Annoying Scandals

I am so sick of turning on the TV and hearing about David Letterman or the scandal between Jon and Kate Goseelin.   Over and over TV shows reiterate the accounts told by each person as if they are covering a major media event.  Why is it that they continue to go on about these two scandals?  Better yet why are they considered scandals at all?

            These people represent average Americans, even more then actors we see in films.  When watching  both of their shows it appears as if the stars are simply acting  like themselves. These people are not reading scripts, they are simply real people.  We feel as if we can relate to them and their stories.  David Letterman is an average guy , who has been with a women for years and he keeps his  private life away from the media (when he can).  Jon and Kate  (plus their kids) represent a version of the average America family  , just trying to get by. These people’s  relationships represented the American ideals of what a marriage or family should look like and the media overreacts once these  ideals are disrupted.

            The people we see in the media are just normal people, who make mistakes.   America  tries to uphold certain dominant ideologies on different institutions such as marriage, and when  “celebrities” make mistakes a message must be sent to the public.  This enables the media , the higher power, to demonstrate ethical values necessary for people to obtain.  The same overreaction from the media occurs when a celerity is caught with drugs or gets in a car accident.  These people are supposed to act like model citizens of what everyone should aspire to be.  When someone famous messes up they have the power to redeem themselves ,but only after times goes by and they must demonstrate some action towards recovery.  One form of this recovery would be rehab.  Every time they speak about David Letterman they mention how it was good of him to apologize on air.  This is exactly how he has begun to redeem himself and thus demonstrate to the public that what he did was wrong and shameful. When the media condemns these people, who act oppositional to the dominant ideologies , they are in turn continuing to  promote the dominant American ideologies by demonstrating the negative consequences of acting against the American norms .