WHAT ARE YOU WORTH...? NO, SERIOUSLY!

Right now Al Pacino is addressing this question on Broadway (have I bragged that Al is a distant member of the family?). In "Merchant of Venice," his Shylock speaks in terms of a pound-of-flesh. In caste societies, the value of a human life is often determined by the family lineage. Here in America, flesh and lineage are not as important as cash. Here money is the mark and the measure of a person. Period...!

Now at one time, Hollywood directors like Frank Capra made movies about the average person as in "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" and "It's A Wonderful Life." At one time illustrators like Norman Rockwell made artwork about the average person as in scores of classic "Saturday Evening Post" covers and calendars.

In today's America, money is still the mark and measure of a person; but usually the person has to be a celebrity before most of us bother to care. And thus it is that billionaires running vast corporations make and keep their billions without many headlines. It's the celebrities whose money we most pay attention to.

Which is why publications like "TV Guide" drool over stories with titles like "Top Earners" in which they snappily write: "From Hugh Laurie to Jersey Girl Snooki, it's our annual roundup of who makes what on TV."

For what it's worth -- and in the final measure of a life it isn't worth a hill of beans -- here are these top-earning TV celebrities circa 2010. The question has to be: Do these dollars represent their value? For instance, my life was recently saved by carotid artery surgery whose total doctor/hospital bill was over $30,000 for three hours of intensive work. How to match that up with Snooki from the reality show "Jersey Shore" who makes $30,000 every episode for -- lets see now -- for being Snooki?

Then there's pretend doctor Hugh Laurie who makes $400,000 for every episode. And Charlie Sheen who rakes in $1.25 million. And Catie Couric at $15 million a year, And Oprah Winfrey at $315 million a year.

Well, why go on...? The point here is that free-enterprise societies tend to value a life in terms of the money a person's enterprise has earned them. Which makes a kind of sense. And yet, a kind of nonsense. Our value as humans really emerges from our value to the world and to those with whom we walk in that world. And that, surely, is not so easily tidied up into a dollar figure.

I'm thinking here of the day my son saw a woman collapse in a store who he revived with CPR. As the medics arrived, he quietly walked away with the sublime knowledge that his life had saved another life. How would "TV Guide" put a dollar figure on that...?