{"id":25454,"date":"2014-12-22T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T05:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25454"},"modified":"2014-12-13T09:44:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T14:44:20","slug":"qotd-celebrity-gossip-as-a-common-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/qotd-celebrity-gossip-as-a-common-good\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Celebrity gossip as a common good"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Celebrity gossip is psychologically healthy.<\/p>\n<p>It provides an outlet, a useful sublimation, of our self-destructive subconscious compulsion to lean over the back fence and cluck (or tweet) about the godawful things our relatives, friends, and neighbors do.<\/p>\n<p>Celebrities are not our family. Although there are so many celebrities that we are probably related to some. But they\u2019re not the niece looking daggers at us across the Thanksgiving turkey because of what we said to Uncle Bill about her hookup with that McDermott idiot. They\u2019re not the daughter locked in her bedroom running up our Visa card bill with online shopping for new makeup, clothes, and other mall finds.<\/p>\n<p>Celebrities are not our friends. They don\u2019t borrow our money or power tools. They don\u2019t forget it\u2019s their turn to carpool the kids to junior high. They don\u2019t come over when we\u2019re busy watching <em>The View<\/em> and litter the kitchen table with used Kleenex, pouring their hearts out about their (remarkably frequent) divorces. They don\u2019t get caught \u2014 unless Dean McDermott is late to the set for his televised therapy session on <em>True Tori<\/em> \u2014 necking with our spouses in the coat closet at our cocktail parties.<\/p>\n<p>P.J. O&#8217;Rourke, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/04\/welcome-to-show-biz-sharia-law.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Welcome to Showbiz Sharia Law: No talent? Kind of dim-witted? No shame? Perfect. The celebrity industry needs you \u2014 just don\u2019t ever veil your face&#8221;, <em>The Daily Beast<\/em><\/a>, 2014-05-04<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Celebrity gossip is psychologically healthy. It provides an outlet, a useful sublimation, of our self-destructive subconscious compulsion to lean over the back fence and cluck (or tweet) about the godawful things our relatives, friends, and neighbors do. Celebrities are not our family. Although there are so many celebrities that we are probably related to some. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28,41],"tags":[477,139,248],"class_list":["post-25454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","category-quotations","tag-magazines","tag-psychology","tag-realitytv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Cy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25455,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25454\/revisions\/25455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}