Starbucks Quote #192

What is a celebrity? Until a few years ago, I thought I knew. Babe Ruth was a celebrity, as was Sergeant York, John Wayne, Martin Luther King, Charles Lindbergh, Michael Jordan, Tom Landry, Sam Walton, Lincoln, Hemingway, Billy Graham, Johnny Cash, Luciano Pavarotti, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Sam Houston, and Robert E. Lee--and the list could go on and on. When it comes to names like, Van Gogh, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Rembrandt, Eisenhower, Bogart and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, we don’t even need first names.

It seems that a new definition of "celebrity" has emerged from somewhere, perhaps out of some garbage truck. According to most dictionaries, celebrity refers to someone famous, and famous means "well known." Famous is a first cousin to "family," folks with whom we are familiar. I guess this means that fame has mutated. I know why the names listed above are familiar, but I am not quite sure how nor why we have become familiar with our current crop of celebrities. I do have my suspicions.

We are familiar with the listed names because of their accomplishments. The new breed–mutants of historical celebrities–has managed to accomplish the gaining of our attention by getting our attention. That is about all they have accomplished, but for those who find nothing else to transcend their own barren existence, this may be enough. But where does this lead?

Quote #192 on a Starbucks cup gives us the answer. According to Donna Phillips of Claremont, California:

Many people lack a spiritual belief system and fill that void with obsessions about celebrities. The celebrities are raised to the rank of gods, and these earthly gods will always fail the expectations the masses have set for them. The cycle runs thusly: adoration turns to obsession, obsession turns to disappointment, and from disappointment it is just a short emotional jump to contempt.

Long ago, through the Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, God says much the same, but much pointedly: ". . . my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."