Fifteen minute fame

[hyphenate]

I'm tired of people with their bids for 15 minutes of fame. Including any of those who have had more than their share of fame, whose single minded vapidness is the one and only reason they haven't finally realized how utterly ridiculous they are. Before the electronic age, fame wasn't dependent on the attractiveness of a person--the number of people who were "famed" simply because they existed was a manageable size--now, the world is filled with people who have no talent, no wisdom, no raison de'tre. We have our Zsa Zsa Gabors, our Paris Hiltons, our Kato Kaelins--our neverending list of people who make fame look like a dirty word. Do we really give a shit how many times people show up in the media simply "because"?

And we must not forget criminals who have murdered, who tell their tales, and who keep getting airtime because they have "something to say"? The best thing we can ever do is to send them to prison and ignore them. Too many of them are narcissistic, and the attention they get keeps them going. Too many times the victims of crime and their families are the ones ignored, and sometimes they feel non-existent in the fray that follows any tragedy.

We have a society that for some reason involves living vicariously through the fame of others, instead of allowing them to live in their own worlds. Before we had television, before we had radio, we had the written word, and the imagination was king. Before the electronic age, having good looks was not important in running for office--I can't imagine Abraham Lincoln being electable based on the shallow qualities required nowadays: no, Abe had compassion, humility, values and wisdom--things which would have been overshadowed simply by the leading requirement in today's society--looks.

I hate the superficiality we live with every day. Is there any way for us to return to the values of the past? In this technologically competitive world, there must be a way--if there isn't, the things which brought us to this time in history will become endangered.

Sometime in the progress over the past few hundred years, we lost our way. And fifteen minutes of fame for the wrong reasons is just distracting us more every day.