America's Celebrity Death Cult

America, as I write this, is being treated to a viewing of Nancy Reagan's funeral. Why? Okay, she was married to a President. I do not care. She was an old woman and she died.

Well, so did a lot of other old women and we do not make note of them each day nor do we spend hours of news coverage on their burial. I am sure that the death of an elderly member of your family means a good deal more to you than Nancy's does and I am also sure that your departed kin do not get weepy testimonials from Government officials and aging celebrities. Why the fuss over her?

Recently, Glen Frye of the Eagles died. I liked the Eagles, mostly, although I did grow a bit tired of hearing them. He was only in his 50s and it is a shame he died young, but why is that a bigger deal than any other guy dying young. There are hard working parents with large families who die young and the Nation makes little if any note of their passing. Young people just starting their lives die and little note is made.

What is our obsession with celebrity? I have known musicians at least as talented as Frye and their passing saddened me but I did not see any reason for their death to be a National concern. When the wives of past Presidents such as Truman and Eisenhower died, a quick news mention was all that they received.

Somehow, celebrities have become more than humans to us, and there in lies the answer. This is a secular age, an age where we, on the whole, give little more than lip service to our Creator. Oh, we trot Him (or Her, or, well whatever pronoun you wish to use) out on occassion, but for the most part we ignore the Divinity. That leaves a gap that the human mind wants to fill. In older cultures, the creator was considered a remote and frightening Being so folks dealt with a bunch of lesser beings, gods and goddesses. Now, we laugh at such beliefs while failing to see that we are merely substituting celebrities for low level divinities. We worship Beyonce instead of Aphrodite, Tom Cruise instead of Thor and Glen Frye instead of Apollo.

Then, when these demi-gods leave the scene, we resort to the kind of behavior that the Old Egyptians engaged in. The Pharoahs were, to their subjects, gods on Earth and when they died, it was thought necessary to see that they had a successful passage to the afterlife as this would insure continued prosperity and order on Earth. We, as we bury and mourn the loss of our celebrities are carrying out a watered down version of these rituals.

Don't believe me? You can find videos of people at Graceland. Every evening there is a gatherering of people at Elvis' grave, a candlelight gathering complete with a solemn few moments for quiet and meditation. This is by any realistic view, a religious gathering. Celebrities have become our objects of worship just as Pharoahs and kings and queens and every other sort of head of state throughout the history of the ancient world. Given that things did not work out too well for all of those mighty kingdoms of yore, maybe we should rethink that.