The Internet is probably one of the most amazing inventions to come about in history. Without it life would be extremely dull. Where else would we go for a quick YouTube laugh, or to view sports scores in real-time? Where would college students be without Wikipedia?
With all this convenience comes a price. You see, the Internet is also the staging ground for where “celebrities of the week” gain momentum, spamming up inboxes and news sites with annoying and totally unnecessary content. You will soon know the kind of “celebrity of the week” I am referring to and maybe we can join up and ban these aberrations from cyberspace once and for all!
Let us begin with Susan Boyle, the frumpy Scottish singing sensation that emerged from obscurity onto the international stage when she went on the show “Britain’s Got Talent” last month. Judges were stunned when Boyle came out on stage looking lost, as if she wandered onto the set because of dementia. But when the uni-browed wonder began singing, audiences were amazed by the incredible voice she had. My question — who cares?
Why do I have to sign on to the Internet everyday and hear more stories about how Boyle navigates her way through life? Case in point, her recent “snub” of President Barack Obama. According to British website “News Of The World” Boyle was invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — a gala held at the Washington Hilton where the press and president schmooze and hobnob amidst drinks, dinner and entertainment. But Boyle was “too nervous” to meet one of her biggest fans, Obama, so she declined the invitation. Say it ain’t so!
It’s not that I hate Boyle; it’s that I feel stupider for knowing who she is. I couldn’t care less that she has a great singing voice and I care even less about her trials and tribulations. Can we please just let this woman fade back into the nebulous she came from and stop gracing my computer screen daily?
Believe it or not, there’s even someone more annoying than Boyle. Hailing from Holland, Ohio, many people are familiar with this man from the “team” he formed with 2008 presidential candidate John McCain. The man I’m talking about is, of course, “Joe The Plumber.” Why, oh why, is this cretin still in the news? When will it stop?!
Samuel Joseph “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher is one of the “celebrities of the week” who has seemingly extended his tenure to “celebrity of the year” because he simply will not go away.
According to Wurzelbacher in an interview in Christianity Today, gays should be referred to as “queer” and “I would never allow [gays] near my children.” Perhaps Wurzelbacher and Miss U.S.A. contestant Carrie Prejean should team up on the “Say No To Gays” tour?
The magazine also got Joe’s expert opinion on the future of the Republican Party — he still loves Sarah Palin — and whether or not he is going to run for office. “God hasn’t said, ‘Joe, I want you to run.’ ” Are you as sick and tired of this guy as I am?
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said it best in response to Wurzelbacher’s recent comments: “[They] would matter if Joe the Plumber mattered. One thing among many things we learned in the 2008 campaign is that he doesn’t.”
Because of the Internet and its extreme power, people who don’t matter are thrust into our daily lives constantly and sometimes their stories even trump the ones that really do matter. I wish Boyle and Wurzelbacher the best in life; I just don’t really care to see their faces on my computer monitor.
Why don’t we save the Internet for what matters — learning more about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newest Somali child and seeing video of Salma Hayek breastfeeding Third World babies?
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.
For once you got something right, Gary… your article was dumped on the internet.
I think you’re a member of the socially inept, Gerry. This column is inane.