COMMENTARY: For some, 15 minutes is too long

By M. Scott Carter

So the manager of the Blacked Eyed Peas smacked uber-blogger Perez Hilton upside the head and now poor Perez is all upset.

Meanwhile, Britney has been seen topless, yet once again, Lindsay is having problems with her girlfriend and Paris is swapping spit with athletes.

Wow.

Across the country, page after page and video after video about this group of “stars” continually finds its way to the public.

The idea of living vicariously through celebrities has reached a new height here in the good ol’ U S of A and, honestly, it makes me laugh.

While the Hiltons and the Lohans are throwing their public tantrums, thousands of people are losing their homes, people are hungry and that weird dude in North Korea keeps trying to take over the world.

Of course, part of this is the press’ fault.

Photographers stake out nightclubs hoping for a photograph of a drunken starlet, and writers devote countless man hours and thousands of inches of magazine and newspaper space to reprint rumors and trash that half the people in the world won’t even repeat.

No matter, cause the stuff is being sold to the other half.

Jessica Alba’s recent spat of Shark-induced vandalism drew as much attention here in Oklahoma as stories about next year’s race for governor.

I just wonder if the story about the graffiti would have been as popular if it was, say, a group of homeless people seeking help, or done by school teachers seeking smaller class sizes.

Probably not.

Jessica looks fine in a short dress and she’s done a few movies, so, naturally, we should pay more attention to her than, say the highway patrolman who lost it and pulled over an ambulance.

Maybe we just want to escape the turmoil and problems facing us right now.

Maybe we just need a distraction for a while.

Or maybe we just are idiots.

I hope the answer lies in the first two statements, because I don’t want to believe that human society had degenerated to the point that Perez is worth more ink than Watergate.

Last week, a group of kids from Cleveland County set off for Quartz Mountain to attend the Summer Arts Institute.

These kids didn’t just ‘load up and go’ they had to apply, audition and, eventually, get accepted. It took work, skill, dedication and lots of effort.

And other than this newspaper, The Norman Transcript and a handful of others, you don’t hear much about these kid’s accomplishments.

That’s wrong.

Because down in southwestern Oklahoma, nestled in the middle of the Quartz Mountains, you’ll find more beauty and talent the Lindsay Lohans and the Britneys of the world could ever imagine.

Text Only