My thoughts on 'star quality':

Amused though I am at the suggestion that people can be universally led by something so simple as an unknown quantity in some random individual's manner, I personally do not believe in such a thing.

These people we call stars are great because we choose to make them so, not because of some 'pied piper' effect which somehow the overwhelming majority of the population are incapable of reproducing themselves.

Princess Diana? Pah. I despised her with every fabric of my being. Her relentless PR machine little more than an exercise in swaying public opinion in her favour and against her husband. She used charity work as a weapon to help her end her marriage, and that is possibly the most contemptible act conceivable. Sure, some good came of it, but good things done for the wrong reasons are dangerous.

No doubt some of you will be tempted to refute my view of Her Deceased Majesty, the Queen of Hearts, but I ask that you do not. I will not be moved, and those of you who don't know this by now, probably deserve the literal battering I'll be sorely tempted to deliver against any attempt.

There are always examples of this. All celebrities are loved by some, liked by others, ignored by yet more and by still more thoroughly loathed. How then, can any quality these individuals possess command the respect or otherwise that they have? The answer is simple, they cannot. We give them their fame, their power and influence. We supply them with the money we then envy endlessly.

We crave the pictures of them standing by the bedside of ill children we can't help, waving emphatically at cameras from ski slopes we can't afford to visit, or crumpling on the pavement outside nightclubs we can't get into.

We crave it, we ignore it, or we detest it. We do not universally treat it in any particular manner. People forget that we are, or at least are supposed to be, individuals. We cannot be judged in unison.

I've no doubt that my confession here will enrage some, confuse others and be ignored by everyone else. I'm not here to change your lives. Such power is beyond me. Nor am I hoping that some more sagacious character than myself can step forth and guide me to a better truth. I'm merely expressing an opinion, something to which I am entitled.

1 message(s) of denial

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AlmostNormal - 2004-12-09 15:15:33

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's so good to know that someone else doesn't think that Di is sitting at the right hand of the lord giving suggestions on how to do it better. I never understood what the hullabaloo was about and whenever I asked was given harsh glares and cries of, "How could you not love her?" I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now. Thanks for the great entry!

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