#169
recognizing the cult (pt 2)
I am usually reluctant to contribute to popular discourse. It mostly feels like a useless exercise; reactive and self-important. Still, I can’t resist bringing up the outrage leveled at the comedians who will be performing at the Riyadh comedy festival.
Just for a second, if you don’t mind.
Once more, we are provided with an example of our collective short-sightedness, our focus on individual failings and names—fucking names—gossip, targets, a chance for passive judgment. Myopic rage-bait, soon to be forgotten. Meanwhile, we continue to overlook the systems that encourage this kind of shameless cupidity.
The fact that fame itself is what drives the bare-faced indifference of celebrities and their brazen disregard for morality seems too uncomfortable for us to acknowledge.
I’ve written about this before, about the meaningless liberal outrage and the limited criticism. But it fascinates me—it really does—this resistance to concede to the commonality of celebrity and its assured destruction of integrity. The refusal to see the cult for what it is, to accept that perhaps their moral abjections are a requisite, an essential in exchange for visibility.
