- The cult of celebrity is the black death de nos jours.
-
- It's a plague that eats away at the soul of our culture:
rewarding vapid mediocrity while distracting the mindless masses from the
awful pointlessness of their lives.
-
- Stuck in a dead-end job that robs you of your precious
years? Hey look, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are getting married. Going
to war over weapons of mass destruction that don't exist? Hey look, Britney
Spears kissed Madonna. Is your dying planet ruled by soul-less corporations?
Hey look, J-Lo and Ben Affleck aren't getting married.
-
- It's summed up for me by the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger
can be taken seriously as a politician purely on the basis that he's famous.
-
- On the internet the same rules apply, there are over
a million pages devoted to J "less talent than Miss Piggy's little
finger" Lo, and hardly any of them correctly identify her film Gigli
as a crime against humanity.
-
- But a Google search only throws up about 20 pages devoted
to AS Douglas.
-
- Twenty pages!
-
- Hmm, I was expecting that fact to provoke a bit more
outrage at the extent to which this hero is unsung. I owe AS Douglas a
personal debt of gratitude. His heirs made my tricky teenage years bearable.
As well as getting me through some grim times, they made sure my formative
years did not solely consist of pretending to read Kafka and Dostoevsky
in public, angst-riddenly drinking miserable home brew and writing miserable
bitter poems about the (legions of) girls who somehow managed to resist
my angst-ridden, pretentious, miserable charms.
-
- AS Douglas helped me get a job in journalism in a roundabout
way, by giving me an extra skill that gave me a competitive edge. Incidentally
he also fathered a multi-billion-dollar industry. The Cambridge student
did all this in 1952, when he wrote his PhD thesis on human-computer interaction.
-
- Still not impressed?
-
- He illustrated his thesis by writing a program that allowed
an operator to play noughts and crosses with a machine. In short, he invented
the first computer game - more than 50 years ago.
-
- Of course, the EDSAC system was slightly different from
the PlayStation2 or the X-Box. It didn't support online play, 3D graphics,
or indeed any games other than AS Douglasís Squares. Its display
was a cathode ray tube and it took up a whole room. (Play Squares at http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/%7Eedsac/)
-
- There's still very bitter disagreement over the title
of "father of computer games". Ralph Baer, who, in 1967, created
the first video game that could be played on a TV, had the idea in 1951.
In 1958, a US academic, William A Higinbotham, rigged up an oscilloscope
so that a dot could be bounced between two bars in a game called Tennis
for Two.
-
- Other technological pioneers fare better on the web,
even if they don't get the fame they deserve in the offline world.
-
- There are a couple of hundred thousand pages devoted
to Tim Berners-Lee - and Ted Nelson has about 15,000. While they are respected
in their fields, the average person in the street has no idea who these
innovators are and neither do most internet users. Most will, however,
know who J-Lo is.
-
- Of course, being a discerning scotsman.com user, you
know who Berners-Lee and Nelson are. I would never dream of insulting your
intelligence by telling you that in 1990 the former invented the world
wide web and the latter developed the concept of hypertext in the 1960s.
-
- Without Nelson the internet would not exist. Without
Berners-Lee only a few academics would use it. Without AS Douglas et al
computers would not be as massively popular as they are.
-
- Without Jennifer Lopez the world would never have had
to endure Gigli.
-
- Guess which one's a multi-millionaire.
-
- No wonder there are so many online computer games that
revolve around humiliating celebrities.
-
- - Stewart Kirkpatrick is the editor of Scotsman.com
-
- ©2003 Scotsman.com
-
- http://www.news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1116182003
-
-
-
- Comment
- From Heather Sheridan
- 10-9-3
-
- This is a brilliant article. Can we forget last summer's
revolting, deservedly short-lived ABC television series "Are You Hot?
The Search for America's Hottest People"? I work in television and
the ad for this series stopped me in my tracks, and nearly made me run
in the bathroom to vomit.
-
- On black screen, the words appear, closing in (I may
have the exact professions below wrong, but the spirit was the same):
-
- "He's a world-class violinist..."
- "She's an Olympic athlete..."
- "He has an I.Q. of 200..."
-
- Sound of record needle on vinyl.
- Onscreen, the words: "So what?"
-
- Announcer: "So what! Are they HOT? (beat) Are
YOU hot?"
-
- Title appears onscreen: ARE YOU HOT?
-
- Announcer (over images of men and women in thongs humiliating
themselves and looking like dejected, skinned cattle standing being graded
on gleaming soundstages in very cold studios): "Are You Hot? The Search
for America's Hottest People: coming this summer on ABC!"
-
- I literally did a double take at that television, stared
at it for maybe a full fifteen seconds after the spot was finished, then
felt my stomach heave and had to stand there recovering for a minute, actually
dizzy. I knew we had crossed a line.
