The brightest stars burn out first.
Posted on June 26, 2009 - Filed Under Celebrity, Michael Jackson
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM & FM, Friday, June 26, 2009.
The ancient Greeks called the sun, the star closest to the Earth, Helios. They thought the sun was a god. There was a time when we called the biggest of our celebrities stars, and thought of them as gods. The sun-as-god, celebrity-as-god parallel is closer than you think. Let’s explore it.
Let’s start with the first of two stars to burn out yesterday. Farah Fawcett was the smaller of the two that we lost but that’s only a comparative statistic. Farah Fawcett was, at the height of her stardom, huge.
A show of hands from the middle-aged guys out there. How many of you had the poster? Yep, I did too. My mother wasn’t thrilled about the nipples pressing through the fabric of her swimsuit but the poster was on my wall, as it was on the walls of every guy I knew.
No one had ever heard of Farah Fawcett prior to her one season on the hit show “Charlie’s Angels.” But the franchise owes its very existence to her. The flowing mane, the dazzling white smile and the lithe, athletic figure put the show on the map.
And in the process it saved the ABC Television Network. Prior to “Charlie’s Angels,” ABC was a very distant third in a three-network prime time television race. But when Farah Fawcett and the other two Angels appeared, CBS affiliates in markets all across the country, accustomed to an easy prime time win, could only look upon the surge of ABC with impotent envy.
I was working at WFAA in Dallas at the time and I saw it happen. The sudden success in prime time emboldened the management to make investments in the ten o’clock news product that might otherwise not have been made. From that prime time success, Channel 8 news in Dallas went on to over two decades of dominance in the Dallas-Ft. Worth media race.
Most of Farah Fawcett’s work after her one season on “Charlie’s Angels” was forgettable. But for that brief moment, she was an authentic star that burned bright and hot and she had an impact on the national conversation.
Then later yesterday afternoon, one of the brightest, hottest stars in all of history burned out.
Michael Jackson stands unequaled in the history of recorded music. No one, not Elvis, not Sinatra, not the Beatles - no one - ever came close to selling the number of units that Michael Jackson sold. I firmly believe that no recording artist will ever sell 25 million copies of a recording ever again. Babe Ruth’s home run record was eventually eclipsed. Michael Jackson’s sales record will stand for all time.
Of course, stars are not gods. Astronomical stars are balls of hot gas that do what they do by consuming themselves. And in that way, the parallel between celestial stars and human stars is almost exact. For it seems that the brighter the human star, the more it must consume itself in order to exist. It seems that our biggest stars come to the worst ends. Michael Jackson’s inevitable early death reminds us of the bad endings that came to the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
I have lived long enough to not be over-awed by stars. I see them for what they are. And what I see is a shrinking galaxy. Today’s stars are not stars at all. They’re mere celebrities who try to imitate the white-hot heat of stars by figuratively setting themselves on fire in public.
Forty or fifty years from now, will we spend this much time talking about the passing of Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson? Somehow, I doubt it.
I, for one, miss true stars. For all of their manifest failings, they gave us all a common cultural touch point. They brought us together. Even if you never watched the Angels, you knew who Farah was. Even if you never liked Michael Jackson, you knew that the album “Thriller” was something extraordinary.
In the final analysis, I think Michael Jackson was creepy. I didn’t like him and I will never be fully convinced that he wasn’t a pedophile. But we have long tolerated sociopathic behavior from the most talented among us. It’s the price we have been willing to pay to enjoy the work of true artists. Michelangelo was insufferable, Beethoven was an irascible tyrant. Frank Sinatra was a jerk. I detest nearly everything that comes out of Barbra Steisand’s mouth — right up until she begins to sing.
So with respect to Michael Jackson, I will unashamedly admire his brilliant work. And I now mourn the fact that his star burned so brightly that it is now fully consumed and burned out, with no new stars rising above the horizon.
Live healthy, pay less.
Posted on June 18, 2009 - Filed Under Health Care
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM & FM, Friday, June 19, 2009.
President Obama has stated that his number one domestic agenda priority is a radical overhaul of our health care system. The various proposals being discussed are projected to cost well in excess of $1 trillion over the next ten years.
It should be obvious that we can’t afford such “reform.”
But the debate over costs misses what I think is a very important point.
If you listen to KTBB at all, you hear segments we produce for the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler called ‘Health Connection.’ It recently struck me how often the doctors whom we feature on Health Connection will say, in response to a question on this or that health problem, that proper diet and exercise constitute the best prevention and the best treatment.
And that got me thinking.
You would never expect State Farm to pay a claim for a burned up engine because you never changed the oil. But we somehow expect Blue Cross to pay for a heart bypass when you have allowed yourself to be 70 pounds overweight and addicted to tobacco.
You have no problem with State Farm pricing your auto policy based on your driving record but you don’t want Blue Cross to price your health coverage based on your 44-inch waist and your pack-a-day smoking habit.
If you have a job with employer-paid health coverage or if you are on Medicare, there is no economic penalty for poor health habits in the same way that there is an economic penalty for bad driving habits.
When your co-worker’s arteries plaque up and cause heart disease, it’s no skin off his economic nose.
But that has to change. We have to get over the idea that it’s unfair to make those who don’t take care of themselves suffer the resulting economic consequences.
But Paul, what about those poor people who are just not healthy and can’t help it?
Well, to that I say those born with health problems constitute a manageable minority of cases. The vast majority of people are born with bodies that, given reasonable “maintenance,” will last an actuarial lifetime. The non-smoker who gets lung cancer can be affordably priced into the premium for cancer coverage, particularly if the smoker is made to pay for his/her disproportionate contribution to the aggregate risk.
It is diabetes and heart disease that lie at the root of most of our runaway costs. Lung, breast and colon cancers are up there, too. The majority of these problems are avoidable through good nutrition, good exercise, avoidance of known risk factors and good preventive care. (Yes, they have established a dietary and exercise link to the dramatic increase in breast cancer).
I think it’s really this simple Live healthy and we can afford health care. Keep eating like pigs while doing no exercise and a $1 trillion health care overhaul will accomplish nothing.
The collectivist approach has a terrible record. We are way too collectivist with respect to health care already and it’s not working. On the current trajectory, health care will simultaneously become ruinously expensive and unacceptably scarce.
Put people back in charge of the decisions that affect the cost of health care and we’ll end up with a much more competitive provider environment on the supply side and a much higher quality consumer on the demand side.
And we’ll all feel and look a lot better in the bargain.
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