In the last week of December the ancient Romans had festivals to their gods...the Huns and Celts sent altar offerings to heaven....the medievalists prayed through the 12 days of Christmas. In modern America we indulge in the recurring ritual of listing the-most-celebrated-people-of-the-year. A harmless exercise whose chief purpose may be reassuring ourselves there really is something important to all this.....!
Carrie Fisher -- herself familiar with celebrity -- puts it this way: "Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time."
Like you, I've scanned this week's names. All interesting, a few memorable, most will not even make next year's list. But the names do give one pause. NBC's Brian Willialms & the NY Times had several choices --
* Barack Obama earns the top spot simply by achieving the world's top spot against every racial and political odds. I mean here's a guy who first worked on the southside of Chicago for a friend of mine. and now he's the proverbial leader of the world in an age when the world desperately needs leadership...!
* Captain Sully Sullenberg piloted the "miracle on the Hudson" landing that seems to prove man can still snatch lives from out of the cold fierce hands of Death itself. I pray every trip there's another Sully at the controls...!
* The team at NASA discovered water on the moon, one more small step by mankind in its relentless search for meaning in our cosmos. These scientists take your breath away with their dazzling possibilities, altho I still sleep better at night holding on to the foundational probabilities of my faith...!
* Lady GaGa has at the age of 23 stunned the culture world with what her admirers call the most unique fashion statement of the year. Their case is built on the conviction she's broken the existing social Gestalt. Without denying that, I remain amazed by how many young audiences return to the pleasures of their parent's Gestalt..!
* Twitter from Iran to Cook County has convinced many that this is actually the newest lobby to the biggest hotel of communications the world has ever known. Personally I can't challenge that until a verbose educator learns how to work within the valuable limits of 140 characters...!
My own choice for the-most-celebrated-people-of-the-year remains those I again witnessed this week at O'Hare Field. The gun-toting, scanner-equipped officers, security staff and medics whose thankless 24/7 task remains thankless only until the next foiled crisis. You're my heroes...!
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Sometimes obscurity is a lot safer than celebrity...
ReplyDeleteI think celebrity is so fleeting. And the more we build them up, the more we want to rip them down. Strange statement on society.
ReplyDeleteStrange indeed. Freud might call it our love/hate complex. We rather feel that way about almost everyone in our lives. Strange, strange, strange.
ReplyDeleteCelebrity has become an obsession in this country. Really pathetic.
ReplyDelete