Dear Hollywood: Take a chill pill

By Gus Bode

Jessica Simpson is a fatty fat fatty fatso walrus fatso fatburger. At least that’s what the pictures on the gossip sites are portraying.

Simpson appeared at a chili cookoff in Florida this weekend and it appeared as if she ate most of the chili. The people in the blogosphere have ripped her to shreds.

Also, this weekend Miley Cyrus was on a video shoot and was not wearing a bra, so her boob popped out. Obviously it’s difficult and illegal to publish photos of 16-year-old girls having nipple slips, but it still was out there in picture form and we all got a good laugh out of it. Cyrus has taken her fair share of flack for dating a 20-year-old and taking racy photos at such a young age, but really, not much of this is that scandalous. But when nudity enters the equation, you better watch out!

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And did you hear that George Clooney was spotted out on the town with a new girl? And that Emily Blunt and John Krasinski dined with Anne Hathaway and her new boyfriend at a posh restaurant? Isn’t it delightful to speculate about the love lives of celebrities?

All of this was to be expected. The media ravages celebrities who gain weight or change their appearances or go out with new boyfriends over and over again. It’s really a symptom of our culture in wanting to watch famous people fall down. Is it healthy? No. But people seem to continue to fascinate in watching big celebrities struggle.

Look at John Travolta. His son Jett, recently died in the Bahamas. The media felt sorry for him for about two seconds before things started to come out. Jett was probably autistic and John, being a Scientologist, refused treatment. A maid discovered Jett nearly 12 hours after he had died because the Travoltas were out enjoying their vacation. Lawyers are trying to extort money from them because of what happened. Couldn’t the media have just left them alone so they could grieve without having to second-guess their actions every day?

I wrote a similar column on this subject last year in the wake of the cavalcade of celebrity deaths that occurred. Once again, the media treated these deaths like they were the end of the world, that these celebrities were not the insanely good people we all accepted them as. This is true. Celebrities are ordinary people at their cores. Sure, they have tons of money and power, but they also are just people with thoughts and feelings and emotions, and sometimes we forget to respect that.

Certainly this column does its fair share of celebrity bashing, but there is no outright hatred of the celebrities. They are mostly nice people. And guess what? People get fat. People use Botox and get plastic surgery. People experience tragedies. Just because these people are rich and famous, they get the lion’s share of the hatred.

So in the end, it’s OK to poke fun at celebrities, but let’s cool it with the vicious attacks on their person and their well being. It’s certainly not healthy for everyone involved, and it could lead to more death and destruction. I love you, Perez Hilton, but seriously, calm down. You aren’t writing Shakespeare.

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