Brutally Honest Rant - 08/02/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Another Celeb Rant
Audio Transcripts
08/02/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Okay folks, I know I’ve talked about this over and over again, but it’s time for me to rip a new one about these overhyped celebrities!

You know… it’s one thing to have celebrities be known for the stuff that they do. You know… the movies or TV programs that they appear in or the albums that they crank out. But lately we have celebrities being known for the stuff that they do AS celebrities.

Okay, part of it we can blame solely on the air-fluffed ego-driven ratings-hungry members of the media. Between the hired stalkers they call the Paparazzi and syndicated TV shows like "Entertainment Tonight", the media has concocted this idea that the performers or entertainers or social nobodies (i.e. Paris Hilton) are not only more important than not just the stuff that they crank out, but that they are even more important than the REAL news of the world!

So now we have female celebrities whose pregnancies are being treated by the press like they’re bearing the next messiah. We have pop star relationships that are so badly overhyped that their very names are morphed into one nickname (i.e. "Bennifer" and "TomKat"). Their wedding ceremonies have to be done in secret or else the media comes storming in like the Airborne Calvary from "Apocalypse Now", complete with the "Ride of the Valkyries" music. The details of their divorces are made known before the ink dries on the signatures.

And WE know all of this stuff before the press releases even come out! I don’t know who handles media relations, but they probably got their start at the White House given all of the LEAKS that go on!

And all of this stuff is encouraging and generating diva-like behavior that just makes me sick to my stomach! So if I gotta talk about it, then I’m gonna call it like I see it!

We have Jessica Alba bitching and crying and threatening lawsuits because a CLOTHED photo of her showed up on the cover of Playboy Magazine! Hey Jessica, get a life! This is the same magazine that interviewed world leaders, sports figures, businessmen, and Rush Limbaugh. Why is it that you can pose for FHM and Maxim showing LESS than what was shown in Playboy and you don’t throw a fit? One thing’s for certain… when Jessica’s career is relegated to C-movie obscurity in the next few years, she won’t be able to turn to Playboy to give her "sex symbol" image a boost.

Speaking of Playboy, I’m getting tired of hearing about female celebrities BOASTING how they turned down multi-million-dollar offers to show skin in the house that Hef built. If I had a dime for every female celeb that SHOULD have posed for Playboy since the magazine’s debut but didn’t, I could pay off the national debt all by myself! If you want to pose, then pose… not because the magazine offered you mad money but because you WANT to show off your body.

Publicly boasting about turning down this kind of a deal is not being moral. It’s basically being a tease. And you can only tease people once or twice before you lose any kind of credibility.

Here’s a great example… we have overhyped rumors of Natalie Portman getting naked in movies and then turning out to be huge disappointments. First it was in "Closer" and now with this movie called "Goya’s Ghost". Hey Natalie, either strip or don’t, but stop letting your spin doctors tease it! Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, we stop showing up at the box office. Fool us three times and it’s goodbye video rentals! Get the picture?

We have Eva Longoria being overhyped for no reason whatsoever. Hey Eva, you’re part of a five-actress TV series. Stop pretending that you’re the end-all-be-all for the show! And by the way, you’re not there to be the THINKING part of the quintet! You’re the eye-candy. You were brought in as the eye-candy, and you KNEW going into it that you would be the eye-candy, so stop complaining that you’re being treated as the eye-candy. You want serious? Leave the show and do some tearjerker movies for Lifetime. You won’t get the attention that you’re getting now, but you will get that respect that you’re looking for.

And of course that’s part of the problem right there. Attention and respect are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. The people who have properly EARNED respect usually don’t do the things that bring attention to themselves. So you have a choice. Either you can get attention OR you can earn respect, but you really can’t do both at the same time.

And now we have Lindsey Lohan getting in trouble with studio executives for her repeated absences from the latest movie she’s in.

The executives at Morgan Creek Productions recently sent Lindsey a personal memo basically telling her to get her act together or else she would be sued for breach of contract. The folks at The Smoking Gun came across this memo and gladly shared this with the rest of the world.

Of course Lindesy’s people (i.e. her mom) are outraged over this. She’s 19! She’s young! She’s acting under unbearable conditions! It’s hot as hell out there on the set!

You know, when I was 19, I worked my ass off doing security work for a company that literally had me running ragged across New Hampshire. I would work 16-to-23-hour days, operating on maybe an hour’s sleep before having to get dressed again and hitting the road for the next security assignments. Made quite a bit of coin from those three months of work, mostly from all of that overtime that I had to put in during the 6 or 7 days a week because I really was in demand. I worked in hot and humid conditions, I developed a nasty allergic reaction to the guard uniforms, and I was crossing union picket lines to do my job! I literally put my life on the line!

Now, do you know what I was told when I talked about the lack of sleep or rest? "You’re 19! You’re young! You’re flexible! You can adapt!"

Well guess what Lindsey? You’re 19! You’re young! You’re flexible! You can adapt!

Now how long has Lindsey Lohan been doing movies? She was doing movies long before she developed boobs! You would think that someone that experienced around a movie set would know about showing up on time and fulfilling their contractual obligations, wouldn’t you? There is a time for work and there is a time for play, and part of actually BEING an adult means knowing the difference between those two times. They know when one stops and when the other one begins. And while work CAN be fun at times, at the end of the day it’s still WORK.

And by the way, Ms. Lohan needs to remember that there’s a young actress and singer by the name of JoJo who bears a striking resemblance to her. I can’t say this about too many other actresses, but given the right hair dye, Lindsey can find herself replaced very easily.

