Celebrity

Here is another one of my little 'issues'-Celebrity.
These are people who earn obsene amounts of money to keep us amused and work a quarter of the time the general man in the street does. Or in the case of the so called 'socialites', they don't work at all. Well they do star in the occasional home made, leaked home movie, but that's not work I guess. (some parts of One Night in Paris were classic let''s face it)

We live in a world that celebrates celebrity and hang on to their every word or movement. And of course they do have issues and they do think, because they are rich and famous, this suddenly makes their views the right ones, and they are not afraid to express them. It also makes their views much more important than those of us who work 5- 7 days a week to keep the family fed.
Many of them host fund raising events, and brag about collecting $2 million...when they could have put in $5 million from their own pockets, as could all their rich celeb friends at those events. These charity events should raise tens of millions if they were as generous as they make people believe. But the truth is that if they brag about being generous, then they are perceived as being generous and then they are social heros. Perception and truth are not always the same. How many make anonymous donations? Or when they do, somehow it leaks to the press and then they have no clue how that happened...riiight!

These are the same people who use the media when it pleases them to get publicity, then shun the same media when they have created a market for themselves and got people hungry. To me it is a sell off. If you choose to have a career where you will be rich and famous, then you have to realise that you sell off your privacy. They cannot expect to try to control the media at  will or show a finger to the fans, the very people without whom they are nothing, when it pleases them. They are public figures and should act like it. As many celebs local and abroad have discovered, just because you are a darling of the press one moment and bask in the sun that is publicity, if you screw up, the same sun will burn your arse. This is when they squirm and cry and cannot believe how they are being picked on. They need to grow up. Of course the press are going to splash the news everywhere. Accept it and move on!

When celebs fall ill, it is also the end of the world and millions rally behind them, sending wishes, gifts, flowers, livers, lungs and kidneys....if we fall ill, only those close to us really give a stuff.
Celebs then appear on Oprah's show and write books for all the gullable to buy. How brave. Forget the fact they have millions for the best therapy and treatment and don't really have to work until they want to. The man in the street, either gets treatment until his medical aid bombs (which these days seems within days) or lands up rotting in some governement hospital, where he is lucky if any medical staff notice he is there. If he recovers, he goes back to the same dead end job he had before falling ill.

Then it comes to meeting important people like politicians (important is a relative word I guess) or other well know people. If the person in the street wanted to meet Mr Mandela- we would be turned away, unless we had some terminal disease or something, then there is a slight chance. We are tax paying citizens, making a contribution to South Africa, yet not good enough it seems to meet these people.
In flies a celebrity, who is SA for his own business concerns, be it a concert or promoting a film, and gets to meet whoever he wants. Now that just seems so fair.

There are many who do make a positive contribution, like Bill Gates, Bono, Moby to name a few. But I think most of them just enjoy the good life and what they can get out of it without remembering who put them there or feel the need to help those less fortunate in a meaningful way. Got to love them.

Now, I am off to watch a movie.