-
- What bothers me about this commercial was not the trumpeting
of sexuality as king, here, but its explicit ridicule of achievement, intelligent
and hard work. That is what bothered me very much. Here in an age where
I nearly went bankrupt two years ago for trying to get an educational children's
series teaching music theory and how to read and listen to more than hip-hop
music on the air, a series providing unknowns 6 minutes of McFame for disrobing
and humiliating themselves on television shoots straight through the pitch
session to prime-time.
- We live in deranged and deeply black times. Some of
my ancestors were Hindu, and though I don't go to that kind of temple,
I have to admit the Kali Yuga seems to be upon us: ancient Indian sages
predicted in the upanishads that there would come a day near the end of
civilization when thieves would be pronounced kings, kings would be pronounced
thieves, women would discard modesty, culture would be turned upside-down,
and wisdom would be scorned as ignorance while ignorance, previously hissed
by mankind, would be crowned genius. Far from me to proclaim British author
David ("The Reptiles Are Among Us") Icke correct, but the more
I watch and the more I see, the more life begins to resemble some bizarre
science-fiction movie in which Things which are clearly Not Us, and who
hold humanity in contempt and wish to destroy us, have slouched into total
control of our media, our government and our civilization and are now fighting
with the gloves off. How else to explain such an alien-sounding, alien-acting,
alien-feeling age that has come upon us?
-
- The goals of Whatever This Is seem to be:
-
- 1. Ridicule marriage. Demean it. Turn it into a
joke.
-
- 2. Humiliate women. Make the world think women are
stupid, backstabbing, golddigging prostitutes. Women are not to be taken
seriously. Women are to be made naked then made fun of.
-
- 3. Make sport of Caucasian men. Caucasian men are
adorable, cute, and kind of stupid - a little like Golden Lab puppies.
Secretly they all wish to be gay. In time, they will be. Caucasian men
must be portrayed as slow, dopey and ignorant, easily fooled, and incapable
of intelligent thought, and especially informed action.
-
- 4. Black males are thugs but they are soo clever and
soo interesting. Black men who achieve, show intelligence or exhibit hard
work don't exist. The only black man who is interesting is one who talks
like his mouth is full of marbles about nonsense and nothing, who rhymes
and dresses like a daycare student, and who's waving a pistol. Now THAT'S
interesting in the black male world. Nothing else is.
-
- 5. Black females are fat, ugly and scary. The only
black female that isn't scary is one who is two-thirds Caucasian, one who
is overweight and soothing and says nice soothing things, or one that erupts
scatologisms like a gold-wearing parrot with Tourette's Syndrome - a "who
dat" here, a "don't you start" there, and "GIRL!!!!"
24 hours a day. THAT'S what exists in the black female world. Nothing
else does.
-
- 6. Gay is better than straight. Now, I don't personally
have a problem at all with the gay universe, but you have to ask why gay
people are being used as this sort of all-purpose Trojan Horse to mow down
heterosexuality, mow down heterosexual women, and mow down culture in general.
Used by whom? ... Why? And the irony is, most gay women and especially
gay men do not even realize they are being used, and by someone who is
not them.
-
- 7. Latin is better than not Latin, and Spanish is
"hotter" than English. Actress Jennifer Lopez is touted around
the media for having the Most Perfect Derriere on the planet; which is
odd, when any schoolboy knows African-American women have had her identical
buttock design for centuries. Why is it, when suddenly worn by a Latin,
notable and deserving reward? (And any Latins reading this and becoming
upset, save it: Eu sou Portuguesa.)
-
- 8. Liberals are the source of all evil in the world.
In fact, Americans are to now view this scourge named "Liberals"
the way Germans in 1930 were trained to see Jews. Don't think so? Take
any statement made about Liberals by Rush Limbaugh, court jester to the
king Dennis Miller, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Neal Boortz, et alias, remove
the word "liberal" and replace with "Jew" or "Jewish".
Insert chill.
-
- 9. America is to be cut in half and split down the
middle by any means necessary, whether this be by pitting Jews against
non-Jews, Christian Conservatives against Liberals of any religion, gays
against straights, straights against gays, men against women, women against
men, husbands against wives and wives against husbands, teens against parents
and vice versa, right versus left, left against right, Green against Democrat,
Democrat against Republican, talented versus "hot", and those
who know what is going on and why, against those who still refuse to see.
And most offensive of all,
-
- 10. Children are kinda sexy.
-
- Those are the 10 Enneagrams of The New Order of Whatever
We're Dealing With.
