Celebrity

A-List, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity, FamousForBeingFamous - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous

see Daniel Boorstin, author of The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America ISBN:0689702809. Boorstin argued that in the 1960s leaders were beginning to resemble "media stars," rather than politicians. Boorstin further warned that if the voting public continued to be inundated with pseudo-events and un-nuanced media coverage, these media stars would soon dominate the political landscape. Of important note, this book was written in the years following the 1960 Presidential Election, where many commentators have noted that John F Kennedy's appearance and demeanor on the first televised presidential debate may have swung the election.

  • The weekend death of award-winning historian and social critic Daniel J. Boorstin came in a world he had largely predicted, and feared: News of his passing was reported quickly, electronically, by media outlets in business around the clock. His death, at age 89, was unlikely to capture a fraction of the attention of Sunday night's Academy Awards.
  • CELEBRITY AT THIS MOMENT IN America is epidemic, and it's spreading fast, sometimes seeming as if nearly everyone has got it. Television provides celebrity dance contests, celebrities take part in reality shows, perfumes carry the names not merely of designers but of actors and singers. Without celebrities, whole sections of the New York Times and the Washington Post would have to close down. So pervasive has celebrity become in contemporary American life that one now begins to hear a good deal about a phenomenon known as the Culture of Celebrity.

Marshall Blonsky (1992): Why the rage for letter-turning Vanna White? (An Empty Vessel - viewers can imagine her any way they want.)

Jul'2014: Kim Kardashian has a Computer Game. Kim steadfastly refuses to sell anything but herself. Or, to be more specific, she refuses to sell anything but the image of herself.

  • Nov'2014: Take the stream of small faux-confidences that she offers during the interview. They reveal very little yet foster a sense of closeness. She tells me that she is "obsessed with apps" but, when I ask her to name one, she replies, "I like all different apps." Of her 72-day marriage to Kris Humphries, one of her rare missteps that actually left a footprint, she says: "It's just one of those life lessons that you have to learn, and it's OK." Her behavior suggests that the key to total ubiquity is giving up all of one's verbal edges and sharp angles (while occasionally tossing out a memorable visual flare: a sex tape, say, or a nude photo shoot). Social Media has created a new kind of fame, and Kardashian is its paragon. It is a fame whose hallmark is agreeable omnipresence, which resembles a kind of evenly spread absence, soothing, tranquil and unobjectionable.

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