"We all have gods", Martin Luther said, "its just a matter of which ones." In America, our gods are celebrities. WE idolize our celebrites with a religious fervor formerly reserved for gods of nature, for gods in the sky. We build temples to celebrities the way the ancient Romans built temples for emperors, ancestors, and sky gods. America is, in essence, a polytheistic society.
Any physical object ever owned or touched by a member of the celebrity pantheon becames a sacred relic, like a bone fragment from a saint, extremely valuable monetarily, imbued with magical powers. JFK's golf clubs, Michael Jackson's bed, princess Di's dress, whatever.
Sooner rather than later possessions of Whitney Houston will doubtless join the magical parade of valuable talismans. Each year nearly a million people pilgrammage to Graceland, a sacred temple.
Entire corporations, like the Hard Rock Cafe base their appeal on a mass yearning to be closer to celebrity. The corpses of ascended celebrities, like Charlie Chaplin and Eva Person, are stolen and held for ransom. Likewise headstones of the famous. In our modern culture our religion is celebrity.
When Albert Einstein moved to New Jersey in 1933, he was instantly turned into the most famous celebrity in the world by the American media, as you can no doubt imagine. He was amazed. In europe he had been a well known and respected scientist, in America, he was suddenly a celebrity god, one of our American pantheon of celebrity gods. He was photographed so often that he started calling himself a "model", and he couldn't understand why wriitng his name on a piece of paper created a sacred American reliquery.
Our celebrity religion serves the same purpose as the roman gods; it keeps the motley masses tamed, and harmless.
Please scroll down for the other articles in today's issue of The Truthless Reconciler! Thanks!
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