According to the L.A. Times, Donald Trump is currently negotiating to buy Ed McMahon’s foreclosed Beverly Hills home from its lender. His plan is to let McMahon continue to live in the home, saying that helping the TV legend would be, “An honor.”
Is that really what this is? An honor? It’s some sort of benevolent act to help a man who’s made millions of dollars with his current financial predicament. This is sort of like feeling charitable for dropping George Clooney the phone number of your hot girlfriend. Rich people shouldn’t need help with money, so why do we feel compelled to listen to their sob stories or even have the urge to help them out?
It has a lot to do with our celebrity culture, of course. A channel that reported on nothing but the whereabouts of Britney, Paris, and Lindsay would probably get great ratings, oh wait, E! already does. But this culture is usually one of malice, one that seeks do deride celebrities rather than elevate them. Why is it different when they’re down on their luck?
It’s simple really. When a celebrity runs out of money, they’ve become one of us. We now have a shot seeing them in front of us in line at Advance America signing the papers on 78% interest loan just so they can afford to buy Ramen. Suddenly, we want to help them just like we would our friend who’s lost his job or a family member who can’t pay his bills.
This is because of the omnipresence of celebrity. Because these people are, in effect, our friends and family. They’re in our home more often than most of our friends, and we’re often happier to see them than our relatives, so I guess it makes sense that we all feel a need to help them out during hard times. There’s only one difference between these people and the people with whom we regularly spend time: Celebrities are filthy, stinking rich.
It’s nobody’s fault but their own that a house they could have paid cash for 15 years ago is in foreclosure because they felt a need for an upgrade after they’d run through their money. It’s not like these people couldn’t afford to live comfortably either, McMahon is currently residing in a 6 bed/5 bath mansion in Beverly Hills, are we to feel sorry for a guy who shelled out millions we could have lived comfortably in a 3 bedroom townhouse in Sherman Oaks?
I don’t. I don’t feel a thing for him. I didn’t feel any sort of sympathy for him whatsoever when he showed up on “Larry King Live” a few months ago in a neckbrace whining about his problems with money. All I could think was, “I wish I had that much money to lose.”
It may be cliche but there are a lot of people in this country and the rest of the world that don’t have enough to eat at night, and now we’re supposed to take up alms for a guy who spent 30 years on the most popular talk show of all time.
I say no. In fact, it’s not entirely out of place to laugh at him a bit. Snicker at the fact that somebody who’s so rich now has turn to somebody even richer simply because they could go on being rich themselves. There’s nothing wrong with making light of that in any way.
After all, it’s probably what Johnny Carson would have done.
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