Trust is a weird thing.

*Note, the topic is not relevent. It's only based on the song that I'm listening to right now.




Kids scare the bejesus out of me. Well, that came out wrong, so let me enunciate: Kids piss me off, it's the concept of kids scares me.
The commitment of having to look after something for the rest of their life years terrifies me to no end (even after 18 years, there are no gurantees that the child will leave. Take me for instance.). Then there's the whole facet of actually looking after the child, who after your years of parenting may not even turn into a productive member of society (again, look at me...).
Even then, all this would depend on my rather lax ability at finding someone who'd actually want to have a kid with me, and even then there's a better than half chance that I'm gunna be one long road to bozo divorcee town (which is still preferential to mid life crisis esplanade. But only just.)


In fact, I can only find one positive to having a kid: The incredible sense of superiority you get out of saying how inept other people are at raising their children. Oh, it must be sweet feeling to admonish someone else' sparenting style, feeding habits or crude methods of punishment.


Thing is, maybe you don't even need kids to get this sense of superiority. All you need to do is open an issue of New Weekly/Any other Low Culture Celebrity magazine. Maybe it's me again, but is there an indelible link between the medias (and our own treatment) of celebrities and the way that parents treat their seemingly inept peers? Are celebrities assuming a new role in our culture? One where they're viewed with ineptitude rather than admiration?



You could call it Tall Poppy syndrome, but you'd be wrong. Why? Because:


a)Tall Poppy Syndrome is class based. i.e: People looking down on other classes.


b) It's not a lack of respect being shown toward celebrities. If anything it's excessive respect being shown to them, in the form of reporting on totally benign and pointless things***. We still want to be informed of what celebrities do, it's just want the image to be skewed towards a different angle. We're resigned to the fact that they're famous, it's just we're seeing them in a new light.


c)Tall Poppy syndrome would say that these people, and the concept of putting them on a pedatsool are stupid. Instead, yeah, we're saying that they may be stupid, but's wonderfully entertaining.



The best example of this new trend manages to use three of the worst examples of humanity in recent history: The recent report on the Britney Spears/Dr Phil situation by Today Tonight. Let's for a minute put aside that Today Tonight is the most lambasted journalistic device in Australia (Haha, those zany Chaser guys!) and that the whole Dr Phil situation is one of the most fucking insane instances of shameless publicity since the Dreyfus Affair*.

The whole story was the personification (well, Teleifcation) of the media in general (and by proxy our) treatment of Britney Spears over the last couple years: Feigned sympathy and thinly veiled distain.In essence, the only thing more annoying than the constant reporting on Britney was the way in the reports where conducted, and in turn the way that we perceive her. We've become the parents that shit on the parenting skills of other parents because we feel it's justified. Admiration has been forced aside by, dare I say it, laughter.

Riddle me this: When was the last that anything Britney Spears did was portrayed in a positive manner? Or, to be more specific, when was the last you heard someone comment on Britney without there being a lethal dose of negative vitriol? Or failing that, feigned apthy?
Does anyone even admire Britney Spears anymore? Is she notable for just being someone to make fun of? Does someone, say 10 years younger than me know why she is being reported on so much? Or why she is famous?


Spears is only the most recently visible, and easily recognizable example of this trend. Negative reporting on celebrities seem to be as endemic as negative behavior by said celebrities. Whilst mainstream articles are almost uniformly negative, others outlets such as Dolly seem to be torn between loving and hating Paris Hilton**, between including a copious of picture, then implying that her history of sexual partners is less than stellar.


Now, I'm not for one second decrying the media's reliance on celebrities for news (hell, I probably admire thesuperficial more than anyone should). What I'm interested in the way that the message has shifted. It's now longer expected that celebrities are someone to be just reported on and admired. Now we need to almost constantly laugh at them, we have to admonish them for screwing up their surreal lives to an unprecedented degree. It feels like we're moving to a paradigm (!ARGH!) where celebrities are people who ought to be disliked, not admired for their success, or at least for what they are doing whilst successful.
Maybe it's because we're just picking the wrong people to star in movies, maybe we love controversy or maybe we're turning into a misanthropic bunch of assholes.





*There's that History degree paying for itself Ma!


**I cannot stress enough the fact that I do not actually buy Dolly. I may casually read my Brother's Girlfriends copy, but there is no law against that!


***Okay, so pictures of Hayden Pantetterie shopping for clothes is never pointless. But you get my drift right?