Hollywood is the place where people go to make it big. Small town girls with big city beauty see the dolls displayed on magazines and become infatuated with being like the faces they see. But where do the cameras and tabloids stop and the person with issues really begin?To the surprise of many, Hollywood is no longer a famous sign on a hillside, but has become a system of celebrity and influence. To be Hollywood is to lose touch with humanity and practicality. The HW mentality has made the failures of humanity a marketable tool, and some are so caught up that they couldn’t see a car if it was right in front of their own vehicle. Lindsey Lohan does drugs and gets DWI’s and she only gets more famous. I know plenty of people who do the same things and no one cares. The only difference between the celebs and college students is that their pictures end up on Entertainment Weekly while ours end up on the latest Facebook album.Sometimes our first impulse is to laugh at the blunders of celebrities, but the reality is that some of them have serious personal issues. They’re not necessarily bad people it’s just that their issues are worth more money than mine or yours. Paris Hilton doesn’t drink more than anyone else at quarter night. She just gets filmed and photographed doing it.Single mothers are called everything but a lady while Halle Berry and Jessica Alba’s un-married impregnations make the front page of magazines. When you are adored by massive fan bases you have more to do than simply keep making good music, movies and plays on the court. You’re responsible for your image whether you like it or not. They companies and people give you a million bucks while the fans make you feel like it, and when you don’t produce you end up on VH1’s The Surreal Life.As clich as it sounds there are children watching, and they’re not remedial as we often may believe. Everything we are is the summation of what we’ve experienced since before birth. When I was young I never could swallow pills and 21 years later I still take children’s medicine. It’s like I have a mental block against it. I will not even attempt to try. And the same mindset that produces my inability to intake antibiotics orally is the same that plagues celebrities except it’s not as public or severe, but undoubtedly more comical.These Hollywood rollers make more money than most will ever see and find no stability in it. Their lack of character development outshines their superstardom. My pastor once said “Your gifts will take you where your character can’t keep you.”SO despite the overwhelming media output that glorifies the works of the unsavory what is on the inside really does matter. What happened to the integrity of people that we look up to? It’s not that anyone is without a blemish, we all have picked our proverbial poisons. The issue lies in when our evils affect others.All the Vick brothers needed to do was play football. It’s simple. Those brothers could have played out their careers taking vacations in the off-season and making a difference, but their lack of personal resolve enabled them to escape the shackles of self-oppression. As if that wasn’t bad enough a report surfaces that points the fingers at the golden boys of baseball. Yes, they did it! But people still are shocked that anyone would dare point fingers at ‘The Rocket.’ How na’ve are we assume that people aren’t capable of cheating. Whether it’s on a test or in an election it’s still cheating and there’s no way around it.Hollywood knows very little if any mercy and has an array of wrath that ranges from photos of people in gas station bathrooms with no shoes on to untimely deaths. Heath Ledger is the latest victim to the popular trends. You may not have known him, or even been a fan, but everyone is now aware that behind the lights, awards and red carpets Heath had his troubles. He wasn’t perfect, and nobody is. However the humanity of Hollywood-goers is the best kept secret in the biz, so when a celebrity has an incident it becomes more newsworthy than mass genocides and poverty. The world is bigger than the TV screen and Hollywood doesn’t want you to know it. It’s not a place. It’s a state of mind.
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