Entertained to Stupidity

If a celebrity (or fauxlebrity) makes a statement in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer to the question is only if we follow them on Twitter and it then gets reported all across the Internet. As someone who has worked in PR for more than 10 years, I certainly know a thing or two about manufacturing news, but the proliferation of the Internet as a growing source of information seems to have multiplied this to the nth degree. We are constantly bombarded with news of mistresses "speaking out," explicit email revelations and encouraged to take sides in celebrity and fauxlebrity splits.



Celebrity culture certainly has a place in our society. Hell, as I rail against its proliferation, I am still a consumer of it. But the problem is that most of us know about Bombshell McGhee apologizing to Sandra Bullock but couldn't say what's in the new Healthcare law that wasn't provided as a talking point on any one of the 24-hour news channels. Celebrity culture has effectively made us dumber than ever before. Need more proof? Mattel's popular game Scrabble will now allow place names, people's names and company names or brands. So, instead of being encouraged to use words that expand our vocabulary, we can use the word Hollywood -- because we're not already dumb enough.

One of the things that YouTube has taught us, is that our celebrity-obsessed culture is rubbing off on children. Whenever I see a video like this one

I want to wretch. I think a prerequisite for children emulating celebrity culture online should be that they must say their ABCs and count to 100 before they exhibit their mimicry skills. We need to force ourselves to try to be as educated about politics and world events as we are about celebrities and their dating sagas. Michael Wolff argues that we rightfully don't pay attention to things like who the next Supreme Court Justice will be because "it doesn’t really merit all that much attention anymore" and that we shouldn't "feel guilty if the confirmation battle for the new justice bores you to death." But we should. When was education supposed to be all about fun? It's this culture of fun that has helped cause the implosion of our urban public education system (there are certainly other culprits including race and class). But it seems that we are content being a nation of dumb, fat (KFC Double Down, anyone?)and happy people.