When one realizes what utter gutterscum make up our list of current celebrities, the mind reels as the stomach empties. What's more, there exists a whole cadre of talented, eager, and interesting young actors, singers, artists, writers, pundits and personalities who have spent years starving and taking wait staff jobs while a group of spoiled, stupid, vain and ungrateful twits have hijacked popular culture towards their own ends. Witness the rash of non-talents railing against the paparazzi's supposed "invasion" of their so-called privacy that has steadily grown to a head (like a zit) over the past two decades. Now, the first example I can find of a bratty celebrity lashing out against the work-a-day pressmen would be Sean Penn, who was sued back in the 80's for punching a photographer. There have been other skirmishes, lawsuits (Claudia Schiffer sued over pics taken of her sunbathing topless in the 1990's, but models might be too stupid to realize that you shouldn't do such a thing in public, so it doesn't count).

The latest celebrity to bravely take on people who make far less money annually is the perennial enemy of the press Cameron Diaz.
She's been in the news twice this year, and neither scoop related to her acting abilities. Back in the spring, she had her lawyer send a cease and desist letter to a website which aired topless footage of her taken back before she rose to fame (courtesy of The Mask, a Jim Carey vehicle which used computer animation to make him look weirder than he really does and used lots of makeup and lighting to make her look hotter than she really does). Apparently, history is revisionist for a celebrity of her stature (note the use of the word "celebrity," not "actress), so when she whored her breasts out in desperation early on, we are supposed to censor the images and forget it ever happened, whereas many other women's mammaries have wound up on the net courtesy of jilted ex-boyfriends, but you never hear of a lawsuit pertaining to these. (Celebrities are "special," probably in the developmentally disabled meaning of the word). With her shameful past censored and her born-again modesty upheld, she plunged forward, making more headlines over her relationship with a boy ten years her junior.

Now, she's back in the press again (sorry no new good movie or anything) after getting into a very dignified shoving match with papparazzo Saul Lazo, who was trying to take a picture of the "star" and her little boyfriend as they walked to their car from Hollywood's trendy Chateau Marmont hotel on Nov 6. The bleach blonde bimbo apparently whacked him in the neck and stole his camera, in her very dignified celebrity way. She and Justin Timberlake (the boy wonder, star of Backstreet Boys and gay porn) are claiming self-defense, since so many celebrities have been murdered, beaten, robbed and raped by cameras, presumbably.

Cameron and Justin are not alone. Kim Jong Il's favorite son Alec Baldwin has beaten up photographers! Johnny Depp has threatened their lives. Non-talent dog Gwyneth Paltrow has whined about them with every fiber of her soul (that's at leat one or two fibers, folks). Wailing icelandic mutant Bjork has physically attacked photographers while dreaming up pretentious new musical attacks on sensible ears. Mel Gibson had to take time away from explaining how the holocaust never happened in order to produce the movie anti-photographer cinematic screed "Paparazzi," which did about 500 dollars worth of box office business (all of earned in L.A. theatres, word has it).

Now here's the punchline...

If it were not for the press, and the paparazzi, then Princess Diana would still be alive, acting all saintly or whatever she did, and none of the above mentioned people would have careers at all (Excepting Bjork and Depp, who artfags seem to love and it must be for some reason). See, what these out of touch celebrities fail to realize is that they are talentless, their art is pop-culture junk geared towards the sort of housewives and morons that go to see a movie based on the star rather than the plot or the creative elements. None of their work has the quality that draws people the way a performance by Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, Katherine Hepburn, or Gary Oldman makes one care about the artistry of the performance over the celebrity persona.

One has seen Baldwin, Diaz, Gibson, Penn, Paltrow and Timberlake come out and spew their political ideology at America. They show up to talk shows and conduct magazine interviews in order to sell us something that they will make money from. When the media suits their selfish needs, then they will gladly put on a happy face and beckon us into their tent, or but on an outraged face and beckon us over to their political views. However, they want their privacy. They don't want to be bothered by minimum wage-earning paparazzi who dare to snap a picture of them. Sorry, celebs, but you got into the wrong line of work. Fame comes with triflesome annoyances like public adoration and desire to know you better personally. It's your fans demanding a connection when some gossip rag publishes your mug as you leave an eatery that your fans themselves will never afford to eat at.

If you don't like your job, then go teach, or wait tables, or join the peace corps. Become lawyers, or doctors, or open a restaurant and get a mascot to do all the photo ops. Christ, deliver pizza if you have to. I have seen girls far more beautiful than Cameron Diaz working at Seven Eleven or Hollywood Video and no paparazzi has ever bothered them. You are not actors, but rather you are celebrities and you signed your right to public privacy away when you whored yourself out to Hollywood in the first place. No one should have any sympathy for you. You had and still have a choice.

None of the stars mentioned have starred in anything significant for quite some time. Maybe they should step down and let those who want fame have it. It seems as if they aren't talented enough, or cool enough, to handle it. They can go flip burgers.