Vapor

America really is in love with celebrity and in-your-face crudeness. Witness our Commander in Chief. I have trouble celebrating this.

Larger than life people—by virtue of appearing on a TV or movie screen— get eulogized for several news cycles, or revered as if they were the Pope, somebody who dealt with real life, who improved the lot of humankind beyond an ability to entertain or allow us to momentarily escape our perceived mundane existence; who created an advancement in medicine, or invented something that made life better and safer and easier, or wrote or spoke words born of life experience and acquired wisdom that inspire us.

Celebrity is subjective, shallow, unsubstantive, fleeting, ego-feeding vanity.

Still, better to be rich and famous, it seems, than to have left one’s mark as an innovator or inventor or peace-seeker or, more simply, a thoughtful, decent human being– most of whom spend their lives flying under the radar, away from the limelight.