-
- America is being actively split and disunited. This
effort is deliberate. We need to wake up and see what is going on and
avoid the perpetrators' traps to finally discern clearly who they are and
what their agenda is. It's easy for Antisemites to claim it's the Jews,
but it isn't the Jews, because the Jews are being split down the middle
too, by the issue of Israel and Sharon's aggressive Likud Party. Eventually
unless they open their eyes to the split being perpetrated upon us and
them alike, they will as usual become the scapegoat victims of it. So
since it isn't the Jews, the question for all of us to ask is THEN WHO
IS IT?
-
- Who thinks making fun of women's is funny? Who is comfortable
with an image of men as stupid and illiterate?
-
- Clearly this is something neither female nor male; ridiculing
and disempowering both sexes is something that comforts whatever this is,
so it is neither male nor female.
-
- The gays?
- No, it is not the gays of America. My reason for insisting
this is that gays are being used as the Trojan Horse to do this. The horse
itself didn't break into fortresses; it was built and employed by Greeks
who wanted in. Who then are the real Greeks inside the anti-heterosexuality
bandwagon? Gays are being used and don't even realize. When the damage
is done, they will be among the first rounded for slaughter. It is this
unknown presence's historically-proven way of saying "We're done with
you now; thank you." It was seen during the Weimar Republic when
gays were used to grind down German civilization and prepare the way for
Hitler, who immediately then herded them and turned them to ash. How little
some learn.
-
- Who thinks black men are boys, micro-men, animals, savages
with weapons, and criminals straight out of the womb? To whom would it
be worth promoting rap and hip-hop culture for two exaggerated decades
to enflame mainstream hatred and draw back the bow tension for an inevitable
and probably bloody coming backlash? To whom would showing "tolerance"
for black male excesses be profitable, in order to provoke such a backlash?
Who would promote such a thing and destroy American civilization with
it, unless there is a prized payoff they are counting on?
-
- Who thinks black women are ugly and scary? Period?
No discussion?
-
- So now we know our nemesis is neither white male, white
female, black male nor black female. As stated above, we also know this
menace isn't homosexual. Nor, really, could it be called heterosexual.
It acts in a manner suggesting asexual; its scathing contempt for sexuality
and real penchant for using sexuality against humanity like software or
a tool strongly implies this may not be a human enemy, familiar with or
even cognizant of what sexuality is or what it feels like.
-
- It isn't Latino or Chicano, because like the gays, Latinos
are being used to divide a country obviously up for grabs. America's borders
lie open like a grocery store with no cash registers, no gates and no doors,
and Latin-Americans who paid the fees and filled out the forms to emigrate
legally are dumped the burden for this, having to face second looks, suspicious
stares, rude comments and open discrimination wherever they go, when they
paid the price! This is similar to Affirmative Action, where people of
color like myself who paid the price, worked hard, learned the rules, learned
the language and assimilated are doubted, distrusted and disliked because
the majority of people who look like us continue to rely on a free ride
while pissing the bus over with behavioral grafitti.
- So whoever our enemy is, is not Latino either.
-
- They aren't Liberal, they aren't Conservative; they use
both sides as tools. It is increasingly clear they view democracy with
contempt, and are attempting to drag the American voting process through
the same mud marriage was pulled a few months and years ago. So this is
a force that doesn't vote, has never heard of voting, likely grew up without
voting or even seeing voting, and is new to the world scene and merely
hates voting, in the same blind, compulsive way it hates heterosexuality
and hates marriage, and hates men, and hates women especially. Voting,
freedom, marriage - gay, straight - words like these mean nothing to what
we are dealing with. The only things it knows are contempt and hate, and
to divide and destroy.
-
- And its target is America, the way Germany was its target
in the early twentieth century.
-
- America it seems has become the Germany of the 21st century,
and the plan our common nemesis seems to harbor for us smells, from here,
the same: likely we will be divided and uprooted, and used as the host
nation for herding and executing some despised minorities (the usual suspects:
Jews, blacks, gays and the infirm), then starting a world conflict. The
world will be summoned to unite to stop us because of our formidable nuclear
arsenal, strong military and increasing aggression. United, the world
becomes the playground of whoever and whatever This Is, and ladies and
gentlemen, one-world government minus the one country that could have prevented
and forestalled it thus begins.
-
- The opening salvos are being fired across our common
bow. The thunder of those salvos says things like, "Look at Jennifer
and Ben." "Look at her ASS. God, just look at her luscious
ASS." "Hot is everything." "Don't think. Talent
and thinking are for losers." "Trust Bush." (Of course
trust Bush. Bush is one of the biggest Trojan Horses in history, virtually
re-writing America's software making our nation into The Reason The World
Must Have A One-World Government, The Thing That Must Be Destroyed So The
World Can Live In Harmony... New World Order... with America, the mighty
nation that could have stopped it, VANISHED: just as Daddy prophesied.)
-
- So, let me ask you, people: here's the most important
thing facing us right now -
-
- "Are you hot?"
-
- Heather Sheridan
|
