Does being a celebrity mean that you must also sacrifice your right to privacy?

[robmadden1]

2008-08-08
Does being a celebrity mean that you must also sacrifice your right to privacy?

Our celebrities are the golden people. After all, they are our role models, the ones we admire, look up to and even envy. They inspire us, entertain us, and hold out the promise of caviar wishes and champagne dreams for all to aspire to. We all remember them from high school when they were voted best looking, smartest, class president, and homecoming king and queen. They were gifted with talent, brains and looks to take them the distance in life.
We continue to be the subjects in their court and support them with our devotion, adoration and unwavering love. And we are interested in everything they say and do because our curiosity into their lives tells us they're just like us and helps to humanize them. If they're having problems it somehow gives perspective to our own difficulties and makes them more manageable. It's the hook of the soap opera, that bird's eye view into the troubles of others, seeing what they are struggling with which somehow offsets our own plight and makes the conflicts less daunting. Additionally, we can get answers for our own lives by watching the way they deal with their dilemmas and picking up some solutions along the way.

But when does it go to far whereby in order to make our own lives better that we do it at the expense of a celebrity's personal and emotional well being? When did they become the property of the public and because they offer and share their talent lose their claim to any personal space whatsoever? The bullying and even stalking of so many celebrities today is testimony to the fact that the line between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy has been crossed. It has reached a point where the boundaries have been pushed so far that there are fans who truly believe their own fantasies and delusions about whichever celebrity they attach to. They shift from admiring the star and wanting to be like them, into the danger zone of either wanting to be with them or even more hazardous, wanting to be them. Unfortunately, their reality is the only one they can process. So while it is completely contrary to what is really transpiring, (reality becomes completely irrelevant to them). They take the notion of entitlement and feel they have a right to get whatever it is they need (or want) from their chosen one. And in so doing they shift from being fans to being fanatic.

It's time to give back to these celebrities who entertain and offer us so much, Who become the vehicles for us to be able to lose ourselves and escape into the another realm for enjoyment. There needs to be some measures put in place to protect these stars from those who lose themselves so completely that their behavior and actions become hazardous and even injurious to them. If a celebrity's energy and time is being consumed in protecting themselves from bullies and stalkers, they are not then free to direct it into what they do best, sharing their talent and entertaining. We owe it to them to put some checks and balances in place, some control measures that will both respect and insure their privacy. Without them, we perpetuate the notion that its ok to violate for our own self interest. That’s as big a loss for us as it is for them.

http://www.celebrityloop.com/blog.ph...type=b&ret=%2F