Wednesday, April 23, 2008

THE CONTINUING DEVALUATION OF THE CONCEPT OF CELEBRITY

You don't care and I don't care, but the wire services apparently feel it's a story worth running: NBC has revealed the cast of its upcoming Celebrity Circus show!

And what Big Names will astonish and delight us? Why, uh, the guy who played Peter Brady and, let's see, some super model or other and...This is pathetic. The only person here I'm familiar with is Wee Man from Jackass. (There's no particular pride involved in admitting a fondness for Jackass, but no shame conceded, either.)

I mean: Really? Back in the seventies, TV brought us Circus Of The Stars. Lauren Bacall! Jerry Lewis! Rock Hudson! Angela Lansbury! You know--stars. Sure, the performers might also include the likes of Gil Gerald and Jayne Kennedy, but at least they appeared regularly on TV at the time. By the loosest possible standards, they were celebrities, if not necessarily stars.

But criminy--Rachel Hunter? She's most famous, near as I can tell, for appearing on Dancing With The Stars, on which she had no business appearing, since she is not--and I can't stress this enough--a star.

If someone created a show entitled Dancing With Non-Entities, she'd fit right in, though. Peter Brady could join her, and oh, what jolly times they'd have.