The Most Meaningless Word in the World: Celebrity

To be a celebrity used to mean something. A certain status, a certain level of success, a little cache if you please. Celebrity meant you were a star, a somebody and recognizable figure that people wanted to see.

The word as lost all it's meaning though, and there is no better proof of that than "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!"


When the most "celebrity" contestants of your celebrity contestants are John Salley and Torrie Wilson, you've got issues and you can consider the word itself dead and buried. Let's look at the rest of the cast:

Sanjaya Malakar
Lou Diamond Phillips
Stephen Baldwin
Daniel Baldwin
Janice Dickinson
Frangela
Patricia Blagojevich
Holly Montag

The biggest celebrities that were on the show were that super-douche Spencer Pratt and his wife Heidi, but the jungle was too much for them, so they split. In their place, Heidi's sister Holly, someone I've never heard of in my life.

Same goes for Patricia Blagojevich. How does your husband trying to sell President Barack Obama's Illinois Senate seat make you a celebrity? Just because you're standing there when all the cameras are going off doesn't mean people are taking your picture. Sorry sweetie, you're background filler.

And don't even get me started on washed up actors that I used to enjoy. Stephen Baldwin was great in Threesome and The Usual Suspects, while Lou Diamond Phillips will always be Ritchie Valens to me, but neither has been relevant for years, not to mention Daniel Baldwin.

While I clearly wasn't around for them, I miss the old days, when movie stars were movie stars and celebrities actually did something to earn their place on pedestals and magazine covers. Now, all you've got to do is be a former supermodel or the longest lasting bad contestant in American Idol history and poof you're a celebrity.

Then again, you get the same treatment if you pop out eight kids too, whether they're all at once or two followed by six.

Celebrity (noun): anyone who has ever had 15 minutes of fame and been on the glossy pages of InTouch, Us Weekly or OK! Magazine. Talent not required.

Shoot me now ...