Can’t We Just Cancel Celebrity Culture?

            Did you know that Kendall Jenner has 141 million “followers” on Instagram?  Right, we know, who the hell is Kendall Jenner?  Did you know that her sister, Kim Kardashian, has 191 million “followers”?  Right, we know, who the hell is Kim Kardashian?  Many other so-called “celebrities” have tens of millions of “followers”.  Most of them have little-to-no actual talent or credentials about anything.  And there’s a whole new breed of people who also never did anything other than become so-called “influencers” on the internet using one or other social media forums, such as Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, etc. 

            “Influencers” in fact are just comical.  It’s apparently an actual career path these days.  You may recall Lori Loughlin (another no-talent nobody, but who is a “celebrity” nonetheless), who currently is in the pokey for buying off people to get both her daughers into USC.  One of those daughters was apparently a budding “influencer” but whose “career” now has been side-tracked by the adverse publicity surrounding her mother.  Well, when in Rome…

            There are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of idiots in this country who turn to these “celebrities” to “follow” for information and opinions.  If you add media “personalities”, who generally also are idiots regardless of which political party they advocate for, just supposedly better informed, and their “followers,” what you end up with is an entire country of idiots that just cannot think for themselves.  Of course, just thinking aloud gets you cancelled these days, so it’s way safer to adopt someone else’s pre-packaged politically correct opinions and feelings.

            There used to be people called “reporters” who would write non-biased articles describing in purely factual terms what happened where, why, how and by whom.  Yes, sounds quaint, doesn’t it?  There used to be an op-ed portion of the newspaper, which was the designated place for opinion pieces.  The rest was actual news, except for the funnies and crossword.  But we have to think back probably 40-50 years for these memories.  Today everyone with a byline in the paper is an opinion columnist with whatever the “news” is being smothered in a frosting of personal opinion, bias and prejudice.  When the headline is “Here Are The President’s Lies Today,” then unbiased reporting is out the window.  What he said is supposed to be the point, not what the reporter or his/her paper thinks about it.  That’s what the op-ed page is for.

            But thanks to cable TV and the plethora of channels, all of which need programming to fill their time, the talking heads are almost inescapable and have become just another piece of the celebrity business.  Not a one of them talks any sense – the game is to either interview friends who agree with them, in which case it’s a lovefest.  Or it is to interview enemies, in which case the point is to goad, insult and embarrass them so the interviewer can show how smart he or she is, and how hopelessly ignorant and insane the guest is. 

            But all these clowns (we mean, “media personalities”) are also “celebrities” these days, with their own fanatical following regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.  Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Robin Roberts, Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh, they’re all the same.  Even people who used to have some talent are in on the act now, like the comedians Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, etc.

            And all of this is based more or less on the assumption by all of them, and their hardcore supporters, that the rest of us are just too stupid to separate the wheat from the chaff.  So we say, cancel them all and give the rest of us a break!

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