Why do we love a good train wreck?

Anyone who saw Chris Crocker’s desperate web plea to “leave Britney alone” last September knows how involved and obsessed Americans can get about celebrities. We laugh when they laugh, we’re happy when they’re happy, but when they break down, we’ll definitely be there to kick them. Sometimes, we kick them even when they’re happy. It just depends on how cruel we’re feeling at the moment.

But we have to consider, why are we so fascinated and disgusted by the rich and famous? Is there something about their depraved and privileged lifestyles that causes a paradox of envy and revulsion? We seem to watch their every move with hope and angst. Children use them as role models for life, with trust that celebrities emulate proof that success and happiness are possible.

I think the obsession starts with envy on a certain level. Everyone knows how successful these celebrities are. They make more money in one year than an average person could realistically consider making in their lifetime. The American Dream is living on through these celebrities, especially those who came from nothing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone comment how amazing it was for Fergie to go from being a drug-addicted gang member, to being a top-selling pop star.

We don’t just praise them for their successes however; we also like to hold their past against them. While Fergie may have done drugs at one point in life, she could still be considered an addict or helpless, even though she’s doing great right now. We don’t really know Fergie, and I’m sure most people don’t know her real name. We like to pretend to.

Take Britney Spears as another example. Few people know Britney Spears on a personal level. Fewer know her deepest thoughts and emotions, but everyone knows her actions. The media even publicized when she was admitted to a psychiatric facility. Even so, Britney Spears is constantly being accused of forcing the attention upon herself through her outrageous behavior. Did we ever stop to wonder if we created the monster that we now blame for behaving so savagely? It seems as if the media takes pleasure in portraying her darkest moments on the evening news.

How did this happen? Britney was a huge success when she was a teenager. She was cute, innocent and people liked her. But when she got married spontaneously, suddenly she wasn’t as likable as she used to be, because she showed some kind of flaw that could be blown out of proportion. And we’ve made it a point to remind her ever since. I’m uncertain if the media has fed us this tabloid gossip and we ate it up asking for seconds, or if we asked for it to begin with. It seems that the news only tries to reflect what it thinks that the public is interested in and then force it down our throats until, oddly enough, we beg for more.

Whether it’s the media promoting this obsession to the public or the public demanding it from the media, it is nonetheless an unhealthy problem. It seems the public is too involved in the lives of people who they will never know on a personal level. If we tell these celebrities long enough that they’re all wrong, dirty, trashy or slutty, we have to wonder, is it that we were right to begin with, or that we imposed these behaviors upon them until they became what we accused them of being?

Michael Jackson is the prime example of what happens when one celebrity gets far too much media attention for too long a period of time. Only 5 years old at the formation of the notorious Jackson 5, Michael Jackson has been in the limelight ever since. That was over 40 years ago. He’s been repeatedly slapped on the cover of tabloids his entire life and people say how sad it is that he’s gotten a little weird. How normal would you be? Britney Spears has only been going through this for a decade and look what’s happened to her.

We give celebrities way too much crap for being poor role models, living their lives in outrageous ways or sometimes not living up to the possibilities that are provided to them. If we left celebrities alone for a while, children wouldn’t look up to them as role models, people may actually get to put their lives back together and really begin to live outside themselves. I’m sure there are some celebrities, like Paris Hilton, who really enjoy the attention and use it until it’s exhausted. For all others, we really should just leave them alone.