This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28046810. It is an article on how ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer now has his own column in a magazine.
I am so sick of people in power, people in public places, doing things that mere mortals get blasted for, like lying and cheating to an entire population: and instead of going someplace quiet to think about the error of their ways with all the misfortune that goes along with that, they instead get more opportunity foisted on them, as in this case with (gasp) a column in a magazine?
To be completely transparent I will tell you I would love a column. I would love very much to have just a tiny fraction of the literary limelight that seems to have shifted onto ex-Gov.Spitzer. Or how about the book deal that his prostitute was offered? I'd love a deal like that--but I don't want to sleep with a married politician to get it.
I feel awful for his family, I feel awful for anybody involved in his sordid drama, but I also feel bad for all of us out here who are great writers who don't get offered a job. Where's our big break?
So here's my next query: will I actually read Spitzer's column? I mean, his moral ability has already proven a miserable failure, but what about his mental insight into the economy. He has been in government for a long time, he has experience, and the reality is that he may (gasp) actually have some things to say that we may all learn from.
But do I want to learn from him? I am not sure. I would then be feeding into that thing which makes me even crazier than Spitzer's new column: the fact that celebrities, even fallen politicians-turned-writers, get shots at advancement in this life that this budding writer would drool for, and in fact is drooling about right now.
But I have never been a prostitute. And I have never thrown the public's trust, nor my political career, away for high-priced sex. And I never will.
I will get my big writing break the old fashioned way: I will earn it.
I wonder how many columns Eliot Spitzer will have written by then?
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Lissa Stewart
Lea Lane
Kerry Lauerman
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Comments
I too have a certain resentment toward any so-called celebrity who manages to pen a book and is then assured of immediate publication and forthcoming sales---simply because they tend to get their photograhps and names publicized in People Magazine, and appear occasionally on the Oprah Winfrey Show or David Letterman's or Jay Leno's show.
Ann, you know as well as I do, that a Cult of Celebrity is very much alive and full of many many adherents in the United States as well as just about any other country around the world that you would care to name. Who doesn't want fame & fortune? . . . But all of us unpublished authors look at this business, and all we can do is shake our heads in puzzlement and disgust. Then we can turn to Open Salon and unfurl some well-thought-out complaints about the cult-status of various Celebreties. At least in South America, if you happen to be a writer, the population in general treats you with more respect than a mere high-school teacher or college professor who has just barely published enough scholarly articles to be seriously considered for tenure.
Don
possibly excepting your mother, nobody gives a damn about your warm insightful humanity. spitzer has made himself a commodity, a 'celebrity'. there's a big cut in pay and status in his case, but he can be sold.
you, and you, can't. first celebrity, then the displaying of warm insightful humanity.
how to get that first dollop of celebrity? it's tough, like that first credit reference. i won't lie to you, i wouldn't tell you until i used the method myself. unlike spitzer, any celebrity bar pedophilia conviction would be a step up, for me.
but a quick survey of 'people' covers suggests the following: hire a pretty hooker, do it on the overpass of a busy highway causing a pileup, make sure you have good photo coverage, and mention the loud humming in the air, widespread electrical failures, and strange objects in the sky.
i can give you this possible introduction to celebrity because i'm too old to use it myself. good luck!