Is it a good thing to "care" about celebrities?

Concerning Bieber, Britney, Whitney and a sermon by Kevin Costner

I confess this with mixed feelings: I have always been one of those people who passes the tabloids in the check-out line with a glance and a shrug.

In other words, I am being judgmental. I am mystified by the fact that millions of people are concerned about, maybe even obsessed with, the private lives of celebrities in popular culture, sports and politics. Note that I said “private lives,” which — to my way of thinking — is different than admiring a famous person’s work or even his or her commitments in public life.

Thus, I was one of the folks who got excited when information surfaced that Justin Bieber was an active member of an evangelical megachurch. Also, I have never been comforted that Britney Spears was baptized Baptist and now goes “back and forth” between Kabbalah studies and the evangelical faith of her youth.

Thus, I have been tuned out on the raging social-media reports about Bieber’s increasingly bizarre public behavior. For example, I confess that I didn’t make it all the way through the Brett Cooper video at the top of this post.

I am not saying that this cultural crush on celebrities isn’t important. I will repeat what I said in this recent Rational Sheep post — “Who is a ‘celebrity’ these days?” — addressing Cooper’s claim that Americans care less, these days, about what celebrities THINK. Here is some key material from that:

… Cooper’s Big Idea, in this case, is that celebrities are still at the top of the gossip food chain, in terms of mass media, but that they are losing the ability to change the minds of their fans. To be specific, she thinks that Taylor Swift has overplayed her hand by getting too political.

That may be true, but I think it misses the point: What matters is not whether Swift was able to point young voters toward Kamala Harris. What matters is whether she retains (even as she ages) the ability to shape the minds and hearts of young women on matters of love, emotions, beauty, relationships and sexuality. Oh, and her Christianity is a “good” form of Christianity, for media folks.

Now, here is my question for today: Should Christians pray for celebrities? When celebrities who have claimed Christian faith are tempted and crash, should we care abut what is happening to them and view their lives as cautionary tales?

Consider these chunks from a Suzy Weiss piece at The Free Press that ran under this headline: “Suzy Weiss: Is Justin Bieber Okay?”

We’ve seen it before: A child star with a cherubic face, and enough skill to navigate a bit of choreography, ascends to megastardom on the wings of a new technology. They get some cash, and the wrong people surround them, and eventually their brain breaks. Then they spiral, in public view, until they are wrecked, the same tech that launched them contributing to their ruin.

So went Judy Garland, who came up around when Technicolor films were lifting off and was put on amphetamines to keep up with her filming schedule, and then became addicted to them. So went Britney Spears, who rode the early internet and MTV at its peak. Twenty years later, she’s dancing with knives on her Instagram and recently took a baby doll on a vacation to Mexico. Now, we have Justin Bieber, 31, who hasn’t yet reached the level of enlisting a security guard to carry around a Barbie in a BabyBjörn for him. But given how he’s been behaving, he seems mere weeks away from doing something deranged.