I’m reading Chris Hedges’ latest book Empire of Illusion. It reminds me of Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason in some regards. I must admit that I am rather shocked at how pervasive celebrity worship is in our culture. It has gotten to the point that even the wealthy along with the poor view themselves through the rose colored lens of celebrity status. The wealthy need their Town and Country magazine to show off and the poor need their reality TV to aspire to for the same reasons.

I found this excerpt below interesting. It pertains to a reality TV show called The Swan. Where the “regular” woman, part of the bottom 90 percent, is depressed to the point of ending her marriage because she is unhappy with who she is.

Troubled marriages, abusive relationships, unemployment, crusihng self-esteem problems-all will vanish along with the excess fat off their thighs. They will be new. They will be flawless. They will be celebrities.

We worship the elite and the beautiful to our own detriment. I truly beleive that there should be more role models that are not of the one percent featured in the media.

Another excerpt along those lines:

The working classes, comprising tens of millions of struggling Americans, are shut out of televisions’s gated community. The have become largley invisible. They ar mocked, even as they are tantazliezed, by the lives of excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we want it badly enough, if we believe sufficently in ourselves, we too can have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We have failed where others have succeded.

One more except which I think sums it all up:

Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as if possesing unique if unacknowledged gifts.

It is a “culture of me,” a culture of narcissism.