Finding the Cloud in the Silver Lining

There aren't many disadvantages to being a celebrity.

Even as your earnings typically skyrocket, you suddenly find yourself besieged with offers. Developers want you in their exclusive properties. Car manufacturers want you in their cars. Designers want you in their clothes.

The list goes on and on and on. An avalanche of free luxury goods spilling into your lap while you earn more money than you ever have before is an experience I—for one—can't even begin to fathom.

It is life in an entirely different language.

But there is a down side, too. Namely that when you're a celebrity, well, you're a celebrity. People notice you. Even when you're not hawking your latest book/concert tour/movie.

Kathy Griffin makes a good case in point.

Acting on her puckish sense of humor, she posed with a likeness of a decapitated head. It just so happened that it belonged to our so-called president, which I think is entirely reasonable. It is merely a physical representation of what many of us have suspected for months—that Donald Trump has lost his.

How else to explain the mystifying decisions, defensive behavior and outright stupidity that have been the hallmark of this administration?

If I had posted that picture, no big deal. Just another libtard spouting his impotent rage over the results of the last election.

But I'm not famous. Well, not yet, anyway.

Kathy Griffin is. She's on TV. She does all sorts of stuff. People know her name. And even if they don't, they recognize her face. That's because she's a celebrity.

So when she poses with a fake head of the sitting president, it gets noticed. It's a big deal. And the torrent of outrage from Republicants has been, if not interesting, certainly amusing.

Conveniently forgetting the abuse they heaped on the Obamas during their eight-years in the White House, they are swollen with righteous indignation. They cry it's a disgrace to the office and shows a shocking lack of respect.

I would counter it's no greater a disgrace to the office than Donald himself, and offers a degree of respect equal to that Trump routinely shows for anyone who isn't white and wealthy.

Rock on, Kathy. And stop apologizing!

Celebrity and Teachable Moments

Too often, I give in to a nature both skeptical and cynical. So when I read that Paris Hilton, a wealthy young woman who doesn’t have to do anything for anyone, was arrested for cocaine possession in Las Vegas, I was suffused with relief.

Not because she had been arrested. Far from it. What restored my faith in humanity was the fact that the cocaine wasn’t hers—she was merely keeping it for a friend.

In a world both distant and uncaring, here is someone willing to risk social embarrassment, legal problems and even prison for a troubled friend.

And it’s not just her. Celebrities of every stripe regularly place themselves in harm’s way by stowing all manner of illegal substances, stolen property and firearms for their friends.

The same celebrities whose cellulite and marital woes we mock and snicker at show us time and time again the true meaning of selflessness. Of deep and unwavering friendship.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself: when was the last time I risked jail time for a friend?

The answer is you haven't. Shame on us.

Michael Jackson

I wasn’t a fan, really. Apart from pulling over on the Tri-State tollway one night after some underage drinking to dance to “Billie Jean”, I hadn’t had many interactions with his music. But Michael Jackson was unavoidable.

He was a complicated soul. His was a life made difficult by fame and wealth. Following in the sad tradition of pop stars like Elvis Presley and Brian Wilson, Jackson was surrounded by parasites that had his earnings potential, and not his well-being, at heart.

In that peculiar kind of warpage that fame and wealth brings, Jackson’s delusions ruled. Tell the mad king no and you were likely out of what was a very cushy and very well-paying job.

As with Elvis, no one cared enough about the human being to rock the boat. Tip the apple cart. No one organized an intervention. No one informed Jackson we’re not going along with this. Individual job security and access to the star prevailed.

Warren Zevon had Jackson Browne. Michael Jackson had pharmacists.

Jackson had his faults, to be sure. But I wonder how many of his problems never would have materialized had Thriller not sold a hundred bazillion copies, elevating him to something just this side of saint-slash-miracle-worker.

There was no way it could be sustained. There was nowhere to go but down. Gravity, like rust, never sleeps.

Add to that the means to indulge a denial of the very genetic connection he shared with his father and the exit from reality was complete. From there, it was only a question which would run out first: his money or his need to distance.

We were different, he and I. Michael Jackson never heard no. It often seems that I hear little else. Yet Michael was the ultimate square peg. A square peg perhaps fatally misunderstood. A square peg we felt free to cast aspersions on and to judge.

I don’t believe he ever molested a child. He struck me as mostly uninterested in sex. An eccentric but gentle man who only wanted a loving, peaceful world free of the turmoil his was full of. It was a beautiful and noble delusion.