marthastewart

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, along with Mark Burnett, is trying to pitch 'Help Me, Martha' as a new reality television program. In it, Martha helps someone who is having a party or "lifestyle issue" get things together. In short, it is the most unreal reality television ever devised.

The show is slightly reminiscent of 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' or even 'The Marriage Ref.' It's great how television assumes that people have no control over their own lives (in truth they don't, but I hardly think making them a television spectacle is going to help).

If you were planning something, would you really want Martha there looking over your shoulder? She comes across as pretty bossy. If your party idea didn't match with hers, she could very well change it around on this television program without your say-so. And if you didn't like it, she'd have to let you go.

More of our best of the decade coverage, which started on Tuesday. You can read the other posts at the link above. Here, we talk about a very aught-like phenomenon: the cult of celebrity.

There is no clearer metaphor for the concept of being a celebrity than the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You work hard to chase your dream and achieve a career for yourself by making your name known to the masses of the universe.

Then when you've grabbed that star and become a regular fixture in the flash bulb of the press' cameras, how does the public honor your tireless toil and efforts? They throw you down on a sidewalk and walk all over you.

In the Aughts, however, a new celebrity oozed out of the primordial muck. A celebrity that still suffered the slings and arrows of the tabloid press and a complete loss of the right to privacy, but achieved their stardom by simply cutting out all that pesky hard work and tireless effort nonsense. These are the celebrities who became famous by simply because they were famous.