STUPID STUFF: CELEB TRAIN WRECKS Why are celebrity train wrecks so fascinating?

STUPID STUFF: CELEB TRAIN WRECKS

Why are celebrity train wrecks so fascinating? I mean, Lohan, Sheen, on one end, Spears in the middle, and Moore and Stone on the other.

Most of human existence is pretty transparent to me. Tediously obvious even. But the crazy stuff people do never ceases to amaze me, and I find it endlessly fascinating – even if I wish I didn’t. Even if I’m embarrassed that I do.

But somehow I love to live in a world where we have all these entertaining characters who tests the limits. Not of criminality. Not of violence. But of some insanely uncontrollably misdirected passion.

When I was younger I used to love to watch the Dead-Heads go to concerts. I have no interest in them. I dont want to know them. But they’re all happy and adorable in a completely ‘white’ kind of way. And I just loved living in a world with people like that in it. Where it’s perfectly OK to be peaceful counter-culture.

It’s beautiful – in a sort of twisted way.

But American civic culture has declined with the ascent of the government, the decline of the family, and the misplaced admiration for division-inducing multiculturalism. And so our countercultures, except for possibly the burning man phenomenon, are almost entirely forms of politica agitation.

I wont’ get into why this state of affairs exists. It’s a depressing distraction. I’ll just appreciate that a few outrageous individuals can buck the prohibition on revelrous passions.

Even if it’s just vicarious.