It has gotten to the point now where every celebrity gossip columnists will fight tooth and nail to slam celebrities for every photo op and every mishap that is caught on tape or film. While there are numerous financial reasons for such action, lets note that most of this exploitation is centered around female celebrities

Case in point, have we not heard enough about Britney Spears? While we are more than happy to sneer and cajole about the mishaps of Ms. Spears and her excess 20 lbs, but what happened to her deadbeat husband, Kevin Federline, who is dropping $2,000 tips in Las Vegas when his average gross income is merely $24,000! WTF? Can men really criticize what they have little to go by, such as putting on weight when you have children back to back? How many women actually can put on a size 8 or 10 after 6 months of giving birth to their second child in the last 24 months? It’s actually quite unfair to even compare the notion.

Why are we constantly attacking our female counterparts when our male counterparts are equally liable and responsible? Take the latest incident of celebrity exploitation where we are criticizing Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton for being skanks and illegitimate whores when we do not categorize their male companions for the same deed. Sex in rehab is not a one man job, especially for Lindsay Lohan, and Hilton with the latest member of Good Charlotte did not happen because she was a solo practitioner. Lets drop the sexism people because men are just as whore-ish as women yet they do not get half the backlash. While I’m more than happy to bash celebrity whores, I want to make it an equal opportunity basher. Don’t hold back because they are male, apply the same principle or else don’t do it. If we’re going to criticize someone for their weight, sexual preference, and public persona, apply it regardless of their gender. At least then we know that we are not differentiating indiscriminately.

On Wednesday MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski decided to take a stand and refused to report on the latest Paris Hilton news story. Brzezinski told her producers and viewers that it was not newsworthy and the lead-in story when there are real news to report. Bravo! This position has prompted attention on the web, particularly Youtube, from viewers who commended her for taking a stand against soft news and the obsession with celebrities.

If only more shows such as CNN or the right winged FOX could take a similar stance then perhaps we can actually discuss more important, relevant news such as the war in Iraq, the defeat of comprehensive immigration reform, the inadequacy of the healthcare system, or the deterioration of the economy, rather than non-sensical celebrity news. Brzezinski should be applauded for going with her gut and telling her viewers that enough is enough. The aftermath of her actions has yet to be decided but judging from the emails and responses from viewers online and off, this might be the highlight of her established stellar career as a journalist.

Earlier this week Anderson Cooper from CNN lamented the fact that Hilton has received so much attention for basically doing nothing. In fact, he continued that he thought she was insubstantial and made nothing of her fame except to promote her lifestyle. As you could probably imagine, Cooper probably has to vomit during commercial breaks and stab his toes every time he has to report on Hilton. As a creditable and investigative reporter, Cooper has risen to fame during the Katrina disaster for his reports on the real-life crisis of the victims and criticism of the inept system that failed to prepare for the disaster.

The media wheel has fallen victim to soft news and understandably so as what matters most to them is the bottom line. Americans have fallen victim to be consumed by peripheral news which has no qualitative value except to lull them into ignorance. This vicious circle has to be broken. More people should stand up for what they want and not what the media tell them they need - more celebrity news. Let the vomiting begin.

If you perform an Internet search of people who buy and read glossy magazines, people who subscribe to the Oprah fan club, and people who are opinionated and up to date with celebrity gossip you will find that the majority of them are women. Women speak fondly of Oprah and all the wonderful charity work she has done for the children and women in Africa and the extraordinary educational projects she has accomplished in the United States. Very rarely do we find any begrudging complaints from viewers about Oprah’s diva behavior or plight for racial justice at any cost. Did you notice that most of the viewers in her audience are female? To be fair, there was a woman that filed a civil action recently claiming she was injured in her mad pursuit to grab a coveted, desirable chair when the doors were open to allow the audience in.Lets assume that the majority of celebrity news readers are female. Lets move on to whether it affects male and female differently.

Based on readership, men subscribe and read magazines along the lines of Forbes, Economics, and Wired. They are usually wired to be sensitive to market trends, business analysis, and anything that has to do with fronting a n economic edge. That’s just the tip of the entrepreneurial iceberg. Most men care about whether is affects them financially, while most women generally worry about the social norm it might impose on the sociala nd personal status quo. Therefore, it’s plausible to conclude that most men would not be the target audience for supermarket tabloids and junk news. Discontent with this sexist presumption, I decided to search the Internet and talk to some of my friends to placate my curiosity.

For the sake of research, I approached 5 nurses and asked them about this Anna Nicole Smith saga. They gasped in horror to learn of her demise (apparently they had not heard the breaking news on every media circuit because they were at work) and proceeded to discuss intimate details about the celebrity’s life prior to her death. I inquired with a few friends regarding their knowledge of the Oprah syndrome (something along the lines of raising her to virtual god status) and the a few of my friends agreed that Oprah should run for office. They would vote for her.

