how come it takes a rock star to say what everybody knows? #4,792

[realthog]

On the same day as the news that the entirely talentless celebrity Paris Hilton -- well, entirely talentless in polite company, anyway -- is going to lose at least 97% of the money she might have thought she was going to inherit from her grandfather, so she'll still get something over $3 million from him but may have to give up on plans to buy the Virgin Megastore chain, we find this among the non-Bhutto-related items from the Beeb:

Albarn condemns celebrity culture

Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn has called for celebrity culture to be "dismantled" - starting by getting rid of talent shows like The X Factor.

The current celebrity culture "sends out all the wrong messages", he said.

"It's creating a mindset that suggests you can get something for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame," he told BBC Radio 4.

"It should be one of the hardest things to do," said Albarn, who was speaking as guest editor of the Today programme.

In full at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/7161966.stm

(Today is the flagship news and current affairs program of the Beeb's flagship radio channel, Radio 4.)

There is something very wrong at the heart of a society where far too much is laid at the feet of a very small number of people who are far too often modestly talented at best. Indeed, there's something fundamentally wrong with a society -- and I'm talking here about world society, not any particular national one -- where a tiny minority are rewarded with such an enormously disproportionate amount of the wealth, whether they're talentless, like Ms Hilton, or enormously talented, like any number of scientists, artists, physicians, writers, musicians and others who come to mind.

I'd've been impressed if Albarn had gone on to say that perhaps it's too easy for rock stars to attain celebrity status when, say, physicists have a far harder time of it, but I'm grateful for what he did say.

Now, are we going to have some newscasters on US television who're actually competent journalists or are we still going to be stuck with the celebrity ones?

Comments

[bobhowe.livejournal.com]

Hi there. Skated over from Scott Edelman's blog—hope you don't mind. This post really caught my attention, especially "...where a tiny minority are rewarded with such an enormously disproportionate amount of the wealth..."

That point comes to me on the rare occasions I watch major league baseball. I almost always have a moment of unreality when I realize I'm watching a bunch of millionaires play a game for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of non-millionaires.

I think the thread that connects Paris (or at least her father), the millionaire professional athletes, the celebrity "journalists" and the rockstars is this: the free market produces a lot of things (many of them good), but justice isn't one of them.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Skated over from Scott Edelman's blog - hope you don't mind."

All are welcome here!

"the free market produces a lot of things (many of them good), but justice isn't one of them."

I think every economic system that survives in practice for any length of time has a lot of good aspects -- even communism. It's a matter of whether the bad aspects of any particular one are sufficiently numerous and/or significant as to obviate the rest. My guess is that the unfettered free market is likely soonish to go the same way as state communism precisely because of the lack-of-justice aspect you identify, and to be replaced by some sort of compromise system -- some sort of social democracy, in other words. Depending on the willingness and preparedness of us all, this will happen in either fairly tranquil fashion, as per the Scandinavian social democracies, or rather less peaceably, as per the French Revolution. It'd be nice to avoid the excesses of the latter, I think!

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

a-men! **applaus** to him and to you.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you kindly. *bows*

[bobhowe.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you say, most especially with the need for a more regulated free market (which seems self evident). I sometimes despair that powerful interests will always obstruct such measures. On the whole I concur that we'd be better off following the Scandinavian model, but an atavistic part of me wouldn't mind seeing the sans-culottes carrying Grover Norquist's head around on a pike.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"an atavistic part of me wouldn't mind seeing the sans-culottes carrying Grover Norquist's head around on a pike"

In my sourer visions, the sans culottes would be running out of pikes . . .