Celebrity is a bitch. If you don't believe me, just ask Ed McMahon, Adam West, Burt Ward, Ted Danson, Nadia Comanici or any of the other has-beens who have recently appeared on Hollywood Squares.
I remember watching Hollywood Squares with my grandmother, who loved the program. That was back in the days when it featured some truly gifted comics like Paul Lynde, Charlie Weaver, Jonathan Winters, Rose Marie, Charlie Callas. In those days, it was hosted by Peter Marshall, who recently appeared as a guest.
It used to be a hoot, even though we knew that the celebs got the questions in advance so they could riff on them. The difference between now and then is that then, the celebs were real stars. Clever and inventive people who often gave the correct answers to the questions.
Now, all we have left is a refugee center for Z-list never-made-its who not only can't answer the questions, but can't even deliver a humorous lie.
Frankly, I don't watch Hollywood Squares anymore. But the promos for the show keep intruding themselves on the news programs, which I do watch. Not because I believe that they deliver anything of substance, but because I am a news junkie. I was once a television journalist, much to my shame. Now that I am a print journalist, I can sneer at TV news as much as I want.
How did I get off on that digression? Never mind. Back to celebrities. Once you have been one, however undeserved, the addiction is hard to kick. Gannett News Service writer Thomas Nord recently pulled it all into focus for me. He cited former Playboy playmate and billionaire widow Anna Nicole Smith as an example.
She has parlayed an unabashed golddigger syndrome into a dubious goldmine. Our bizarre hunger for celebrities, which we can both worship and condemn, has spawned a post-modern industry.
Talentless drones who have somehow captured the public eye refuse to relinquish their hold. Witness the continuing visibility of Mr. T, Morgan Fairchild and Tonya Harding. They refuse to accept the 15-minute limit that Andy Warhol imposed on fame. And why not? Warhol never bought into it himself. At least from his own perspective.
Who can attest to the syndrome better than James Morel? He used to run a mag called POPsmear, which thrived on satirizing the culture of celebrity. Now, he runs a show which sets up dates between has-been celebrities and ordinary folk and records the results.
"If you have an ounce of fame," Morel said, "somebody in America is going to have a fascination with you. This recycling stuff is like a pension plan for celebrities."
So why do former stars subject themselves to potential humiliation?
"They know they are being made fun of, but the temptation to maintain their fame, even a radically abridged form of it, keeps sucking them back in. There is the whole capacity for self-delusion," Morel said. "If you can make that work, you can prop that up, then that becomes your reality and you've won the game."
Meantime, the rest of us can get our jollies by watching the public humiliation of those who never deserved their 15 minutes in the first place. And the great thing is, it's politically correct! We can feel superior to someone without regard to race, creed or color. I guess that's somehow healthier than Polack jokes.
I suspect that this also gives a great deal of comfort to the Madonnas, the Britneys, the J Los that currently plague our celebrity pantheon. Even when we clue into the fact that they have no talent, they can still stay off the welfare rolls. Hollywood Squares will make them immortal.
1:41:49 AM 
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