Our favorite pie-charted newspaper, USA Today, brings to our attention a disease — uh, phenomenon – we thought only we suffered from: A debilitating addiction to celebrity gossip. Author Jake Halpern covers the addiction with a disturbing intensity in his new book Fame Junkies, which likens your daily blog reading to a less destructive verzh of crack — likely stemming from Paris Hilton‘s ass goiter. But it is the statistics we find most disturbing:
- The teens who regularly watch certain celebrity-oriented TV shows were more likely than others to believe that they themselves will be famous someday.
What was that? Sorry, our stage moms are on speaker… Headshots appointment moved to 3, but we have a Triaminic audition at 3:30… (“cough, cough… Mommy, our froat huwts.” Perfect line read, thank you.) Ah yes, statistics! Here’s another, far more troubling fact:
- Given a choice of becoming the CEO of a major corporation, the president of Yale or Harvard, a Navy SEAL, a U.S. senator or “the personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star,” almost half of the girls — 43.4% — chose the assistant role.
Whoa, whoa, whoa… you’re telling us that American teenagers turned down the fake opportunity to rule the Harvard roost or embezzle company cash in order to pick up someone’s dry cleaning? A personal assistant, for f***’s sake?! Never before, and we say this with complete seriousness, have we been more turned off by the future of this country than at this very moment. Sh*t, at least aim for overbearing, possibly molesty, spotlight hungry stage Dad!
