PT Barnum would have been proud

I was heartbroken this week as news that the wedding of the century lasted 72 days… Actually, what brought tears to my eyes was that the American public took yet another collective step down the ladder in race to the bottom, and this particular bottom is a big one, if that shot from the New York Post isn’t retouched!

How does anyone assemble such a large group of lazy, nihilist, shallow, hopeless aspirationalists and suck them into actually believing that shallow self-absorbed and dumb as a clogheel is any way to go through life (to quote Judge Smails from Bushwood CC). Oh, and all the while selling them products and services that redefine trashy?

1. Turn on a camera I guess.

P.T Barnum may have said “sell to the masses, eat with the classes… the Kardashian Empire has somehow gotten Americans to consume endless hours of totally worthless pettiness, appears to be selling them fairly lame clothing (with what is best described as VS syndrome it looked so good on her…), and almost loading all those follower/purchasers into a ridiculous fee loaded credit card. That was finally pulled, as the smell from the fees and interest must have even penetrated the perfumed confines of the Dash boudoir. It seems no one every got poor underestimating the class of the American people.

So truth be told, I don’t mind Kim. She’s pretty. And she is not the first to run the table in the star-infatuation for profit racket.

Elizabeth Taylor carried that type of fascination factor throughout her live, and was no stranger to quickie marriages and headline grabbing affairs. But she actually DID stuff. Decent movies. Ardent support of AIDS victims. Classy as hell fashion. And articulate positions on a variety of issues that concerned our society. On the other side of the spectrum of nothingness, there is Paris Hilton, who is furious she can’t muscle onto a magazine cover lately, having contributed equally as much to society’s table as Kim, to date.

Kim has become the most extreme symbol, so far, in just how low and desperate America’s aspirations are for something better, and how totally devoid too many Americans are these days of the skills and work ethic required to actually earn any of it. That’s the saddest part of this progression, and it won’t stop until we find something better to do with our time. Like developing a skill, or creating something that benefits society, our community, or just a circle of friends. And it will take tuning the crap out of our lives and getting on with something more rewarding and redeeming.

And what’s next for Kim and the value of the throne as Queen of Nothingness? Perhaps the best answer came during lunch with Sam Zell yesterday while he talked about distressed assets: price is the cure for any perceived defect.

Sponsorship for her next wedding, or a ringside seat at the birth of her as-yet-un-announced secret love baby (no doubt conceived during an yet-to-be announced affair while married to her now belatedly-beloved for 72 days) may well fetch less that $17M. How much less and how quickly her price falls depends on how soon America snaps out of it, and moves on to something with meaning.

I’m counting on that happening, but not fast enough.

The Kardashians next season begins November 27th. Plans for her run for the Senate are as yet un-announced…