Waiting for Harvard to Report

PREDICTABLY, my mother made her weekly announcement: "I plan to watch 'Dancing With the Stars' tonight." Well of course, mother, what else. Otherwise, I would question her health. At last, after much hesitation, I could no longer resist asking the big question.

Mom, I said, if the name of the show were "dancing with anonymous nobodies", and it featured only great dancing by complete strangers, would you still be interested? She thought about it for a second, indicating she understand the intent of my question, and replied, "yes, probably".

Her answer encouraged me and surprised me. I'm sure she was bieng honest, but I had expected her to say that she watches the show mainly because of the stars, the glamorous, glittering, exciting stars, not the artistic competitive dancing, and that she watches the show to watch the stars get booted, humiliated and angry, with the consequent controversy.

Of course what I'm interested in finding out is whether people watch dancing with the stars because they like high quality competitive athletic dancing, or because celebrities are doing it. Is it the dancing, the competition, or the stars? and in what proportions? Just how deeply is american culture in love with this strange "celebrity" phenomenon of ours?

Surely this is a question for the harvard sociology department to study. Hell, whay not? they study everything else...they found out that taller people get paid more, pretty people get paid more, and so forth. They could find the answer to this, hands down.

Millions of people like dancing, millions of people like competition, and millions of people like celebrities, so, obvioulsy, all three components are an attraction, and part of the formula for success.

my fervent hope is that appreciation of quality artistic dancing is the overwhelming attraction, with competitive fun a distant second, and the celebrity appeal lagging far behind. That would be a much preferrable reflection of american culture, wouldn't it? Somehow, though, I sense that aint the case. But, there's always hope. We'll just have to wait for the harvard crowd to check in...