What about their métier?

The solution would be that private lives of successful people not be be of such obsessive interest and that these people's work be the subject of interest instead.

The cult of celebrity can probably be traced back to Photoplay Magazine (1911) is perhaps the source.

Low self-esteem felt by the audience may well be at the root of the cult. Most people react with weird fascination towards the famous, instantly imagining that they are somehow different from them and that they could never be like them. Sadly this is a complete myth.

Celebrity spotting is a shallow sport much like sticking pins in a map after traveling through an exotic region. Like going to Paris and having to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre but never actually experiencing the feeling of daily life. The ersatz freaks of Las Vegas such as New York, New York or Luxor epitomize this strange collecting of accomplishments, and in Vegas the depth of experience is not even at a superficial level. Snapshots are taken and later displayed on a knickknack shelf back home, like proud trophies. A photo showing the shallow traveler with an arm draped over a statue of a movie star in Hollywood is an achievement. The celebrity magazines and tv shows fill in for the real thing of travel-spotting. The young sometimes become groupies.

Even the famous practice cultism themselves.

In societies where individual achievement is noted this phenomenon is likely to endure and those overwhelmed by their own success will continue to re-seek anonymity often with self-destructive behaviour and people will slow down to gawk at their accidents.

Generalizing from a small sample

The gossip press does not condemn women, as much as it makes great sport of shows of obnoxiousness.

Paris, Britney, Lindsay, and Amy are linked not just by gender but by transgressing social norms in terms of underwear and, in the case of the latter, being a notorious crackhead who cancels shows. The least egregious of these is Paris Hilton, who is paying the price for her Simple Life persona. The rest have had professional and/or personal crises resulting from public overintoxication.

The gossip press is avid to jump on the intoxicated misbehavior of George Michael, Brandon Davis, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Alec Baldwin, David Hasselhoff, etc. etc. so the case for gender bias in reporting scandals is not strong.

For an example of a crushingly one-sided villification of a man, consider the press treatment of Tom Cruise vs. Katie Holmes, uniformly portrayed as that of a tiny, cackling Blackbeard and his petrified victim.

This is not to say that women are treated absolutely fairly, since beauty fascism is far more absolute.

Nor is it to say that celebrity reportage is respectful. In fact it is always highhanded, hypocritical and often unreadably vicious. South Park has a particularly good take on this.

Dr Henry Morgenthaler

Here's the test.

Do anti-abortionists hate Dr Morgenthaler because he's a man?

Or do they hate Dr Henry Morgenthaler because he freed women from a certain kind of tyranny? (Ref. Belgium case where a man fathered 7 children by his own daughter who he kept imprisoned for 24 years.)

Anti-abortionists say "all life is sacred" but they also say the Death Penalty is legal and justifiable in other areas of human error.

But it can't be both.

So is it mostly women who protest against abortion? No.

Do men feel strongly that women must give birth no matter how conception occurred? Some do.

The whole matter seems to be: what causes hatred? How are we taught to turn against our own species? And what keeps the hate-factories going day and night?

Needs more study.

RMan & BC Mary

RMan, for a celebrity, if the gossip columnists, etc, ignore you, you're dead in the water. Publicity - of almost any kind - is money in the bank. As Liberace said re his detractors "Yes, I cried all the way to the bank"

BC Mary, by far the majority of the anti-abortionists I've met are women.

Concerning Dr Morgenthaler being awarded the Order of Canada, he is obviously a hero to a very significant number of Canadians. And opponents of this couldn't possibly be more distressed than I was when Lyin' Brian got his. To each his own.

Quote:Anti-abortionists say

That's certainly not the Roman Catholic position.

Yes it is, actually.

As do some women. Viewpoints on abortion don't follow the gender divide, contrary to what some propagandists like to pretend. Some of the most pro-choice people I know are men, and some of the most ardently anti-choice are women.

