Did it bother you when Brad left Jennifer? Do you cringe over every one of Britney’s exploits? Can you repeat them all if anyone asked?
Well, if you can answer yes to any of these questions, you may be what Carla Seaquist, State Rep. Larry Seaquist’s wife calls “the celebrity-starved.”
In a guest opinion in the Seattle Times, Mrs. Seaquist contrasts the celebrity-obsessed among us with “the conscientious public,” the people who care about important matters, like the war in Iraq, the needs of wounded veterans or the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina.
In a sharp and angry tone, she takes the “commentariat” to task for setting the table and feeding the public tastelessly tantalizing tidbits on the life of Paris or Lindsay.
“Let’s stop the suicide now,” she demands. “At its simplest, the remedy is a matter of lighting. Just as the commentariat has ignored the conscientious public, it could ignore the next celeb-a-thon — simply kill the lights, for what’s celebrity without its lights, its stage?”
As a member of the commentariat and someone who can easily kill a good half hour in the grocery check-out lane just “catching up on news,” it was hard not to feel wounded.
I mean, suppose you were sort of, kind of, you know, obsessed with celebrities solving the world’s problems? Would that make you a member of “the conscientious celebrity-starved?”
Seriously now, this is important. I mean, what if Britney Spears keeps popping up in your dreams and you are trying to convince her to tackle a world problem?
I mean, what then?
OK. It only happened twice.
I had an assignment to write a step-by-step personal development plan for a class in real time and I wrote one for Britney instead. In my dream, I’m holding her hands in mine intoning over and over, “Honey, honey, honey, you can’t go on like this” while laying out this complete plan that involved about two dozen parenting and child development classes, newly recorded lullabies and books for babies on tape.
There is no rational explanation for any of this, except that she actually would be the perfect spokesperson for early literacy.
Only I can’t seem to get her to understand this and I end up having a second dream days later. In that one, I’m pleading with her to consider what she could accomplish for children everywhere. She argues and angrily snaps, “Why should I care?” and in the dream all I can think to say is, “Because you can reach more people than anyone else. You’re the only one who can do this.”
It makes me wonder about taking the opposite stance from Carla Seaquist. What if we argue that people like Britney, who have such big lives as a result of their talent and our obsession, are able to accomplish more?
In light of this possibility, does it make sense to take a moralistic and judgmental view toward Britney and call her influence “fluff” and “frippery?” Instead of “killing the lights,” wouldn’t it be more effective to ask the celebrity giant to light the way through the darkness?
Imagine us encouraging Britney to show other young mothers how to nurture a child. Imagine Britney explaining the role in early brain development of reading aloud to babies. Imagine a CD of lullabies of Britney singing to her sons.
Imagine Wal-Mart becoming one of the most sustainable businesses in the world. Imagine it, like Britney, using its power for good.
Why Wal-Mart? What does Wal-Mart have to do with Britney?
Like her, it has a controversial history of behaviors (business practices). Like her, there are critics and detractors around every corner waiting for the merest hint of a stumble.
But unlike Britney, Wal-Mart has made the commitment to change. After meeting with Al Gore and other conservation and environmental leaders, the company set goals that are so far reaching, even socially conscious investors are noticing.
Said Shelley Alpern, director of social research and advocacy at Trillium Asset Management, “Wal-Mart’s environmental goals — 100 percent renewable energy, zero waste, and sustainable products — are extremely ambitious but also very promising; merely aspiring toward the first two will have enormous ripple effects throughout their supply chain and reduce the strains that the company places on the public sector.”
Like Britney, change won’t come easy, but the impact of Wal-Mart’s $500 million sustainability pledge will be huge. As reported in Fortune Magazine (July 31, 2006) Wal-Mart is the biggest private user of electricity in the U.S., with each of its 2,074 supercenters using an average of 1.5 million kilowatts annually.
It has the nation’s second-largest fleet of trucks, which travel a billion miles a year. So imagine their resource savings alone.
And the possible outreach and education — a savings of $3 billion in electric bills and 50 billion tons of coal could be realized if every customer who visits Wal-Mart in a week purchased one (CFL), compact fluorescent light bulb.
The critics like WakeupWalMart.com are waiting in the wings, like the paparazzi waiting to capture Britney driving with a child on her lap. While I have to agree that Wal-Mart has a long way to go in addressing the social equity piece of their business model, the environmental strides they are making leave even old critics like me wondering whether the prejudices no longer hold true.
Wal-Mart has become the single largest seller of organic milk (free of hormones and growth stimulators) and the largest purchaser of organic cotton, dramatically reducing pesticide use in the cotton industry. Since it purchases 70 percent of its products from China, the pressure on suppliers there to clean up their acts is vital for worldwide change.
Said CEO Lee Scott, “There can’t be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can’t be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can’t be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.”
Mrs. Seaquist is right. It’s important for us, the conscientious public to keep pressuring those in the “lights” to step up and accept the responsibility of their roles. We never know what might come out of the “fluff” and “frippery.”
Mary Colborn is a Port Orchard resident.
