Feather's Miscellany: Celebrity
...Younger generations today may be more streetwise and they're certainly more affluent. They're more knowledgeable, too, in handling electronic gadgets, computers and such. But are they more wise? Is the Age of the Celebrity an age of wisdom?...
John Waddington-Feather is unimpressed by today's "celebrities''.
I'm bombarded daily by media reports of this or that celebrity attending this or that reception being awarded a golden this or a silver that. Alongside the reports are glossy pictures of men parading in expensive suits and women parading in even more expensive tight-fitting next-to-nothing-ons, displaying voluptuous busts and well blessed bottoms. And I've never heard of a single one of them! I must be growing old.
Yet I suppose I was once dazzled by the Clark Gables and Marilyn Monroes of my generation and the crooners and groaners of the 1950s. Though I must say they were a deal more listenable to than the screamers and screechers of today. I certainly lapped up the pop culture of my teens in Yorkshire, but it was always balanced by regular attendance at symphony concerts and choral events like 'Messiah.'
More than that, I spent a lot of time in the company of adults, many much older than myself. Even our school choirs and plays had a healthy sprinkling of staff taking part in them. When you sang or acted alongside them, you saw another side to your teachers than that in the classroom, a more human, a more lovable side.
Out of school, I attended church and church related events. And how much my generation owed to our churches and chapels, where our minds were stretched more than they ever were in the dance hall or cinema, essential though to our growing up these were, too.
More of my boyhood was spent with Keighley Natural History and Literary Society, which involved rambling through the countryside with older folk in summer, and attending lantern lectures in winter at the Temperance Hall. And by my early twenties I'd joined my father and his cronies at his club for a pint of beer and a gossip with men who were battle-hardened veterans of two wars. I'm sure something rubbed off in my youth from close contact with older generations, something akin to wisdom perhaps. Certainly, by the time I left the army after National Service at the age of 23, I was more mature than many men now at 43, 53 or even 63.
Younger generations today may be more streetwise and they're certainly more affluent. They're more knowledgeable, too, in handling electronic gadgets, computers and such. But are they more wise? Is the Age of the Celebrity an age of wisdom?
The Temptation for our Lord to be a celebrity must have been great. He was followed everywhere by adoring 'fans'. He was hailed as a deliverer from a dictatorial rule. He certainly became a national celebrity, but he never veered from the truth he was sent to proclaim - and the last thing the glitzy world of the celebrity proclaims is truth. He stayed so true to his mission through all the lauding and adulation that by the time he'd reached his early thirties he was hung on a cross, dying in agony, jeered by the very 'fans' who once had lauded him to the skies. And he rose again to prove he was something rather more than a celebrity.
