No talent required to be famous

Got no talent, but still want to be a celebrity?

I’ve got good news for you. Now more than ever, technology and our culture have made it easy for morons like you and me to capture the public’s attention.

Time was, becoming famous required a great talent or monumental achievement. Back in the day, if you were on the cover of a magazine or on television, chances were that you boldly cured polio, bravely fought off a horde of Nazis or were talking straight to the public about how awesome cigarettes were for their health (hey, lying is a talent too).

In the age of YouTube and MySpace, becoming a celebrity no longer requires achievement or merit of any sort. With a complete lack of commonsense, artisitc value or human decency, and a good Internet connection, you too can be famous.

Celebrity is a lot like children, syphillis and other STDs; it’s easily spread by intimate contact with the right person. Our most high profile recent example of this phenomenon is Ashley Dupre, who was catapulted into the public eye after it was revealed that she was the personal friction contractor for former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (named by Time Magazine as one of America’s Top Five Governors Who Look Like One of the Cavemen from the GEICO ads). Dupre joins a long list of nobodies who became somebody by being naked at the right place at the right time with the right person. Notable past travelers on this path to fame: Kevin Federline, Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Dole, and Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands six through 15.

Another way to insert yourself into the public eye is to poke at some of our society’s scabbed over wounds in a very dumb and very public way. For example, consider the notoriety obtained by an Ohio state trooper who recently took a picture of himself in a white hood and mask and electronically sent it to his fellow troopers. For the investment of about $7 and five minutes, the trooper gained the attention of the public, who is always eager to find an incident they can have a knee-jerk reaction of outrage regarding.

So if you’re looking for a quick route to fame, and you don’t mind getting fired or attacked on the street, do something glaringly insensitive like leaving a BLT on top of the Koran, showing up schnockered for a Mothers Against Drunk Driving event or holding a Civil War re-enactment on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, take pictures of your transgression and stupidly post them somewhere the public can see them.

Also, as mentioned before, YouTube and MySpace are excellent ways to promote yourself. Want a quick ticket to fame? Video yourself doing something abysmally stupid like beating someone up in front of the police station or trying to steal from the free sample lady at the grocery store and post it to the Internet.

Rejecting Scientology is also a great way to gain public attention. TV actor Jason Beghe recently made headlines when he described the religion, of which he was a member for 12 years, as a fraud. Beghe’s rejection of Scientology has led many Americans to ask the deep spiritual questions, "Who is this TV actor Jason Beghe guy? Was he on 90210 or Melrose Place?" bringing him more public attention than he’s received in probably 15 years.

If you’re looking for a few seconds in the public eye, take a few pictures of yourself tossing a copy of Dianetics into a volcano and send it to your friends. If people ask the obvious, "But hey Bob, I thought you were a Unitarian, not a Scientologist," calmly panic and hit them on the head with a mackerel. People will then believe you are a recovering Scientologist, because who else but a former Scientologist would carry a mackerel around.

Lawyers for the Church of Scientology can send their mackerels to jcook@dothaneagle.com.