To be fair to women, entertainment news is not all that bad, albeit not substantative nor relevant either. It numbs the brain and replicate the process on a continual basis as to replace the ability to critically or logically have a meaningful discussion about anything. Personally, I’d like to use entertainment news as that, entertainment. It illustrates all the moronic behavior that people with pretty faces and skinny bodies will do in their Hollywood bubble. Once in a while, one of those pretty faces and skinny bodies will surprise you by doing something interesting and quasi altruistic - like promote Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or the famine and AIDS epidemic in Africa. To be fair, you can hardly blame the celebrities as their images are involuntarily distorted and at the mercy of the media. They’re either portrayed as sexual objects, or scathing bitches or divas. It’s a no win situation.

The culprit is the media, obsessed with transforming the ridiculous lifestyle of the rich and famous into a fallacy that it can be achieved by the average women readers. They impose unrealistic expectations on what is considered beauty and success, and more importantly, reality. They lie and lie so they can sell their magazines, then they misrepresent and distort the truth so to make the story more enticing. They add sex and booze to each article, sprinkle in a bit of violence, and they have tabloid trash. What I find most interesting is that 7 times out of ten, these articles are about female celebrities. It confounds me that even in celebrity news that women are targeted and degraded as sexual objects. These media vultures circle the females and criticize their physique, promote the skinny bodies, and chastise them from their childrearing decisions to their personal decision in men. While I realize that they are public figures, not comprehensively protected by any privacy rights, but if you’re going to villify celebrities then bring in the men too! It’s a sexist media.

This disproportionate depth of negativity and hostility toward women is fundamentally unfair and cruel. Case in point, Anna Nicole Smith was villified in the media, but her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, has barely been mentioned even though he has been with her for over a decade and as intimate in her personal affairs as any spouse. Only recently have they questioned his motives once they realized what caused her death. Nonetheless, the meaty criticism has been focused on her. It was her yo yo dieting, her drug induced lifestyle, or her disregard for her children that killed her. Like I said, it’s endless. Another case in point is the debacle surrounding Madonna’s adoption of an African child. In a search on Google, her conduct was apparently equivalent to a kidnapper, quasi-criminal, an indifferent shopper looking for her latest accessory, etc., while her husband was merely mentioned as an afterthought. Character assasination is the media’s mechanism to grease the wheel that keeps good women in the shadow.

The fact that women celebrities, just like any other woman, are subjected to a higher and more vicious level of criticism is despicable. There’s no sexual equality in the media, only financial interests and exploitation. Additionally, because the tabloids are focused on women readers, they are encouraging their target audience to be hostile to other women. This is the grease that keeps the hate wheel rolling. They set unrealistic standards of beauty and galvinize women to buy into the media hype of starving yourself thin. The media continue to reinforce this morbid notion that being famine thin is attractive and desirable, that women who have not achieved this level of thinness are not beautiful.

Women have spent too long in the shadow of men and should collectively boycott media outlets that perpetuate the oppression and further displacing women.

 

Some people are so hypocritical it amazes me that they ever open their mouth!

After being refused entry into the UK to perform on his “Chaos” tour with P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg issued a statement that he wanted to spread the message of peace, harmony, and love.

He also went on to say that he wanted to reach out to kids to stop the violence. This hypocrite really irks me. It’s not that his music is demeaning to women, that a known gang banger and a drug user, but he’s also been the point of many altercations and has spent time in jail because of it. Now he’s going on record as the voice of peace?? A peace figure? Give me a break!

The scathing headlines are ubiquitous. Blond bombshell found dead in hotel casino with no obvious cause of death while baby and lover are nowhere to be found. If it was any other woman, the headlines would end there and people would turn their attention to what Tom Cruise and his cohorts are planning for the Church of Scientology. Or what Beyonce is wearing, or where Madonna will adopt her latest accessory. This is not the case as it is the weight chameleon Anna Nicole Smith, spokesperson for the diet drink Trimspa.

The media outlets, from frivolous Entertainment Tonight to substantive NPR, have been exploring the mysterious circumstances surrounding her untimely demise. They speculated on the apparent drug abuse, haphazard dieting regimes, and interviewed scores of friends and family to get their take on what happened. Particularly interesting is the interview on Larry King Live with Chyna, the female wrestler proclaiming to be Smith’s confidante and best friend. Chyna was undermined by another woman on the show who claimed that Smith had despised Chyna and called her a stalker. It seems Smith has not spoken to Chyna in years and avoided any association with Chyna. The subject of Smith’s death became secondary to the brewing catfight between the two women. Television at its best on Larry King Live.

