Dying for Publicity

Any publicity is good publicity, particularly for an aging teen idol whose name no one recognizes and whose career no one can recall. However, I’m not so sure that the 30-somethings who are dying from drug overdoses realize that once they over-dose, they will not be around to enjoy the sudden spate of media attention.

No one can handle the unsupervised use of drugs: no one, but most especially a person who is addicted to that kind of drug. It is a matter of time before the drug leads to an over-dose, the majority of which are fatal. Michael Jackson used drugs to cope with his life physically, mentally, and emotionally. Because he had walked that line for so many years, he probably thought that he would be the drug-dose death exception, but instead he became yet another drug-dose statistic. Tragically, he is no longer around to enjoy the resurgence of his career, as well as the financial benefits of his death for his children’s future. Death is the ultimate price to pay for trying to cheat it.

A poem dedicated To an Athlete Dying Young (A.E. Housman) memorializes the loss of life far too soon for an athlete:

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay, 10
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose

The poet’s point is that dying young avoids dealing with the issues of living too long: the acclaim comes at a young age (early though the laurel grows), but it dies too soon (it withers quicker than the rose). In today’s society, we expect a childhood career to become a lifetime of work, but that does not happen more often than it is accomplished.

Today’s stars are far more often tomorrow’s has-beens. Getting through the intervening years is seldom accomplished by any other than the most gifted, the most talented, the most determined media stars. Donnie and Marie are huge today, as they were during the younger years, but even they had to weather the “forgotten years,” when it was, “Oh, yeah. Weren’t they TV stars back in the day?” To push past the loss of brand recognition and re-establish a career is the exception, not the rule, because there are far more new faces standing in line waiting for their chance to hit the big time – and willing to do so at beginning wages, rather than superstar megabucks. For any star who thinks s/he is one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable, just look at Idol, where a new face takes the center stage every year, while last year’s winner becomes a distant memory.

Or recall Jon Gosselin, who thought he was going to be at the top of the food chain because he believed his own hype. His wife and children were the best part of his life, but he was too near-sighted to see that. He lived the publicity-hounded life that he thought would make him a star, but he became the butt of his own paparazzi posse. As quickly as he took himself to the top, he bottomed out, and everything he thought he wanted is gone. When we believe our own hype, it hurts even more to realize that no one else does.

Far too many of us live our lives at the highest income bracket of which we are capable, forgetting that old adage to save for a rainy day. When we are young, we are especially impressionable, particularly when we are paid huge amounts of money and can afford to live however we want to live. The cast of Jersey Shore is a good example of this syndrome: they have each created a new persona, a self that is a media star now, but what happens when next year’s cast replaces this year’s cast? How long can this group of young people milk the people’s gullibility and acceptance of their lifestyle, their language, and their portrayal of stereotypes of what many others want to outgrow? Once this cast is living their new lifestyle, they have to maintain it, and where is the money going to come from even a year from now, much less five years down the road? They are living a niche they have created, by definition a small, restricted space, not a career.

What’s cutting edge technology today is passé tomorrow as the new quickly becomes the old and we all go looking for another new.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15
After earth has stopped the ears