farmdoc's blog post number 41

Sharon Stone, apparently a well-known actress, has opined that the recent major earthquake in China was bad karma after Beijing’s policy in Tibet. While anyone is entitled to an opinion, I am amazed Ms Stone’s pap has been so widely publicised. As if her being famous in some way gains her insight into, or privileged access to, the truth. ‘Get real, farmdoc,’ you may respond, ‘we live in an age of celebrity’. I see that, but I also see people who are famous for being famous accreting untold wealth and conspicuously flaunting it. These people – A-listers, eh – are attention seekers. But are they role models, or objects of morbid curiosity, or both? Perhaps as role models they are harmless because their material wealth – and maybe also their appearance, carefully manufactured by publicly invisible retinues – is well beyond the reach of everyman. But it’s their opinions that worry me. Mel Gibson’s anti-semitism, for instance, attributed by him to alcohol (which to my knowledge is a disinhibiter and not a changer of cognition). Celebrities have ready if not unlimited access to the media. And the primary objective of the media is to sell advertising which, they have manifestly decided, they can help achieve by reporting celebrities’ opinions however bizarre they are. Indeed the more bizarre, the better. Is the end of this madness imminent? No.