About this Blog

"In the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes." So said the bleached-out, late lamented artist Andy Warhol. Having lived and worked in New York City, Warhol came to fully grasp the hold celebrity has on us. In this very famous sentence, he meant to point out that in a culture fixated on fame, many people will suddenly flash brightly onto the public screen, then--poof--will just as quickly disappear from public view--like shooting stars. Other individuals derive their celebrity from one stellar accomplishment (one hit song, one iconic role, etc.) that they never again match.

This blog is devoted to the one part of our celebrity culture that no one has written much about: temporary/one-shot celebrities.

The pace of modern life has quickened, and now we hear people speaking of someone's 15 seconds of fame. These "celebrities with a lower-case c" who will appear in this blog sometimes come to us from the world of entertainment, sometimes from the world of news. All are fascinating.

The need of our communications media for a continual stream of new material assures that we will have no end of colorful people who go quickly, where celebrity is concerned, from zero to hero (or villain) and back to zero. Now you see 'em, now you don't. What a crazy world, eh?

Temporary celebrities coming from the world of entertainment include one-hit recording artists; TV and movie icons who, although they might have had a great many accomplishments in their career, are remembered for one big role; standouts of reality TV; sports figures remembered for one remarkable accomplishment; and people whose celebrity came from one big role in a commercial or print ad.

News-based temporary celebrities come in many forms: mass/serial killers, other murderers of special note, sex-crime offenders, disgraced figures of government/military/business/media/religion, spies/traitors, hoaxers, femmes/hommes fatale, heroes, whistle blowers, inventors/innovators, and victims.

Celebrity Blogsburg will consider each category in turn.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Femme fatale Mirthala Salinas

Many a pretty young woman gives in to the lure of the powerful man, especially if he is good looking too. Such appears to have been the case with Los Angeles television reorter/anchor Mirthala Salinas, who in 2007 lost her job at Spanish-language channel KVEA-TV for having an affair with the city's mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, while also covering him as a news source.

Her initial punishment was a 2-month suspension, but at the end off that time, the station announced that she would not be back. Salinas returned to the air in 2008 as a host of a magazine-format show on W Radio 690 in Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa, a charming, charismatic young man with ties to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, has enjoyed a stellar career, one slowed little by his fondness for the ladies. His last name at birth was Villar, but when he married Corina Raigosa in 1987, he adopted a merged version of their last names.

His public reputation took at least a temporary hit in 2007 when his affair with the lovely Miss Salinas came to light because at the time, his wife was receiving treatments for cancer.

He has survived politically, however, in the same way President Bill Clinton did following the Lewinsky affair. So long as a powerful political leader's general policies are on the side of the angels, most Americans don't really demand that he act much like one. (The rest of us would be well advised not to "try this at home.")

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