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, October 2, 2009

Disgraced political figure Dick Morris

Included here because of his former role as a top political adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dick Morris suddenly dropped out as Bill Clinton's campaign manager for reelection in 1996 after news reports appeared revealing Morris' "affair" with a prostitute, Sherry Rowlands.

According to Rowlands, Morris especially liked toe-sucking. She also revealed that he had let her a Clinton speech prior to its delivery.

Lord knows, President Clinton had enough marital infidelity troubles of his own, and Morris, a further embarrassment, had to go.

Naturally, Morris remained in the political consulting business and began to specialize in the campaigns of other nations.

Morris' infidelity doesn't seem to have harmed his career all that much. In America, what do we do with someone like him? Why, we turn him into a New York Post columnist and a Fox commentator, of course. And media convergence being what it is, he also started his own political Web site, Vote.com and has published a number of books, some of them critical of the Clintons.

His prediction that the presidential election of 2008 would be between Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice proved wrong.

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