You're not friends with celebrities.

Here is my public service announcement for the day:

You are not friends with celebrities. You don't know them personally. What they do on a daily basis, how they behave in their personal lives, their individual choices--these have no affect on you.

I want everyone to really think about this one. Cogitate on it with me. Because I'm getting more than a little confused by the number of people who seem personally wounded by things done by people they have never met.

Let's take an example. If my friend Glenda (she's fictional, so as to protect the innocent) was dating my friend Vincent (also fictional), and Vincent was cheating on Glenda with every woman with a nose that he could get his hands on--I might be understandably perturbed. Because I know both Glenda and Vincent. I consider them friends. I thought I understood Vincent, and trusted him to carefully guard the heart of my dear friend Glenda--but instead he cavalierly stomped all over it. I'm hurting for Glenda, I'm incensed on her behalf, and I'm also upset that I was duped into believing that Vincent was an honorable guy (the only kind I really like to be friends with, the shady ones are annoying). Vincent, Glenda, and I have shared pizzas, wandered the mall, spent countless hours talking and bonding over our mutual distrust of all things related to Fox news. But suddenly, that's ruined, and it's unpleasant (possibly for the best really, because I sound like quite the annoying third wheel).

ON THE OTHER HAND. If Tiger Woods is married to his wife (whose name I actually don't know and I'm not going to bother to look it up because that will only contribute to the madness that is this entire phenomenon), and he ends up cheating on her with lots of women (again, I don't know the specifics and I'm not going to find them out)--I might be...completely and totally UNAFFECTED. My life will not change a lick if Tiger dies his hair purple, if his wife runs over all his golf clubs with an orange golf cart that he bought her for their 5th anniversary, or if they get divorced. I don't care. And neither should you. Unless Tiger and Tiger's wife (what is her name?!) are your Vincent and Glenda, I have no earthly clue why this should make you feel anything other than a passing, "Oh dear, well isn't that too bad." Because on a basic human level, it is too bad. It's a bummer that we do bad things to each other. But unless you're planning to go on a crusade to eliminate marital infidelity (and I do think there are other crusades you should go on first), I'm not sure why you're so disturbed, why you're distressed that Tiger Woods isn't the person you thought he was--you didn't know him anyway.

If everyone's rancor was due to the actual fact of the infidelity, then every unfaithful spouse would be getting a lot more news coverage. News stations would be pulling divorce records and tracking down the parties involved to ask them how they could possibly have done this to all of us, and asking for public apologies. But obviously that's not happening, and it's because we don't care so much about what celebrities are doing....we care about the fact that they're doing anything at all where we can see them. And it's especially thrilling if we can get them to rehash it for us publicly, and maybe tearfully apologize. Because standing at that podium, with all those microphones, it seems like they're talking directly to us.

This point is especially obvious when you consider that we are now in the business of creating our own celebrities whose lives we can know more about than we know about our friends. All the ridiculous reality shows on television--where we follow entirely random people around in their daily lives, people who have done nothing to gain celebrity other than be in the appropriate place at the appropriate time and get "cast" in their own lives--these just feed our belief that people on television, in movies, and in the media should have lives that are open books. And somehow, we've come to think that simply knowing details about a person's life means we know that person and thereby have rights to some sort of opinion on everything they do. Which is, of course, patently absurd.

So I beg you to keep the following in mind:

1) You do not know Tiger Woods and the fact that he cheated on his wife has nothing to do with you and, I daresay, has not had any detrimental affect on you whatsoever.

2) Ryan Seacrest and the girl on American Idol this season who can actually sing--yeah, you don't know them either and whatever random drama was going on between them was very likely staged so that people like you would talk about it at work for days on end. It's annoying and you should stop. Because whether Ryan Seacrest is actually mean to the contestants is pretty irrelevant to your life.

3) I can't think of any other ridiculous celebrity stories, because I haven't seen E!, MTV, or VH1 since I graduated from college. And the only news I can stomach is NPR, and they're pretty light on the celebrity news.

4) Oh! I LOVE my office for inspiration. Someone just started discussing Sandra Bullock and where she's going to file for divorce. It doesn't matter since she's not (I'm fairly certain) divorcing anyone in my office.

Save your righteous indignation for when people you know do crappy things. It'll seem more authentic. And that way, Vincent will really get the tongue lashing that's coming to him...poor Glenda doesn't have the heart to do it herself in her state.



N.B. I'd like my readers (all 2 of you) to know that the "you"s in this post are the universal you and not directed at any of you in particular. Also, if you actually do know a celebrity, you can disregard. Kthanks.