While any death is tragic, regardless of celebrity status, no death deserves this sort of blow by blow account of the whats, hows, and whys of the cause of death. The fact that Smith left behind a 5 month old baby is disheartening. She died in the same messy way that she lived is somewhat interesting, but 24 hour coverage on her death is neither entertaining nor newsworthy. Smith’s ultimate legacy is marrying a billionaire oil tycoon followed by a decade of litigation after his death. This is not worthy of 24 hour coverage.

The issue with the media is that everyone seems to gobble up the same sound bites hour after hour and as little sheep, the general public is transfixed in this ridiculous circus known as celebrity obsession. It seems everyone has an opinion about Smith’s death, whether they knew her or not. Confounding matters further, Smith’s own family seem to spearheading this media frenzy. What possesses people to tune in day in day out to find all the tidbits of this woman’s life? A deep concern for her family’s well-being? Probably not. An obsession with lifestyles of the rich and famous fueled by the vast arrays of entertainment news options? Probably so.

What became of our troubled astronaut, Lisa Novak? What became of Al Gore’s an Inconvenient Truth? Does global warming not have the same sex appeal as the the Church of Scientology’s quest for their latest celebrity couple? Apparently not. Until we start paying for the Discovery Channel and stop paying tribute to the glossy magazines at the checkout stand, the media will prevail in this battle between what we want to see versus what they think we should want see. The media will have us believe that the death of an irreverant celebrity has more significance than the fact that more Americans are medically obese then any other time in history, and the financial burden this has on our healthcare system. No, lets discuss how some shallow celebrities die and fall from fame, not issues such as global warming or healthcare, as that might provoke thought and action. Lets all say, “baaaahh!”

Once in a while, I dare to detour to the surreal utopian world of celebrities, wherein I inject my superfluous opinions on what Google assessed as the Most Popular subject on the internet that day. Presently, it is about the Beckhams moving to the silicone addicted, reality challenged world of Hollywood, and the current heated debate is whether the omnipresent and Scientology advocate, Tom Cruise, had any role in making that happen. To be honest, does it really matter that they are relocating to Hollywood because of Cruise’s influence, or that personally, the Beckhams wanted desperately to be immersed with similarly I.Q. challenged compadres who can relate to what it’s like to be publicly adored and intimately shallow in life?

The poignant relevancy is that the most superficially acceptable, media approved couple, is moving to the continent of the USA where assets like that alone would make them millions in publicity. Welcome to Hollywood, where no talent or brain is required. (Got Paris Hilton?)

Ladies, we are talking about the ubiquitously perfect male, David Beckham. While I vehemently despise any type of perfection, be it metaphysical or physical, which is an extremely rare and absolutely unattainable commodity on my budget, I must acknowledge that it is David Beckham, the small god of all men! In recognition of my fame obsession problem, David Beckham is arguably the closest thing to perfection. THE golden Beckham that always has a boyish smile on his flawless face, ex-captain of the salvaged English football team, and long term spouse of the equally impeccable Victoria Beckham, ex-Spice girl that generated catchphrases such as girl power.

The general obsession with celebrities and their dating antics has gotten to a shamefully astounding level in the USA. Celebrities get more press coverage on their disastrous relationship decisions than the fact that George W. Bush just committed more troops to the Iraq war, or that Saddam Hussein was hanged in a fashion that ironically, turned him into a martyr instead of the merciless, cruel dictator that he truly was. With all the devastating events emerging from all parts of the world, Google informs us that the Beckhams story is more popular based on the number of hits and headlines than the tragic Indonesian jetliner crash that killed over 100 people.

People might think that this rings close to a psychotic rant from a registered left-winged democrat, but on the contrary, this is an observation of the stark reality created by an abundant coverage of celebrities in their gloriously shiny dresses and meticulously styled hair. A popular USA news program called 20/20 recently did an expose titled “Are we addicted to fame?” wherein an astonishingly amount of middle schoolers heavily indicated on a survey that they’d rather be a celebrity assistant than a President of Harvard or Yale; the CEO of a big company like General Motors; a U.S. Senator; or a Navy SEAL. According to the report, most believe that fame would resolve all their problems, and even though being famous was not an option on the survey, being close to a celebrity was just as desirable. In fact, when asked if they could push a button to be smarter, stronger, beautiful, or famous, it was nearly shocking to discover that most students picked fame over intelligence and looks. What does that say about the future populace of America?

One can only hope that they are the silent, apathetic part of America, otherwise what we have to look forward to is Arnold Schwarzengger and Warren Beatty as President and Vice President, respectively. In order to curb this obsession with celebrities, our personal mission is to advance a proper mechanism of cold indifference and solidify disregard for movie stars.