I can understand both positions on an intellectual level. They’re both legitimate viewpoints. The Pro-Life movement is law-abiding and is a legitimate expression of citizen engagement. Chrétien was right when he stated that there’s an uneasy truce on this issue in this country that should not be gratuitously be disturbed. Justice Beverly McLaughlin’s activism in pushing Morgenthaler’s was gravely inadvisable. It’s waving a red flag in the face of the restrained bull - Pure hubris and overconfidence on the part of the liberal-nihilist secular evangelicals that populate the legal class in this country.

The thing I have to disagree

The thing I have to disagree with on this one is that it is society that demands this sort of press. Society will take the news that is given to them. Look at the Evening News Channels in Japan. They were always largely positive and yet people still kept watching.
Journalism has put it's interest in fear-mongering, and refuses to believe that society is intelligent enough to enjoy news about positive elements of society. Rather than embracing the good things celebrities are doing (Angelina, Oprah, etc), they show us how weird it is that they are doing good. Why can't we hear more about positive change... about successful protests... about things people are doing to change the world. Maybe then rather than sitting back and throwing up our hands at how useless it all is, we could start to get inspired to change the world.

Japan??!

I don't know if Japan is the best example of a culture that doesn't love a strange bit of news once in a while. The online Japanese news sites are sometimes where I go when I need a good laugh.

Media disinformation & Manipulation

I think part of the issue is that by wasting so much media space on these vapid, shallow and troubled folks the corporate media also shifts attention from more important things. You know, things like how freedom and democracy are being eroded. About the actions of the US around the world and the domestic crisis they have created that is seeing their country rapidly becoming a third world nation. Things like the Security & Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the North American Union (NAU)and how governments around the world are breaking down national sovereignty and the rights of citizens right under our noses. But, we wouldn't know that because it's front page news someone's checked into rehab ... again.

If you do an unscientific poll, ask around your circles, who have you been bullied more by, who has emotionally and socially damaged you more, I suspect, like myself, you will find most people will answer girls, or women. I don't want to hear anymore crap about self-esteem. Wah, wah, wah. If someone else is prettier, slimmer, smarter, nicer, then grow the heck up and start improving yourself becoming more of what you are jealous, insecure or threatened by. How about the first thing on the list being a better person and for those who are parents of daughters so they don't see you gossip-ing and tearing down other women? How about taking some parental and personal responsibility for teaching your children to be nicer human beings as well? Kids don't pick this kind of behaviour up on their own.

Frankly, previous generations had no idea about "self-esteem" and didn't put any of the gargantuan effort newer generations of parents are into increasing their offsprings "self-esteem" and guess what, they probably had higher self-worth and were a whole lot less narcissistic and nicer people who weren't wasting their lives revelling in the downfall of other human beings. Has anyone else been noticing that on a grand scale, each successive generation is becoming more and more self-absorbed and narcissistic. Social science researchers are and they're finding real evidence of this. Look around your world, are you seeing evidence of it, because I sure am and it scares the heck out of me.

I used to have guilty pleasures of reading some tabloids, watching the occasional entertainment, or "reality" show, but I realized, I'm part of the problem, so I stopped watching and reading that crap and banished it from my life. We can all do that.

Just like we can start teaching our children values of respect, compassion and care for themselves and others. And, we can and should exert parental control over the media content they are exposed to and encourage media criticism. How about letting kids be kids? Here's a novel idea, no cell phones, no porn star t-shirts, no platforms for 5 year olds. Moms and dads, how about we all teach, model and reward our children for kindness, acceptance and inclusion,
I dare you...

Whistleblowers BC

Be assured that the publishers and producers of celebrity sensationalism have probably never heard of the SPP or the NAU. Their media may be picayune but it's far less provincial than anyone preoccupied with regional or even international political agreements. If ever there were a pretentious conspiracy theory that is it.

For an intelligent understanding of the evolution of this phenomenon in the USA, and concurrently in Canada, this is worth a read.
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html

As for the success of magazines like Paris Match and the British 'Hello' and 'OK', the Spanish Ragazza, and others, one would could probably extrapolate from what Amy Henderson has written.