Out of touch

In times of crisis, I seek out celebrities for answers, for guidance. Cloistered in sprawling compounds with professional chefs and live-in magicians, they are profoundly out of touch. They pay for things they don’t understand. They sign checks they don’t read. A missing zero is nothing. What’s more advantageous to our current global predicament than being literally out of touch? Six feet? Try 6 miles of ocean frontage and a driveway so long it fades into the horizon. These are people who have time on their hands to settle our greatest problems. Helipads are other people. And in this case, that's them.

However you choose to slice it, touching is bad. We should be looking to stay as far apart from each other as possible. With greasy paws and sharp hangnails, you’re bound to injure someone with the gentlest of taps. Astronomically rich people who’ve made a career of pretending know about life. They are here to apologize, to laugh, to lecture.

 

I could look elsewhere, of course. To salt-of-the-earth publicans delivering a constant stream of bar top wisdom or to convenience store cat wranglers mesmerizing customers with a steady flow of bodega bromides. But those familiar sages aren’t nearly rich enough to be taken seriously. To think of solutions, you first need room to think. And the aisles here are far too narrow for that. It’s actually a hazard to stack canned goods on top of glass bottles in the hope a quake won’t come. But it will.  

 

Celebrities have one clear leg up on the rest of us regular people. Having achieved wealth and fame, they are now free to focus on the most important existential questions facing humanity. Inside their mansions or private sea planes, they are afforded plenty of space to ponder unfettered. Once you’ve gotten everything out of life, you can devote your time to serious frivolities. The ones I can’t think about. Diet, fashion, technology. I can’t remember when it eat, so why not tell me what to eat? It's a good start.

 

I trust them. Once you've seen someone convincingly wear a prosthetic nose in a made-for-tv movie about Jimmy Durante, why not model your life after the actor? If he or she can convince you they're someone else, they can make you believe anything. Martin Sheen really is a former president. At least he seems to think so. And that's good enough for me.