Celeb focus offers escape from realities

I know too much.

My brain, sucking into its vortex the profoundly significant and arcanely trivial, feels like a bulging, whirling blender whose top just might blow, spewing its disjointed contents to the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, against my will, consuming some of that precious space is awareness of hot celebrity couples like Brangelina, Vaugniston and TomKat and their romantic antics.

The increasing proliferation of faux-news, publicist-puffery celebrity tabloids and TV shows is unsettling; they glorify even banal societal parasites such as Paris Hilton. We can blame media outlets, but it’s hungry fans who create the audience for the breathless coverage and sordid details

Why the rapid growth of the celebrity industry? I have theories.

I was once a devoted hard news follower. But lately my mind simply can’t seem to wrap itself around every misery and atrocity happening in even obscure corners of the globe, as well as all the pressing issues facing our nation and region. I feel flagellated just opening the newspaper or turning on the news.

The human mind wasn’t meant to absorb so much in addition to life’s everyday burdens. Truth has become even more manipulated and slippery, continually eluding our grasp. We’re almost at a point of information saturation.

And no matter how much I know, I still find more questions than answers.

Such overload can result in angry, helpless feelings leading to apathy.

These days, I find myself gravitating to People at medical offices, instead of news magazines, perusing the unremarkable, obscenely wealthy “beautiful people” I don’t care about.

I’m not proud of this. But my coping elasticity in terms of bad news has been stretched so thin I sometimes wonder if it will snap back. Will I ever again eagerly devour Time from cover to cover?

Compared to the complexities of a combustible world, celebrity magazines feature manufactured soap operas populated with designated saints and villains “just like us,” only dressed in Prada and Jimmy Choo. Those who despise such pap may snicker, but we look, hostage to the crammed racks at store checkouts.

And who wouldn’t rather see Keira Knightly in a gorgeous gown than a bloody body in Gaza? Star vacuity is more amusing than Iranian nuclear threats.

Celebrity obsession may be an escape for numb souls overwhelmed with bad news; a way of coping with a world seemingly out of control. Couch-jumper Tom’s oddities are more fun than terrorism alerts. It’s easier to pity “poor Jen” (Jennifer Aniston) and avert our eyes from the anguishing daily body count from Iraq. We can blast James Frey and his million little lies into the nowhere zone while powerless over politicians’ shifting truths, explanations and alarming policies.

We need to obtain our own celebrity divorce from this curiously mesmerizing junk, possibly on grounds of cultural malnutrition and mental cruelty at checkout stands.

Celebrities du jour will disappear (excepting Joan Rivers – plastic is forever). But the world’s pressing needs aren’t going anywhere.

If ever we need to be attuned and engaged, it’s now.

Because, ironically, good can be reaped from bad news stories, which may inspire us to become agents of change, sowing seeds of mercy and grace through working for change and meeting countless needs, many in our own back yard.

Absorption with celebrities doesn’t inspire us to change anything.

The world is a more nuanced and better place than headlines reveal. Every day good people do great things, from finding disease cures to helping a neighbor. We just don’t hear about it, because the spotlight’s on Brad Pitt.

I may know too much. Or … maybe I don’t know enough.

I’m adding that thought to my blender.