If David Beckham is the media’s next convoluted inspiration for impeccable muscles and golden looks, then we should applaud the fact that he’s transitioning to Hollywood, because he will be in good company with the likes of Brad Pitt and George Clooney. These actors spend hours with their stylist and make-up artist just so they can look “natural.” While we can certainly appreciate the celebrities’ physiological perfection which only substantial money can buy, we must indiscriminately exclude them from becoming a part of our subsistence living. The general populace shop at their local discounted department stores and is a size 10, not two as the skinny talking heads will tell you on their daily entertainment show..

Do not buy the hype! Reality is not based on what you see in glossy magazines and on the big screen. Turn off the TV and cancel your subscription!

Like millions of celebrity obsessed fans in the USA, I’ve been following along and reading every bit of news about the feud between Trump and Rosie O’Donnell. Most of it belongs on a cheap ticket comedy show and some have been purely fabricated. It must be as why would a man with an obviously ridiculous comb-over seriously call a slightly overweight woman a “mental midget?” Has he looked at himself in the mirror recently?

It all started earlier this week when the Miss USA show, for you people who just crawled out from underneath your rock, a beauty pageant show co-owned by Trump, was scandalously muddled across the media because the recently crowned Miss USA’s under-age drinking and debauchery lifestyle jeopardized the moral decency of the title that she’s supposed to uphold. I think the media was more interested in exploiting the photos of a young gorgeous woman kissing another woman than the fact that she was Miss USA. That was merely icing on the cake. Nonetheless, it brought out the big dog, Trump. Trump called a press conference to tell the world his final decision on the future of Miss USA. At the news conference, Trump went into his judgmental Apprentice mode and informed the press that while he doesn’t condone Miss USA’s behavior, he will not remove her title. She would have to enter rehab.

Rosie decided that enough was enough. She went on her show, The View, and told the audience that comb-over should not be so hypocritical as to be the moral compass for young adults. He has indeed been married twice, left both of them, had children with both, and each time for a younger woman. His current wife is half his age!

I thought it was funny up to this point. Next I read that Trump called Rosie a fat slob, ugly, and a loser. This man must have been smoking crack. She was just stating a simple obvious truth that we all have been thinking (and laughing about) and have never had the opportunity to say it. She called him morally challenged and she supported it with his own disastrous track record in his marital behavior. Honestly, the comb-over comment is excruciating painfully but funny and he certainly cannot deny the fact that what he does with his hair cannot be mistaken for anything less than humorous. While I don’t truly believe or agree with everything that Rosie said about him, I do believe that in a society where free speech is still a major force in our constitution and our democracy, Trump should not be resorting to such low life comments that personally attacks a person on such a fundamental level. She’s overweight but that does not make her a loser. She’s crude and she speaks the truth, but it does not mean that you can threaten her life for it. That type of bully behaviour belongs on the streets with the warmongers and crack-dealers.

Additionally, his comments about Rosie attempted to create a nexus between her behavior to the Iraq war. Does he really think it’s people like Rosie that caused the Iraq war? This man needs to look himself in the mirror, give his comb-over a name, and recognize that it is people like him, who capitalizes on manipulating and exploiting people that are the driving forces behind the delusional warmongers that deceptively took us to war with Iraq.

Lets momentarily assess the foundation of what Miss USA stands for. Does it rely on academics or moral intelligence? Does it rely on desirable talents? Does it rely on what one has contributed to society or accomplished thus far? It does none of this except for what the tiny pink, blue, gold, or silver bikini and lovely hair extensions can do to enhance your breasts and tighten your tummy and thighs. By owning the Miss USA pageant, Trump is part of an institution that perpetuates and promotes an unnatural and unrealistic notion of beauty. Women are paraded around in tiny bikinis and stilettos while judges, usually old white men with a token female, decide who is the ideal woman to hold the title. Should someone who earns a living promoting this show really be the moral compass for teens? Moreover, should someone who can’t even maintain his own personal life above the morals that he imposes on his minion be the moral compass for teens?

What a laughable hypocrisy! Have you seen the last few seasons of The Apprentice? Let me point something out as I was a huge fan until recently - all the contestants are slim and young. The women, in particular, are usually referred to and deciphered based on their looks, not their credentials, their completed projects or intelligence. The men are usually distinguished by their Alma mater, not by their hair color or the color of their tops. There was one overweight guy in the show in the last season, and we knew it was a matter of time before he was booted, but not one, fat/overweight woman on the show, ever. By the way, the fat guy was referred to as the fat/stinky/loud/obnoxious guy the entire season. Had this been the Miss USA beauty pageant, he would have been the ideal judge on the panel.

Trump is a McJoke and a McLoser.