Forgive My Ranting

Pardon me, but I just have to rant a while.

I am sick to pieces of hearing about Jon and Kate.  Pardon me for thinking they were colossal idiots to put their lives and marriage on television and think everything would be fine.  A marriage without privacy is no marriage at all.  I don't care about Paris, Lindsey, Brittney or Nicole.  I don't care about the balloon boy's parents.  I think we need to just let Michael rest.  In peace.  Forever.  I don't give a rat's patootie about who in Hollywood is dating whom.  I don't even care who in my town is dating whom, unless it's my husband dating someone.  Then I'd care.

You better duck, folks, 'cuz here it comes....

This is all OUR fault.  Every time we click on a story about these pathetic human beings, a little hit counter somewhere tells the powers that be, "they want to read about this".  Stop clicking, dammit!   We buy those stupid celebrity rags, we bid on their chewed up gum on Ebay and we tear our clothes and cry when they walk through the airport.  To borrow a saying I read recently, sweet fancy Moses!  What is wrong with us?

Those stupid balloon parents are just the latest in a long line of publicity whores and I'm sick of it.  Can't we do something about this?  What if we all commit to STOP CLICKING on this crap, would it go away?  What if every one of us only clicked on a story that was of some actual significance, would it improve the national news?  If we only clicked on news stories that either mattered or uplifted, would we do away with the trash?

Close your eyes and think about it for a minute.  If bad behavior didn't earn the stars, starlets and wannabes any sort of recognition, but making a positive contribution to society did earn them recognition...what would happen?  Gasp!  Could it be?  Might that encourage them to do something good with their notoriety?  I admit it's unlikely, but what if?

What if playing your six-year-old as a pawn in your bid for spurious fame landed you quickly in jail, with no news coverage at all, and no one ever talked about you again?  Would people continue to try those stunts?

Did you ever read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear?  The protagonist of the story is cursed with death at the end of the story.  She doesn't really die, but she is dead as far as her clan is concerned.  They stop talking to her, stop paying attention to her, stop "seeing" her.  It was a horrible sentence.  Think about it.  We are social creatures, even we shy ones.  What if your whole world pretended you didn't exist?

That sort of punishment is part of the root idea of solitary confinement, banishment, shunning, exile, ostracism and every other painful way that societies have of making us behave.  I'm starting to think that shunning might just be the perfect answer.  Celebrities who misbehave, people who endanger others in their cry for media attention and all the rest of the "look at me" crowd...shunning might put a quick stop to all of that nonsense..