Where are the celebrities?

We live in a celebrity-obsessed age with relatively few true celebrities. Were Dean Martin alive today, he couldn't host the celebrity roasts that were once so entertaining. Those who pass for celebrities today simply wouldn't be recognized by most people.

Rich Little

Joseph Epstein commented on this phenomenon in an excellent essay last weekend in The Wall Street Journal. He noted that a few decades ago, impressionists such as Rich Little were able to make a good living entertaining audiences with their impressions of Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Jack Benny, James Cagney and others. Today's impressionists do Donald Trump, Joe Biden and that's about it. Few other people are famous enough to be widely recognized in an impressionist's act.

The problem, if it is a problem, may be not too few celebrities but rather too many. Today it is simply too easy to become a celebrity, or at least a minor-league celebrity. At one time there were just three television networks, meaning that most people were watching the same few shows. And TV variety shows were popular,  bringing back the same relatively few stars to perform. People went to theaters and watched the same movies as everyone else.

Today there are so many entertainment options that relatively few performers stand out. The same edition of The Wall Street Journal had a Q & A with "Grammy-winning pop star" Meghan Trainor. I've never heard of her, and I am probably not alone. Spotify, Sirius and Pandora give me so many music options that I rarely hear today's pop music. At one time it was impossible to escape the latest hits. That's not true any longer.

So many people today have podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs, etc., that few stand out to the point that they are recognizable to the general population. Almost anyone can draw an audience and gain a few likes, but fame, when it does come, tends to be shallow and fleeting.

Epstein just barely mentions literature in his essay on the fall of celebrity, but literature has been impacted as well. I am old to remember when the names and faces of the poets Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg were widely known. Are there any such poets today? As for novelists, the same is true. We once had Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren and several others of that stature alive and writing at the same time. You didn't even have to read their books to know who they were. Is there anyone like that alive today?