“Millions of people figured out that Bai Ling’s wardrobe malfunctions were preferable to Bush and Cheney’s truth malfunctions”

I’ve reached the conclusion 2006 may well go down in history as the year the USA officially jumped the shark.

‘Jump the shark’ refers to that moment when something has passed its peak and is on what is probably an irreversible downward slide. The phrase originated in an episode of the American sitcom Happy Days in which The Fonz goes water skiing wearing his trademark leather jacket and jumps over a shark. Not that Happy Days was any great work of art to begin with, but it had generally managed to be harmless and entertaining before this descent into the ranks of sitcom hell.

Americans have always been obsessed with celebrity gossip. But from the days of Thomas Jefferson bonking his slaves to tales of Rock Hudson marrying Jim Nabors (or was it Marlon Brando sharing a stick of butter with Wally Cox?), there was always this army of people whose job it was to keep private stuff private. If our national icons didn’t always live their lives as shining beacons of moral rectitude, at least they were talented people and their secrets stayed secret.

That was then and this is now. In 2006, we were overwhelmed with non-information about so-called celebrities only famous for being famous, people whose sole talent is that they’ve figured out how to manipulate the media. And with the proliferation of media outlets across newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV, cable TV and the internet, there’s no shortage of people looking to stake their claim to fame by exposing the depths to which some ‘celebrities’ are willing to go.

Who was famous in 2006? Take Paris Hilton. Please. 2006 was the year in which she revealed a singing talent on a level with William Hung’s. It was the year Britney Spears decided that, with no actual new product to promote, the best way to stay in the public eye was to put everything on view. The logic completely escapes me. If nothing else, she could have made $1 million showing far less in Playboy magazine. Instead she chose to give it away. Three times.

(Fifty years ago, the reigning blonde sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, may have been having affairs with everyone under the sun, but at least she had the good graces to marry Arthur Miller, giving a home to every nerdy-looking smart guy on the planet. Britney Spears married Jason Alexander and then divorced him after one day, as soon as she realized he wasn’t the fat guy from Seinfeld. Then she married a back-up dancer. Who will she marry next? Probably William Hung!)
If you go by the gossip blogs, the biggest stars last year were Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Jessica Simpson. The public meltdown of Miss America and the subsequent feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell was front-page news. When Madonna adopted an African baby, the pundits ascended their pulpits to cast thunderbolts in her direction. From the passions of Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson to the nose jobs of Ashlee Simpson, we’ve been besieged with news that isn’t. Why should I possibly care that Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake have broken up? Do I think that means that I now somehow have a chance with her? It has no impact on my life in any substantial, or even insubstantial, way.

Some would argue that this emphasis on celebrity dirt forces our attention away from the issues that really matter. People are busy dwelling on this stuff instead of things like conflict in the Middle East, global warming, human rights in China or genocide in Africa.

But there’s a case to be made in the opposite direction too. As the world around us becomes too horrible to deal with, we seek refuge in nonsense. And there’s probably a historical precedent for this. After all, during World War II, the reigning music stars were the Andrews Sisters and movie-goers flocked to the recycled vaudeville routines of Abbott and Costello. The Vietnam war era was reflected in some great protest music, but the stuff that really sold was the Ohio Express singing, “Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy” and Tony Orlando & Dawn.

2006 was the year the tide of American opinion finally turned against the nightmare in Iraq and Americans went to the polls to say they were fed up with the corruption and scandals of those in power. And it’s reasonable to think many people wanted a break from relentless torrents of bad news, using the trivial to provide refuge from the horror that was everyplace else they looked. Or perhaps millions of people figured out that Bai Ling’s wardrobe malfunctions were preferable to Bush and Cheney’s truth malfunctions. Perhaps we couldn’t trust Condoleezza Rice to be honest with us about body counts but we knew we could trust Jessica Alba to be honest about her feelings about her body.

So are we really focusing our sights on Octavia because we can’t stand to watch Nero fiddling while Rome burns? Is this just the bottom of a cycle and we’re due for an upturn soon? Or is America becoming a nation of trailer trash where the lowest common denominator is the new king? The answer is simple. It’s … wait a minute. What’s that? Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese are getting divorced? I know I’ve got her phone number somewhere. I’ll get back to you.