american idol

Okay, so admittedly, the first episode of American Idol was pretty amusing and entertaining, but how many season's into it are we now? I mean eight seasons of finding the next American superstar just isn't enough. On top of that there's all the other talent contests on primetime TV. Honestly, with all the Michael Jordans, Angelina Jolies, and Brad Pitts to idolize, you'd think we'd have our heads filled to exploding with fantasies about them. It just made me think (and thinking is good because hero worship reveals a lack of intellectual examination) that we idolize and hero-ize them because there's so much we don't know about them. Well that was obvious. But think about it, why do we not idolize our friends or our family in the same way we idolize celebrities. We even go as far as idolizing fictional characters like Superman, Batman, or Gil Grissom and the rest of the CSI team (guilty as charged). But why? Because there's so much mystery to them, so much background about them that we don't know. It's like putting candy in front of a child and telling him not to eat it. These people are dangled in front of our noses and we're dared not to try to know them, to dig into their past, into their interests, their love lives. This aura of mystery surrounding these people is what gets to us eventually because by nature, human beings need connection. We form or seek to form connections with people, to get to know who they are an in turn letting them know who we are. I think it's this drive that causes us to be fascinated with celebrity figures and superstars because we fantasize about knowing them, connecting with them. So what's the moral of this rant? I don't know, just an intellectual investigation of idol worship. It's one of those phoenomenons that happen and no one wonders why it happens. Well, I wondered why.

"If man could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate."
Elbert Hubbard