Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [100]
Looking back, maybe the harbinger of things to come—the comet in the night sky or the buzzard circling the dump before we made the big dive—was Joey Buttafuoco, as he milked his connection to a maiming assault on his wife by his teenage mistress all the way to multiple media appearances, his own show, additional criminal charges (insurance fraud, solicitation, and illegal possession of ammunition), and then, after all that, a radio show called Let’s Talk, about his recovery. Maybe we can now identify him as an early adopter of the coming wave.
By the time the twenty-first century got under way, America’s industrial might had begun to wane. Not only was everything being manufactured in China, but jobs we’d taken for granted were being outsourced to India. We probably didn’t even need the added push from a behemoth economic crisis to prime Americans for embracing their new passion: an endless stream of celebrities they no longer had to look up to. Americans, fed up with admiring their betters, now welcomed the stars of reality shows as a form of celebrity double agent. Obviously, many of them were idiots, which meant that you could also look down on them. But they were rich and famous, so you had to kind of admire them, too, for somehow claiming a piece of the action for themselves. In one fell swoop they boosted your self-esteem and also offered you hope. Because, come on! These newcomers weren’t even spectacular assholes. They didn’t start a war or kill a bunch of people or form a cult. Rather, they represented a brand-new and different kind of asshole role model: a loving reinforcement of everyone at their worst.
Here were the men and women you would move away from on public transportation, the members of your family you hoped you wouldn’t see over the holidays … placed on a pedestal to be stared at and admired.
So as reality TV evolved to become the show business norm, it taught us over and over again that grabbing the spotlight with a public display of aggressive ignorance and boorish or lawless behavior was, now, a form of talent. To admire one of the Real Housewives, or someone on Jersey Shore or The Bachelor or whatever, was to admire the kind of inconsiderate loudmouthed asshole you yourself could easily be if you let yourself go.
And facilitating this was a complete cultural rehabilitation of the idea of the tabloid. In the twentieth century, jokes that can no longer be comprehended by people under a certain age used to be made about “those newspapers no one wanted to be caught reading at the supermarket.” Ha! Not anymore.
Curtain. End Act 1.
ACT 2: CRIME 2.0
Of course, the new celebrity/asshole/criminal paradigm comes with some built-in dilemmas. After having been elevated to star status, every new celebrity/asshole still has to figure out how to keep their momentum going. But how do they raise the bar, publicity-wise, when they are already famous for their obnoxious behavior? Traditional star-making fields like acting and music don’t really open their arms to these people for very long. Where oh where can they go for more time at center stage once they’ve had their turn on Dancing with the Stars?
They can try to get another reality show, which works occasionally but not often. The attention span of the public has become very fickle. So they head for the same arena that even standard-model celebrities who have been knocked off the pedestal for box office failure, aging, weight gain, or substance abuse now turn to in ever greater numbers: crime.
As every actor and actress who is suddenly not able to advance their cause through a new hit has learned, the publicity from crime is now equal to the publicity of a B-movie junket. In fact, it is better because it is more exciting to the general public. And it comes with a ready-made media platform: the news! After seeing how effectively mid-level showbiz personalities have been waltzing their way into more publicity via brushes