Interesting article in Vanity Fair by James Wolcott about the recent fall of "brand" name celebrities.
He writes:
At the pinnacle of American fame is the celebrity brand, a highly lucrative – and often precarious–position. The recent comedowns of Oprah, Howard Stern, Conan O’Brien, and Simon Cowell, among others, reveal the ways a star’s luster can fade.
On Oprah Winfrey:
Oprah’s plea [to Nielsen families] was quickly deleted from her Twitter feed and attended by an apology, any attempt to game the overnight ratings considered a major infraction in the broadcast world, not to mention tacky. Here, it was more than tacky. It was the desperate wave of a drowning diva. If some joker with his own half-hour at Comedy Central or Spike had tried this, it would have been shrugged off as the prankish ploy of an underdog, but for someone of Oprah’s once celestial stature, it was a mortifying comedown—a billionaire extending the begging bowl.
On Howard Stern:
Oprah’s plea [to Nielsen families] was quickly deleted from her Twitter feed and attended by an apology, any attempt to game the overnight ratings considered a major infraction in the broadcast world, not to mention tacky. Here, it was more than tacky. It was the desperate wave of a drowning diva. If some joker with his own half-hour at Comedy Central or Spike had tried this, it would have been shrugged off as the prankish ploy of an underdog, but for someone of Oprah’s once celestial stature, it was a mortifying comedown—a billionaire extending the begging bowl.
On Howard Stern:
As if to break out of the ghetto of Baba Booey and inject himself back into the mainstream, Stern agreed to succeed Piers Morgan in the judge’s chair of NBC’s America’s Got Talent, a once unthinkable scenario for the former Fartman and King of All Media.
On Mr. Countdown:
His recent firing from Al Gore’s Current TV releasing such a deluge of acrimony and recrimination that he is in danger of being designated a toxic hazard.
Read HERE.
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