Monetary Stupefaction

I just read this article online, and it reminded me how annoying our culture can be. Rose Hoare from Stuff.Co.Nz writes: Madonna and Gucci on the United Nations’ lawn. Backstreet Boys’ Kevin Richardson and Elmo on Capitol Hill. Lionel Richie, Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone at the World Economic Forum. Some of the world’s most troubled places and august institutions have welcomed some of the world’s dumbest, most insufferable entertainers, and one English columnist is saying “stop the madness”. Marina Hyde writes weekly columns on sport, politics and celebrity for the Guardian. Before that she worked on the Sun’s showbiz desk and before that studied English at Oxford. Although she writes about it, she says she avoids sites and magazines that carry anonymously sourced gossip or paparazzi shots. She manages to find enough material for her thrice-weekly columns from things celebrities have said on the record. In her new book, Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy, she collects some of the most egregious examples of celebrity power-tripping. The cumulative effect is ugly. On the phone from London, she says, “It’s a slightly worrying indictment of how far we’ve let entertainers inveigle themselves into places they perhaps shouldn’t be at all.” They fill gaps in conversations quite nicely, but who really cares what celebrities do or say? The United Nations and a few world governments. “Some celebrities say reasonable things,” says Hyde, “but I think they should stick to their day job and be entertainers because I don’t think they’re expert in any other field. “I should say that I love premieres and parties and scandals and all those funny things you read about that’s fine, that’s celebrities in their place. “When they become very famous, I think a lot of people thought that they would be very satisfied by their career. But then they aren’t satisfied and they suddenly decide they want to be public intellectuals as well. They want to be taken seriously, they want gravitas, they want people to see them as amazing in another field. They feel they’re not taken seriously just for being an actress.”