Celebrity

I used to call myself a sort of minor-league celebrity. Different people, I have found, have different standards for what they consider fame or notoriety. To some, in the old days of print media, it was a matter of how widely you or your photographed image  appeared – nationally or internationally – in newspapers, magazines, or books. It made a big difference if you were “syndicated,” meaning that whatever you wrote or drew could be seen or read in numerous publications at the same time. It all made you more of a celebrity. In some people’s minds, to that extent, you were famous.

But, with the advent of radio, and then of television, what mattered was having your own, widely and regularly heard and seen, “program” or “show.” And the Internet has again changed everything. Theoretically, we all have equal access, and the important thing is getting more people to be aware of what you have “uploaded.” Ultimately what makes the difference here is money – and large corporations can afford to dominate the ether. Of course, they can also maintain huge mailing lists – and you sometimes have to make a special request to be taken off their list before they’ll allow you stop hearing from them.

In my own case, just appearing in the local daily newspaper – when there was one – was a big feather in my cap. And my writings still appear weekly in another local Journal. Of course, getting paid for it can also matter – but, in this country at least, how much people earn is still generally regarded as confidential information.

I still have a small business based on my illustrated epigrams, which began on postcards back in 1967. These sometimes brought me “fan mail,” and I started keeping a file I called “Celebrities” of letters received from people I considered notable. (It was in pre-computer times, so they were mostly on paper.) Ultimately, they were so few in number that I lost interest in that whole idea. 

However, for the sake of this article I dug that file out. One of the most recent letters in it was dated June 20, 1990. And you’ll never guess who it was from:

None other than DONALD TRUMP.

My Publishers, Woodbridge Press, had sent him a copy of one of my books (#4, WE’VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH TOGETHER – And Most of it Was Your Fault) and his comment was: “It is delightful and very amusing. There are many truisms, and I find it all very entertaining.”

Very few other names in the file are ones most people would recognize today.

But why is fame so commonly linked with fortune? I would think that the best kind of fortune would be as little known as possible. From what I’ve heard about lottery winners, sudden wealth that you haven’t earned is hardly a guarantee of happiness – even less so if your identity becomes widely known.

And what about glory? The very concept of being in any way glorious implies a high order of merit. The most widely known personal message to God is called The Lord’s Prayer, and its concluding words include these: 

For Thine is the Kingdom,
The Power and the Glory

If the Glory is God’s, how can anyone else lay claim to any of it? And yet the idea of military glory goes back thousands of years. The Romans made a big deal out of what they called “triumphs.” Victorious troops would parade through the streets, accompanied (probably not very willingly) by whatever warriors they had conquered. We still echo that kind of celebration with big election winners or sports heroes. And church services, especially of the more “spiritually enthusiastic” kind, are redolent with cries of “Glory!”

In the last two centuries, and in various parts of the world, particularly in the U.S., the concept has emerged of recognizing distinctive achievements architecturally – and so we now have hundreds of “Halls of Fame,” “Walks of Fame,” and even “Walls of Fame.” Of course, some of them are more famous than others. In the U.S., the best-known Walk of Fame is probably the one on Hollywood Boulevard, in which no fewer than 2,800 large stars are set into the pavement, each one bearing the name of someone associated with “Show Business.” I’m not sure if any disgrace could lead to a star being removed, or at least the inscription changed. But all this reminds me of that old quote usually attributed to Jimmy Durante; “Everybody wants to get into the act.”