Alright...serving up a piping-hot dose of rumination-java....some thoughts on where our predilection for celebration of celebrity is taking us.  Here we go:

"Mediated culture is taking the cult of celebrity in new directions.  James Bond was the creation of Ian Fleming.  But Fleming admitted that even he began to write his later novels with Sean Connery in mind.  Ever meet a Moon Man?  The twelve men who've set foot on the moon, known collectively as the Moon Men, have a common problem.  They get large fees for appearing at Star Trek conventions.  But the television actors from Star Trek tend to draw bigger crowds than the real Moon Men."

    -- Leonard Sweet, The Gospel According to Starbucks® (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2007), 119.

   "In our world, anyone can be a celebrity, and nobodies can become instant celebrities.  In fact, this globalization of the tribal was predicted by the famed Columbia University anthropologist Robert Murphy, who summed up the difference betweeen modern and premodern societies in this way: "Everyone is famous in a tribe."  In premodern society everyone was a celebrity, due to being known in the neighbourhood and known for something, whereas in modern society only the elite qualified for celebrity status.

     It's not as if we're not already celebrities to begin with.  To be born a USAmerican is to begin life as a celebrity.  We live like kings used to.  We have won first prize in the lottery of life.  The only question is how we invest our lottery winnings.

    It's also not as if we're not already thinking of ourselves as celebrities.  Have you checked out Facebook, MySpace, or any number of other social networking sites?  Have any people under thirty not already posted their photos and preferences (music, photo, and video libraries), and presented themselves as celebrities?  If you go online for only a few minutes you see that not only are people writing ads for products they like, they are becoming the ads themselves:  image icons."

    -- Leonard Sweet, The Gospel According to Starbucks® (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2007), 122.

   'Nuff said (fer now!).  :D