Not to be left behind in the slime, we're jumping on the Charlie Sheen bandwagon.
Rest assured, our interest is not to further promote this superman of self-destructiveness, and it's certainly not the future direction of your community paper.
However, the editorial board of the Cheney Free Press recently wondered just what was it that has drawn so much media attention to Sheen, the justly fallen star of one of the most popular programs on television? It's been weeks since his last public display of debauchery, but somehow he keeps bobbing to the surface almost daily through the celebrity slime.
If we watch television – and most of us do – folks such as Sheen are pushed in front of us morning, noon and night.
The coverage sometimes supercedes tragedies such as the innocent American soldiers shot on the bus in Frankfurt, Germany by a Kosovan Muslim. And as the mainstream media parades the slimy Sheen – and others like him such as Lindsay Lohan – the economy still struggles, the budget battles loom, Libya rages and in Wisconsin we wait to see who blinks first in that battle of wills.
Admittedly, the trysts and travails of TV and movie icons seem to serve something in many of our psyches. After all, we're always craning our neck to watch a car wreck on the freeway, probably saying to ourselves, “whew…glad that wasn't me.'”
For some reason the lives of the rich and famous appear to be just a little more interesting than those of the average Joe or Jane. But then, for all the adoration, we love to watch them fall off the public pedestal that's been built for them. Again, better them than us?
Maybe more of a curiosity is the idea that for some reason enough people actually care about the next royal wedding featuring Prince William and Kate Middleton. Or what would prompt a jeweler to overpay Academy Awards co-host Anne Hathaway $750,000 she probably didn't need anyway to wear their necklace.
The sad part is that it's those who cannot come close to affording such trappings who foolishly chase after thoughts of such fleeting fame. They search for it in magazines, long for it, burning their money with the lotto or at the card table.
We should point out that according to Jacob Weisberg at the slate.com blog, celebrity journalism “is not only diabolically popular but cheap to produce, which explains why People is America's most profitable magazine.”
There's potentially a carrot at the end of the stick and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But do not fear, despite the potential of vast fame and fortune we'll continue to be your newspaper that's been reporting on local news and filling scrapbooks for decades.
No heading down the yellow brick journalism road any time soon for us.
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