Celebrities Enduring Stardom

EVEN AS REGULAR DAILY NEWSPAPERS printed on paper vanish, swallowed up by the internet, and are replaced by online versions of themselves, supermarket tabloids, the kind sold at the grocery store cash register, seem to be doing very well. Is there an online version of the "National Enquirer"? One is almost afraid to find out. Companies like AOL and MSN put celebrity gossip front and center; the minute you sign on, up pops the gossip on ye olde homepage, celebrity this and celebrity that, in response, presumably, to popular demand. Does popular demand determine corporate marketing, or does ccrporate marketing determine popular demand? Some of each, maybe? The celebrity culture makes big money. Like P.T. Barnum said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. There's a sucker born every minute. And so forth. P.T. made a fortune selling tickets to look at people with two heads, and things like that. A fortune. Our paparazzi profession has equally deep historical roots. Benjamin Franklin made a fortune publishing gossip, and retired at forty. A fledgling frontier country starved for culture, entertainment, information, emerges into modernity with a full blown celebrity culture, worth billions of dollars. Isn't it Alec Baldwin who has all the trouble with aggressive photo-journalists? Didn't Alec recently say that in his opinion, American interest in celebrity culture is, like, way over the top? Sharp as a tack, those Baldwin boys. But until we see Alec Baldwin eschew the spotlight and vanish into the crowd, we can assume taht he doesn't mind the celebrity culture too terribly badly, or that he is very very determined to endure its downside.