Who’s your favorite celebrity, and why?

GUH. You might as well ask me who my favorite elf is since I have about as much knowledge of celebrities these days as I do of the employment records of Santa Claus. I am happy to say, I have never heard a Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga song and I’d quite like to keep it that way.

As I already wrote about in the post Pop Culture Deficient, apparently, I live in a cave. I don’t have cable or satellite radio, I rarely see Hollywood movies and I don’t read the People Magazine. I don’t know who half of your celebrities even are, and the ones I do know, hardly seem worth all the bother. Most celebrities don’t even do anything besides be rich like Paris Hilton or stupid like Paris Hilton or both like Paris Hilton. If all it takes to get famous these days is nothing, count me out. As Sir Francis Bacon aptly said, “Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.”

Besides, celebrities aren’t even people. They’re robots built by some international conglomerate somewhere with a shelf life of five years maximum. They are spat off of an assembly line as empty vessels, ready for mass consumption and fully programmable to hawk whatever product the international conglomerate is pushing that day. I don’t actually believe that, but if someone had irrefutable proof that that was true, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I mean, look at their hair and clothes. Real people would never wear stupid hair like that.

So, when you ask me who my favorite celebrity is, I decline to answer since most of them are unworthy of the spotlight. Most of them will never do anything beyond acting a fool on camera or making a sex video ten years from now. Most of them will fade out of the public eye as quickly as they came, only to be replaced by the newest model of worthless entertainers.

I prefer my celebrities to have a little substance. If a celebrity is going to draw my attention, they have to create something less ephemeral than another crappy pop song or romantic comedy. They have to create something that opens minds and possibilities. So, in order to not completely avoid the (insipid) question, if I had to choose a modern celebrity, i.e. one who isn’t already dead, I’d choose Stephen Hawking, because the man is a testament to human ability and theoretical physics beats pop music any day.