Human in the end

I have no internet at my apartment and I still have scads of unpacking and arranging to do, so naturally, I am watching a lot of television. I'm limited to the shows whose seasons I own on DVD--DVDs I stopped collecting after I got my Netflix account three years ago--so I'm currently on side B of disc 1 of the first season of The West Wing.

For those of you not familiar with the show, it's a fast-paced, über-witty, Aaron Sorkin extravaganza that follows the administration of a fictional Democratic POTUS whose term is supposed to appear to take place around the turn of this century, when the show was on the air, but doesn't interact with almost any specific, real-time events or people in the real world. It's incredibly well written and intelligent, and, if my Poli-Sci 101 grade is any indication, it's pretty educational. I've seen the first season probably a good three or four times more than any of the others, in part because my mom has this morbid fascination with the first seasons of shows, and in part because it was the only one I was able to swipe from my parents' house.

The episode that I just finished was called "Mr. Willis of Ohio." It's a fascinating episode for many reasons and it's one that I gladly rewatch every once in a while, but I was engaged this time by something I'm not sure Sorkin meant to call attention to. (I mean, I can't be sure; Sorkin has always struck me as a man who walks a thin line between being a god among writers and being an arrogant guy who would claim coincidence as art to keep from looking too mortal, so maybe he does plan everything people experience while watching his shows, or maybe he'd swear he does.)

There's a particularly dramatic scene in "Mr. Willis" where The President is explaining to his 19-year-old daughter that she is a huge security risk, especially since she is about to start college. President Bartlet is a passionate man who uses eloquent and, in this case, terrifying rhetoric to make people see his points, so instead of calmly illuminating the situation, he enacts quite the display.

The look on Zoe's face as her father is reaming her out for being a teenager when he has a country to run made me think, in a way I hadn't before, about celebrity and its costs. Zoe Bartlet never existed, but Barack Obama does have a wife and two daughters, and their family existed before his presidency. Before the campaigns, the fund raisers, the approval ratings, before the late nights, the death threats, the "friends" coming out of the woodwork, they were a family. But trying to imagine even that family's camping trips that involve hacky sacks instead of cell phones and late nights that result in nothing more than children being grounded for a week seems unrealistic to me.

I don't like politics, I don't like reality television, and I kind of thought North was a nice name and definitely thought it was a stupid topic of conversation, but I would be a dirty hypocrite if I said I didn't understand and even relate to their popularity. I'm an avid reader and amateur writer, I understand and enjoy drama. Every time I'm in the grocery store check out line, I do glance at the excitement there, if only just to look smugly down my nose.

My derision doesn't make the stars of these big stages any safer, any more common, any less of a spectacle. It doesn't give them any more opportunities to take control of their own lives. Even in my entertainment snobbery, I am still a stranger inexplicably involved in a stranger's life, and it is the existence of vast groups of so involved stangers that necessitates that conversation between a president and his daughter, and that leads to that look on Zoe Bartlet's face. A girl fearing for her life and the influence it has that she never asked for and that now she doesn't know what to do with.

Some people do work to get that influence, but it always comes with unforseen if not undeserved consequences.  What is the correct response, as a common person, to celebrity? Even when the phrase "they knew what they were getting into" applies, does it cover all the sins people in the public eye have to endure?

I was in London during the Royal Wedding two years ago. When asked to write my congratulations to the happy couple in chalk on the sidewalks outside Buckingham Palace, I wrote "Better you than me." Royalty, especially modern royalty, is the perfect example of celebrity without choice, and that little Prince George was a household name before the boy even had a name strikes me as sad and frightening. I can't put my finger on why, though.