In a secular society our need for

ritualized idol worship can be displaced onto stars

Nonreligious people tend to be

more interested in celebrity culture

For them, celebrity fills some of

the same roles the church fills for believers

We live lives more dedicated to

safety or quiet desperation,

and we transcend this by connecting

with bigger lives — those of the stars

Probably the biggest celebrity phenomenon of

the last twenty years has been the glitz and glamor,

the rise and fall of "Diana"

[she needs quotation marks - more myth than reality]

She achieved uber-fame as the fairy-tale princess

God Is Dead - Long Live the Celebrity

Today, celebrities are rather like calendar saints, according to Leo Braudy, the author of The Frenzy of Renown.

The stars’ unreal level of glamorous privilege gives them the allure of a lucky talisman.

So now we have Angelina Jolie, Our Lady of the Rainbow Family and of Teenage Fantasies.

The religious fervour has broken its borders of restraint and found courage in numbers, with the advent of technology and blogs and web forums.

We feel we know our stars, but we want more. We are insatiable.

John Lennon infuriated the faithful when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but he wasn’t the first to suggest that celebrity culture was taking the place of religion.

With its myths, its rituals (the red carpet walk, the Super Bowl ring, the hand prints outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater) and its ability to immortalize, it fills a similar cultural niche.

In a secular society our need for ritualized idol worship can be displaced onto stars, speculates psychologist James Houran, formerly of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and now director of psychological studies for True Beginnings dating service.

Nonreligious people tend to be more interested in celebrity culture, he’s found, and Houran speculates that for them, celebrity fills some of the same roles the church fills for believers.

Like the desire to admire the powerful and the drive to fit into a community of people with shared values.

Celebrity has indeed replaced religion. If we're going to listen to the bible at all, it says that man should not worship or idolize anyone but the Lord Jesus Christ.

But people worship and idolize celebrities. So John Lennon was not wrong, even if his comment did stir up shit.

In a world where god is dead, people will worship anything.

Much like spiritual guidance, celebrity-watching can be inspirational, or at least help us muster the will to tackle our own problems.

“Celebrities motivate us to make it,” says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Oprah Winfrey suffered through poverty, sexual abuse and racial discrimination to become the wealthiest woman in media.

Lance Armstrong survived advanced testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France five times.

Star-watching can also simply point the way to a grander, more dramatic way of living.

We live lives more dedicated to safety or quiet desperation, and we transcend this by connecting with bigger lives — those of the stars.

Probably the biggest celebrity phenomenon of the last twenty years has been the glitz and glamor, the rise and fall of "Diana" [she needs quotation marks - more myth than reality]. She achieved uber-fame as the fairy-tale princess.

Worshipping Diana

It's been 10 years since Britain's Princess Diana died in a car crash with her boyfriend and their chauffeur in a Paris tunnel. A full decade, yet millions continue to worship her as something she never was.

Still the worshippers come to London from all over the world to lay flowers, placards, photos and other personal tributes at the gates of Kensington Palace.

Still they lay flowers on the street outside a store window displaying photos and memorabilia at Harrods, the opulent department store owned by her boyfriend's father.

Guided by plaques embedded along a seven-mile "Diana Memorial Walk" through four royal parks, they visit the palaces, mansion, fountains, and playgrounds associated with the princess.

And they hurry to the National Portrait Gallery to view even more likenesses of the princess.

The worship has intensified in this tenth summer since Diana's death, as evidenced by the crowd of 70,000 that jammed Wembley Stadium on July 1 for a six-hour concert by some of her favorite musicians on what would have been her 46th birthday.

Although private, the official celebration of Diana's birthday on Aug. 31 will be broadcast by the BBC, and it's certain millions will be watching, if not the two billion who watched Diana's funeral in 1997.

The worshiping is not all bad. That birthday concert and fund-raising efforts by Diana during her lifetime raised money for worthy charities. Of course we should honor her for that and certainly should regret her death.

But so should we regret that, whatever Diana's good deeds, her death brought out in many others some of the worst of human traits.

It's said that Diana was vulnerable. She was - much less so, however, than her multitude of fawning admirers.

They have been eager to assume the role of uncritical, wide-eyed celebrity worshippers assigned them by the mass media and treat Diana as a veritable saint.

It's been a triumph of style over substance, a triumph of flash and glitter and wealth and empty-headedness, an incredible, unprecedented triumph of media hype and manipulation.

So what if Diana was one of Britain's wealthiest women, living on millions she inherited without so much as lifting a finger to earn them.

So what if she demanded - and got - millions more from the British treasury as a divorce settlement when she and Prince Charles split.

So what if Diana spent much of the money on outrageously expensive designer clothes, beauty treatments and other self-enhancement.

So what if she flitted from one playground of the obscenely rich to another, finally in the company of an obscenely rich playboy, leaving behind in boarding school the two sons she claimed to be her paramount concern.

That's what glamour is all about, and that's what Diana's admirers want, much like the slack-jawed crowds that gather to gawk at the swells alighting from their limousines on opening night at the opera or symphony.

Or the crowds that gather around Paris Hilton and other celebrated airheads.

Those claiming more serious interests say Diana's life as the world's most famous jet-setting clothes horse doesn't matter. What counts is her fund-raising efforts for various charities and, most especially, her photo-ops with lesser folk.

Why, she was photographed, and in those costly clothes, her hair just so, actually touching dying AIDS patients, holding sick babies in her arms, speaking out against landmines that kill children.

It's not clear, however, how much her efforts actually accomplished, beyond winning Diana the public acclaim she so obviously craved and courted.

But as the response to her death has demonstrated to a distressing degree, it is clear that you can indeed fool most of the people most of the time.

Or at least you can overwhelm them with the pressure of public opinion so prodigious they cannot or will not resist it.

Dick Meister @ ZNet