Wednesday, January 09, 2008

I’ve been seeing a lot of “news” updates – constant and detailed – of the travails of… ahem, …troubled young starlets like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse, (insert King of Siam “etcetera, etcetera” here) in my internet surfing of various popular internet sites. The volume of words wasted…er, uh… devoted to these train wrecks of narcissism and unlimited income poor, struggling victims of addiction is disturbing.

Are we – you know, the people not hunting and gathering these sometimes hourly reports and spamming the world with them – really that interested in the every minute, whimsical turn of these screwed up individual’s lives?

I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and posit that most of the people in the world have their own small dramas to play out every day and have too little time to devote to the manufactured, self-induced chaos of some spoiled, impulsive AdultChild.

These people are just grown up unruly children who’ve never had anyone say an honest “Get OVER yourself and go clean your room” to them. What is so newsworthy about a marginally talented wastoid falling apart?

They are like trolls on a message board: “Hear ME, look at ME, pay attention to MEEEEEEE!” They’re in a vicious circle of courting the press and bemoaning their lack of a Private Life, trotting out their fugly, dirty laundry for anyone and everyone to see – no matter if they want to or not - because it’s EVERYWHERE.

The first rule of dealing with trolls is don’t feed them. What is the press doing by documenting in excruciating hourly detail the wild vicissitudes of these individuals? Giving them the exact dosage of the drug they need to continue on in their headlong plunge over the edge.

How.in.the.world. did this stuff become news? I don’t get it. It’s only interesting to teen-agers blessed with so much free time on their – uh, wait. I think I got it. EVERYONE markets to teen-agers, because they whine and stamp their feet at their mommy’s and daddy’s to get their fast personal computers, televisions, x-box’s and wii’s in their rooms so they can spend allll (eleventy!) their time isolated from ANYthing that is real and worthy in life and immerse themselves in the bad examples of their ill-chosen “heros”.

Okay. Makes sense now.

I just wanna throw something out there, though. I don’t admire the people I mentioned at the beginning of this post (or any of the several others similar in circumstance and behavior – they just happen to be the most “in the news” right now) – I feel sorry for them. I pity them.

Whether they have problems because they were mothered by someone who desired fame themselves which compelled them to disregard even the most basic of parenting wisdom, or they have a propensity toward addiction behaviors and fame exacerbates that tendency or they have a diagnosable psychological disorder (although I’m beginning to think the Psychoanalysis community would have EVERYONE be in the throes of some psychological disorder or another – but that’s another rant) it’s the same. I pity them, because they’ve been encouraged in their dysfunction rather than compassionately and firmly led away from their self-destructive bent.

That, at bottom, is what bothers me about the pop “journalists” who are documenting the minutiae of a person falling apart at the seams; it doesn’t help anyone – not the consumer of the trash journalism OR the sufferer of the break-down – it only fans the flame.

I’ll tell you who I admire am intrigued by right now; Angelina Jolie. Here is a woman who, in the span of a very.short.time transformed herself from a person who seemed to be teetering right on the edge of LiLo and Brit-Brit level shenanigans (hello? Vial of blood around your neck?) into a U.N. ambassador and global philanthropist, who’s (seemingly) selfless desire to mother a child who needed it inspired the current trend of Third World Designer Babies (Yes, I’m talking to “your majesty”, you trend-whore).

Here’s a woman under an incredible amount of scrutiny who could have imploded and become just another statistic. Yet she managed to PR her way into near-beatification and actually managed to do some good …all while having to play down that whole weird escapade with the vials of blood and theTMI/ PDA. Not to mention the very public snagging of the husband of America’s Sweetheart.

You don’t come back from that s**t without some real grit, determination and (most importantly) perspective, folks.

So… if you really feel for these screwed up young women in the news… turn off the tv, don’t buy the rag, and look around for someone nearer to you who might be in the same boat, and try, instead, to help them save themselves.

1 comment:

  1. Again...loving it! And digging Angelina by the way (interview with BaBa Waltah's kind of clued me in on the blood thing...kinda, sorta, cool?) Very insightful post as usual...put your darn self out there! We talked in Tuesday's meeting...market yoself baby! You're awesome!

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