Dazed In The Life

I’ve been feeling pretty rotten over the last five days – all together: Awww. I’ve been topping up on Lemsip and Uniflu, Strepsils and Vitamin C tabs, all to very little avail as it happesn. I’m still spluttering, still have a throat like sandpaper and still feel knackered and whacked out come 8:30pm or so. Then, of course, there are those who are facing the more dangerous swine flu, thus causing my encounter with man flu to pale into insignificance. And while I can mope about, feeling miserable, staring at the snooker on BBC and wondering whether there are any episodes of “Murder, She Wrote” coming on soon, there is the very real threat of a global pandemic. Everyone knows that international travel has led to world shrinkage and that this has made that threat all the more potent. But right now, in this time of Earthwide crisis, RTE’s website felt it necessary to tell us all the astonishing news that MR T WAS CALLED FOR JURY DUTY IN CHICAGO!!! (See link below)

http://www.rte.ie/arts/2009/0429/mrt.html

Yes, you heard me. Mr T, star of “Rocky” and “The A-Team” ,who is well-known for his reluctance to board aircraft and his compassion towards idiots, was called to do his civic duty and this was deemed newsworthy. This really is one of my greatest pet hates: Trivial stories about the banal, day-to-day things that everyone does, but which are driven by the media to a transcendental state when they are done by celebrities. Those “Spotted” columns which the red-tops churn out, telling us where Graham Norton is shopping this week, what park Roy Keane is walking his dog in and what fish-and-chip shop Kevin Spacey is frequenting, seem little more than pathetic pages of detritus, sops to the celebrity culture.

There’s a “Scrap Saturday” line in which PJ Mara assures The Boss, Charlie Haughey, that there is not a blade of grass in Ireland which can grow without him knowing. The constant feed of information about what “famous people” are up to is akin to this, a saturation coverage which, if we’re honest, is completely unnecessary. I don’t care whether Jake Gyllenhaal was seen picking his nose. I couldn’t give a damn if Jordan was seen wearing no make-up in her local McDonalds. I can’t imagine any situation where the contents of Rio Ferdinand’s shopping basket could possibly prove to be vital knowledge.

We live in a world where it is easier than ever to share personal information, through Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc. But it’s also a world where people feel it is permissable to exploit other’s personal information. I’m not going to hark back to the Jade Goody story, I’m not going to point to the death of Princess Diana, I’m not going to cite the innumerable kiss-and-tell stories which fill our newspapers, I’m not going to quote the cases of blackmail and bribery such as that of a royal family member a couple of years ago. I don’t have to.

The fact is that, if anyone looks objectively at our media, our Heat Magazine world, the truth is evident. We are a society obsessed with recognisable faces, with fame and renown. We allow the media to exploit these people and to exploit us too. It’s just stupid. It’s all about money, keeping a name in the news – witness the drip-feeding of Amy Winehouse’s name into every paper, every day, last year -, selling newspapers, spreading the myth that being recognisable is a demonstration of success.

It’s time to say “Stop. Enough is enough.” The madness must end. The piranha-esque feeding-frenzy is over. In Obama-like succinctness, let us shout out loud: “We Don’t Care!”