January 25, 2002
I imagine one of the perils of writing a weekly column is the temptation to cram a week’s worth of news and insight into your 1000-word space. That’s the only excuse I can think of for Daniel Henninger’s piece in today’s Opinion Journal, Talk Falls, Mariah Fired, America Gets Real. Hmm…what were the big non-war stories this week? The continuing Enron fallout, the collapse of Talk, Mariah Carey’s contract buyout….a few seemingly unrelated stories, perhaps a common theme of comeuppance….or maybe…THE LAST GASP OF THE CELEBRITY CULTURE!
Or it could mean that Tina Brown went to the well one time too many (People still has the highest ad revenue of any magazine, and the Oprah, and Martha Stewart magazines are doing very well), or that Enron finally ran out of shells, or any one of a thousand things. The piece reminds me of nothing as much as the myopic bleatings commonly heard on the 24-hour cable financial news networks: the Dow’s up three points! It’s boomtime! Wait, NASDAQ’s dropped five points! Batten down the hatches!
Henninger’s main point seems to be that the modern age of celebrity begin with Muhammad Ali, whose standards nobody since has been able to match. Or perhaps it’s that television created a new type of celebrity who wasn’t able to live up to the standards of the earlier movie stars and athletes. Or that since the bar for fame is now so low, the age of celebrity is dead. Or maybe something else; I can’t quite figure it out. Perhaps when the increasingly terrifying Joan Rivers is no longer allowed to roam free I might accept that we've come to the end of an age of celebrity, but not one second sooner.
Anyway, what really caught my eye about the piece was that besides the aforementioned Mariah and Tina, Henninger managed to squeeze in Muhammad Ali, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Will Smith, Russell Crowe, Josh Hartnett, Benicio del Toro, Madonna, Prince, Drew Barrymore, Tonya Harding, The Beatles, Elvis, Barbara Walters, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Jeffords, Emeril, J.Lo, Fergie, Dwight Yoakam, Howard Cosell, Prince Harry, Frank Sinatra's granddaughter, Anna Kournikova, Alberto Giacometti and, of course, Andy Warhol and his "world-famous for 15 minutes" remark. This impressive display certainly qualifies Henninger for some sort of Googlebait award.
Talk was run by a famous New York editor who was said to have an unerring feel for these things. So it must mean something that Talk tanked. It looks to me that what it means is the golden age of American celebrity is over at last. Or maybe it died some time ago and no one living in the caves noted above noticed. If we've learned anything from Enron it's that people who earn their daily bread by conjuring another fantasy before heading home--offshore shell companies, another Brad Pitt cover--also have a way of pretending that the fat lady couldn't possibly ever sing for them.
Or it could mean that Tina Brown went to the well one time too many (People still has the highest ad revenue of any magazine, and the Oprah, and Martha Stewart magazines are doing very well), or that Enron finally ran out of shells, or any one of a thousand things. The piece reminds me of nothing as much as the myopic bleatings commonly heard on the 24-hour cable financial news networks: the Dow’s up three points! It’s boomtime! Wait, NASDAQ’s dropped five points! Batten down the hatches!
Henninger’s main point seems to be that the modern age of celebrity begin with Muhammad Ali, whose standards nobody since has been able to match. Or perhaps it’s that television created a new type of celebrity who wasn’t able to live up to the standards of the earlier movie stars and athletes. Or that since the bar for fame is now so low, the age of celebrity is dead. Or maybe something else; I can’t quite figure it out. Perhaps when the increasingly terrifying Joan Rivers is no longer allowed to roam free I might accept that we've come to the end of an age of celebrity, but not one second sooner.
Anyway, what really caught my eye about the piece was that besides the aforementioned Mariah and Tina, Henninger managed to squeeze in Muhammad Ali, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Will Smith, Russell Crowe, Josh Hartnett, Benicio del Toro, Madonna, Prince, Drew Barrymore, Tonya Harding, The Beatles, Elvis, Barbara Walters, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Jeffords, Emeril, J.Lo, Fergie, Dwight Yoakam, Howard Cosell, Prince Harry, Frank Sinatra's granddaughter, Anna Kournikova, Alberto Giacometti and, of course, Andy Warhol and his "world-famous for 15 minutes" remark. This impressive display certainly qualifies Henninger for some sort of Googlebait award.
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