Thoughts on Celebrity Mania

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Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
Gore Vidal

I’m an actor. I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don’t ask a truck driver about his job.
James Gandolfini

The celebrity monuments of our age have grown so huge that they dwarf the aspirations of ordinary people, who are asked to yield their dreams to the gods: To flash their favourite singer’s corporate logo at concerts, to pour open their lives (and data) on Facebook, to adopt Apple as a lifestyle. We know our stars aren’t inviting us to think we can be just like them. Their success is based on leaving the rest of us behind.
George Packer

The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the ‘genius’ of the personage, the greater the profit.
George Grosz

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
Walter Winchell

With publicity comes humiliation.
Tama Janowitz

If one surveys this culture of Monica Lewinsky and OJ Simpson and constant gossip and salaciousness, and one tries to trace the roots, you find yourself at Walter Winchell. He was not only present at the creation of this modern journalism but in many respects he was the creation.
Neal Gabler

The glory of gossip these days is that there are so many celebrities and such quick-access media that the scandal stories blow up huge and all-encompassing, then are replaced by the next one three days later.
Michael Musto