribution made by an individual without deifying said individual. We need to be able to celebrate a person’s life without overinflating the value of said life to the point of absurdity. We need to be able to allow those who have a right to grieve to do so, and we need to understand that the death of a public figure doesn’t always merit a public spectacle.

In turn, the famous have an obligation to not go out of their way to make asses of themselves. Elton John used to generate a lot of less-than-positive press in the 1970s by dressing and acting flamboyantly. Then, around the release of the album “Reg Strikes Back,” he adopted a more sedate public persona. He was still out and about (so to speak), but the way he dealt with the media and his fans changed, and, as a result, the sort of press and public response he received changed. The Queen of England would never have knighted the Elton John of the 1970s.

By contrast, the Michael Jackson of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the one who performed alongside his family and changed the face of pop music (no play on words intended), was not the butt of any jokes. It was the later incarnation of Michael Jackson, the eccentric and downright freakish one who dangled babies over balconies and dressed like a soldier in Napoleon’s army, who all but invited mockery and ridicule. Whether the “King of Pop” or the “Lord of the Dance” or, simply, “Prince,” I have little tolerance for someone who chooses to elevate himself above us mere mortals. When the public buys into the act, that is when I find it hard to listen to the better angels of my nature.

All of the above makes fame, not an ouroboros, but a three-edged sword: the celebrity, the media, and the public striking at the heart of our society, each carrying the burden and the guilt. And that is one hell of a pathology to try to combat.