by Cyn Bagley

Created on: August 04, 2011

"The Beatles are bigger than Jesus."
Paul Lennon

I have seen the news footage of young girls fainting after seeing the Beatles. If you can imagine it, those young girls are probably grandmothers or even great-grandmothers now. And as the years have gone by, I have seen several celebrity news shows, like TMZ and others, hound celebrities. Plus if you ask a person on the street who Lady Gaga is, they will probably know who she is. But if you ask them to name a local political figure, they would have no idea. The celebrity machine crunches normal people under its feet.

So in my personal opinion, celebrity worship of our time is idolization. What I find interesting is that the word idolization without the qualifier word "extreme" already means excessive adoration or admiration of a person. The root word "idol" means a representation of a deity or a false god,  So are celebrities the little gods of our modern age?

Some of the problems of celebrity worship include women and young girls who try to look and act like their favorite celebrities. Sometimes it can cause physical problems like obesity or anorexia. When young children get celebrity obsessed, they begin to see celebrities as friends and want to watch them all the time. An unintended consequence is that children can become isolated from the world around them. even becoming couch potatoes.

I remember an old story of an old woman in the 1980s who called the police when her TV blanked out. In the complaint she said that her friend had disappeared. Well, when the police got to her home, they found out that the TV was unplugged. They plugged it in for her and she went back to watching her soap opera.

Since the Roman times, human beings have been looking for something or someone that is greater than themselves. The Romans had the charioteers. The Italian Renaissance had their knights and bullfighters. Although the Pope's influence began to wane in the Renaissance, he would still be considered a big celebrity in our viewpoint.

Celebrity mystique is more about charisma than money. If you look at the celebrities of today, sometimes we admire them for their abilities and sometimes we admire them for their flamboyance. You could say that we might even envy their talent, money, and position.

There is a name for this idolization: Celebrity Worship Syndrome. It fits in the obsessive-compulsive disorders.

I have to admit that I have a twinge of warmth for one celebrity: Judge Judy. When she yells at offenders in her courtroom, I get a thrill. But, if I saw her on the street I wouldn't accost her. She has a life beyond the TV in my living room. And, I wouldn't even expect her to be my friend. How absurd.

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