When cowboys were our celebrities

I'm taking my six-year-old grandson to a disco at his school this evening - a disco at which the kids are to attend dressed as famous persons. He's going as Michael Jackson, resplendent in red jacket, black hat and white glove. I got to wondering what famous person I might have represented myself as when I was six. That is, if I was going to a fancy dress disco, which I wouldn't have been because I wouldn't have known what a disco was. Neither would anyone else have known because discos hadn't been thought of back then. The only celebrities I can recall in those pre TV days were cowboys, such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and the like, who we saw on the silver screen and in comic books. Indians weren't celebrities because they were a generic bunch without individual identities. Robin Hood or William Tell might have been candidates, as might Donald Duck, but they were all fictitious characters rather than famous people. There were famous sportspeople of course, but without TV we didn't know what they looked like. The Royal Family were popular but today they probably trail behind Justin Bieber in the eyes of kids. How times have changed!

The Tiger-watchers

Boy, am I getting fed up to the back teeth by the news media's fixation with Tiger Woods's private life. I cannot see one good reason for any person on this Earth, other than those individuals directly affected, to have any interest in what this person does (or has done) anywhere except between the first tee and the eighteenth hole of a golf course.

Media folk would argue that there is huge public interest and that they are simply catering to that interest. My view is that there is huge public interest only because the news media generated it in their own pecuniary interest. Unfortunately that says as much about the intellect of the media's audience as it says about the media's greed.