Celebrities!

What would be do without ‘em? They’re everywhere … giving us advice, cues on how to act, dress and even serving as our moral compass.

Are we nearing celebrity saturation? We already have celebrity chefs, “apprentices,” DJs, pawn shop operators and bounty hunters. Now, TV is giving us celebrity “marriage refs” to rate our marriages after doing so well with their own.

Can celebrity jerkoffs be far behind? Or have they been with us all along?

When breathless media outlets need comments on whether Tiger Woods’ public apology for serial affairs was sincere, they go to celebrities of the moment. Julia Mancuso looked great on the slopes, but does winning Olympic silver qualify you to pass judgment on Woods’ private life?

Forget being qualified, or knowing anything. Simply being a celebrity now confers instant certitude, and a platform of authority. Nor does it matter if the celebrity can’t manage less than 20 “you know”s in a 40-second exchange. When you’re a celeb, your comments carry gravitas; no matter how inane.

We’ve already forgotten the “balloon boy” and White House party crashers — whose ultimate goal in both cases was to land a “reality” TV show. But maybe if more of us HAD some semblance of a life, the appeal of that absurdity might lessen — along with those survivor-style obnoxious bastards we’re supposed to CARE about.

The democratization of dumbed-down expectations and blurring the line between “mainstream” and “tabloid” news have made it much easier to bask in the wan glow of what now passes for celebrity. Even if only for 15 minutes, as Andy Warhol predicted years ago. Some of us of a certain age can recall a time when we had heroes. And genuine stars. Now, we have celebrities — and they’re hardly the same, even when we can’t tell the difference.

Those even older than I (if that’s possible) may remember when Walter Winchell was the undisputed king of gossip — both reliable and spurious — in America. Winchell was syndicated in hundreds of U.S. newspapers and said to be a confidante of several U.S. presidents. Mention in a Winchell column — good or bad — could make or break celebrities overnight. Today, there’s no need for a Winchell — or even newspapers, for that matter — at a time when anyone with a cell phone camera can play “citizen journalist” and even enjoy brief celebrity in a limited arena. Meanwhile, forget about bothersome details like accuracy, oversight or fact-checking. If it’s out there on a blog or posted somewhere else, it must be true, right?

What remains of “mainstream” print media now has local gossip wags — desperate for any celebrity-link, no matter how tenuous — telling us what celebrity (never local) was “spotted” dining at what LoDo restaurant. Fascinating fare.

Movies, then shown in opulent dream-like theaters and not cineplex shoeboxes, were never so popular as during the Depression 1930s. With 15 million out of work in a much smaller workforce, people needed to forget their travails and dream – if only for a couple of hours – of the glamorous lives of movie stars. On-screen, they lived in towers high above Manhattan or were closer to the ground in Hollywood. Either way, they wore formal evening clothes all day and imbibed impossible amounts of alcohol.

Today, movies only feed a fraction of a 24/7 information/entertainment (same thing?) maw whose appetite is insatiable. But, aided by an array of electronic toys, we can follow the fascinating lives of celebrities on a 24/7 basis. And if we find this week’s hero is next week’s fallen idol with a drug problem or the old screwing-around standby, so much the better. If they’re not so good, maybe our own lives aren’t so dull and we can feel better about ourselves. Also vicariously.

Entertainment hucksters long ago learned that, when winning the hearts and minds of mass audiences, crap trumps quality every time. American TV has run with this formula for years and that effort has enjoyed quantum leaps since then-president Kennedy’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Newton Minnow, declared TV “a vast wasteland” in 1962. Minnow, like Ed Murrow before him, sounded a warning and called for improvements that never happened.

Today’s TV pimps role models that aren’t pretty. At risk of sounding elitist, what I’d call a celebration of “white trash culture” was underway before Rosanne Barr, “Married With Children” and its imitators. Now, the genre remains in full force. Usually, offerings come complete with the stock character of Dad-as-anus; a loveable buffoon who’s the butt (no pun) of jokes everyone is in on but him.

TV celebs typically enjoy shorter shelf lives than those elsewhere. But dress up a show – no matter how idiotic – with a real or bogus “celebrity”, and you’re home free. Or at least until shows are scrubbed at mid-season.

What would be do without celebrities? It might force the bleak prospect of getting an actual life. But that may be asking a bit much.