We are a celebrity-obsessed culture. We care more about Michael Jackson’s skin color and the love lives of Britney and Justin than about the war. I don’t have a problem with that, honestly. I want Britney to find happiness. Maybe she should hook up with Joe Millionaire.
With a culture so fixated on the people on the screens of our TVs, it is stunning how little we care about them. We would be just as happy to see our stars torn apart, (note Michael Jackson and, well, Britney) as to see them celebrated. So when we loose them it’s not a big deal. While a few hundred stoners never really got over the death of Jerry Garcia, very few people are still are upset about Burgess Meredith’s passing.
For almost all famous people we don’t actually feel anything more than passing affection. The reason for this is it never really feels as if they like us as an audience, no matter what they say as they receive their Grammies, Oscars, and Golden Globes. Even more importantly, I don’t care about most famous people because most famous people don’t really care about ME.
So in the last thirty-six hours, it has been amazing to see the sincerity of handmade shrines, the long personal stories, the op-ed pieces, the expensive video montages, all dedicated to the late Fred Rogers.
I think that everyone who watched the Neighborhood felt that Mr. Rogers was speaking directly to her or him. We all thought that he cared not only about us, the audience, but ME. I still, on some level, genuinely believe that. So, in contrast to our relationship with nearly every other famous person, I and we actually CARED about him.
So now, I guess than many of us are at a real loss. We know we need to say something, but what?