That public memo was basically a warning for Lindsey to get her act together, and I think that plenty of so-called "celebrities" need to get a letter just like that one!

Let’s get brutally honest here… I am SICK AND TIRED of hearing about divas! Do you know what a diva means to this commentator? It means that there’s a person who has their head up their own ass for WAY too long and they need to rejoin the rest of the universe.

And it’s not hard to see why that is happening. You have people who are surrounded by ass-kissers who tell them how GREAT they are! They can’t do anything wrong! Their crap don’t smell! They can’t make mistakes. And if they say or do anything that MIGHT be perceived as wrong, then they’re told that it’s really not THEIR fault and that it can all be fixed. All they have to do is smile and bat their eyes and put on a cute face and all is forgiven. Or shed a tear or two and blame it all on the media and eventually the masses will buy it and then it is back to business as usual.

Hey, I’m not laying it all down on just the women here… Mel Gibson just stepped into some SERIOUS horsecrap when he got busted for drunk driving last week! Basically when the cops pulled him over, he was going on and on with anti-Semitic remarks about how "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" and asking the officer if he was "a Jew".

Say it with me boys and girls: OOPS!

Remember when Gibson had to explain how his work in "The Passion of the Christ" was not anti-Semitic? You have to wonder, now, if he was really being on the level about that.

Of course it’s easy to excuse people for their drunken behavior. People have been doing that since they found out how to get drunk. And I know that it is a load of BULL! I know from experience that you’re actually seeing the REAL side of people when they’re intoxicated. You’re seeing who they REALLY are, stripped away of all of their inhibitions and pretenses. This is why we get rip-roaring drunk when we’re young and then do really stupid things. We want the excuse. We want to be able to say "that wasn’t me, that was the alcohol talking" and have our friends and relatives buy it so we can go back to lying to them about our true selves for the rest of the time. The downside, of course, is that getting drunk also screws up other parts of the brain, which only serves to further justify the excuse… but that’s all that it is, folks; it is an EXCUSE!

Now I don’t have a problem with Mel Gibson being anti-Semitic if he’s HONEST with himself about it. That’s not the "celebrity" thing to do, of course, but it is the RIGHT thing to do! And isn’t Mel Gibson, the DARLING of the conservative circles, supposed be the icon of all that is good and RIGHT in this world?

And of course Gibson was quick to proclaim, "that wasn’t me, that was the alcohol talking," and to blame it all on his "problem". Typical weasel excuse! It doesn’t matter if you’re in Los Angeles or Washington… a weasel excuse is still a WEASEL EXCUSE!

Why is it that when a housewife like Andrea Yates drowns her five children one at a time and is declared not guilty by reason of insanity, that it’s an outrage and a miscarriage of justice; but when Mel Gibson poses a threat to society in general by driving drunk and then spews enough anti-Semitism to be put on a terrorist watch list, that it’s not HIS fault because he has "a problem"? That’s hypocritical BULL and we all know it!

Of course as the conservatives love to say, there are consequences to what you say. And I can see his words coming back to haunt him for the next few years. I don’t think that too many studios will be willing to give him work, either as a director or as an actor. That’s what happens when you bite the hand that employs you.

Let’s put it this way: Mel Gibson has about as much of a chance of getting work in Hollywood now as the Dixie Chicks have in getting invited to perform for President Bush.

Does he have a problem? You bet he does! And it’s not alcohol. His best bet right now is to do the time for his DUI charge… don’t get a deal, don’t beg for the mercy of the court, just plead guilty and take the full punishment, including JAIL time. Then when he gets out of jail, he should go back to working on his little church, sit off the royalty checks he gets from his movies, maybe write a book or two about his life, and then spend the next five years doing some SERIOUS penance with the Jewish community. Again, it’s not the "celebrity" thing to do, but it is the RIGHT thing to do!

And Lindsey Lohan wonders why she got a letter telling her to get her act together! I think that she should count her blessings that someone in Hollywood even gives enough of a care to do that!

(Computer – some timely things that you need to hear to appreciate)
(Fade Music In – "Who am I" by Peace Orchestra)

You know, I can understand why people feel the need for mindless entertainment. I mean, the world’s pretty messed up as it is. We need some sort of release from the frustrations of life… especially with all of the crap going on today!

But at the same time, the world of Hollywood shouldn’t be a substitute for dealing with the things going on in the here and now! We have PROBLEMS to be dealt with, and they’re not going to be dealt with if we continually fob it all off on special interest groups and our elected gangs of grifters and shysters just so we don’t miss another night of whatever reality TV show is popular! Obsessing about whether or not another female celeb either hooked up or got knocked up will not help put pressure on the White House to come up with a realistic energy policy, or to get Congress to lay off the wasteful spending! Although the special interest groups are sure as hell getting rich off our misguided fixations!

Hollywood is about image and storytelling. They can’t even be honest with themselves about how much money they bring in, and that is supposedly more important than every actor and actress that ever set foot in a studio! Neither true-blue liberals nor diehard conservatives would call THAT to be acceptable examples for society!

And that’s really the point.

At the end of the day, the people responsible for image and storytelling are just human beings. They’re not gods. They’re not even close to being perfect. They’re entertainers. And when their own personal lives are more interesting than the stuff that they put out, then that doesn’t mean that it’s time to focus on their personal lives as a source of entertainment…

It means that they’re failures as entertainers.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)

(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

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