Celebrities, my foot!

Apr 23, 2012

DOES anybody know what has happened to real celebrity and I don’t mean the ‘sub-lebrity’ we have today. ese modern ‘celebs’ who possess little talent, flash their knickers at the of a flashbulb or become famous (or try to) by being regulars at Fashion Nights in clubs, hanging out popular bars or

By Timothy Bukumunhe
DOES anybody know what has happened to real celebrity and I don’t mean the ‘sub-lebrity’ we have today. ese modern ‘celebs’ who possess little talent, flash their knickers at the drop of a flashbulb or become famous (or try to) by being regulars at Fashion Nights in clubs, hanging out popular bars or attending every possible event on the social calendar including album launches.

What they don’t know is that this type of paper fame soon evaporates and within a relatively short time, many of them go from the glitter to the gutter because, in this world of the sublebrity, real celebrities do not exist.

The nouveau celebrity rot seems to have started with the arrival of showbiz magazine on televisions, ‘Have You Heard’ in the New Vision and the Tabloids. These platforms fed the appetites of a public eager to watch heartbreak, adultery, torture and hatred served up to them daily and nightly.

And as a result, utter nobodies became instant celebrities, often garnering the front pages in the tabloids — and these wannabes demeaned themselves by not being able to string together a sentence that made sense.

WHAT MAKES ONE A CELEBRITY?
Take for example Bad Black and Judith Heard. Bad Black slithered out of nowhere. One day we all woke up and there she was in our faces almost like an irritant that won’t go away. She was tagged a celeb by her friends and the media.

But was Bad Black really a celeb?
The only celebrity status that Bad Black really achieved on her own and in her own right, and at which she probably didn’t show any exceptional talent was the ability to spread her legs and get laid to the highest drunken big time — the world of mega bucks and that was the beginning of her undoing. She exposes herself as a vain and clueless lady, who, su ce to say, that is if the gossip pages in the newspapers did not have pictures for her to look at, things would be tight.

Their instant fame had absolutely nothing to do with dedication to a craft , talent or even hard work. Instead, it was: ‘Look at me, I’m famous’— and that’s all they wanted.

Devoid of talent, beauty or charm, in order to stay in the public eye, they have had to rely on self-serving antics. And, of course, every headline-grabbing time, the antics have become more and more bizarre and outrageous.

Susan Nava, who hosts Login, a showbiz magazine is one such presenter. How she manages to ‘put herself down’ every week is beyond rationalisation and she must be the only person in Uganda who does not know that she lacks any form of talent. Amazingly enough, nobody has sought to tell her — not even her employers.

So, until somebody does and as long as she continues to appear in the gossip pages with the most plastic of a facial smile that was moulded in the factory at Nice House of Plastics and with a pose that an amputee could have done better at, she is deluded in thinking that she is a celeb.

So we have had television presenter Straka Mwezi turning up to officiate at an event with the most outrageous hairstyle — if it can be called a hairstyle, and causing paparazzi chaos whenever she ventured out of her house. We have also had various celebrities spreading their legs just wide enough for the cameras to get a glimpse of their underwear or spilling their breasts out of their dresses.

There has also been Bebe Cool, who conveniently got shot by a night watchman and Chameleone who ‘whilst still asleep’ also conveniently walked himself out of a fourth floor hotel window in Tanzania.

What about Bebe Cool’s wife, Zuena?
She was a brief hit when she took part in Miss Uganda some years ago, but had she not gotten involved with Bebe Cool, she would have been a thing of the past just like most of the former contestants are today. Honestly speaking, ask yourself, what is so celebrity about Zuena except being a ‘brown brown’ a light skin complexion that many men crave for today?

Then there is South African based Zari and Susan Ochola who are grabbing the headlines in Kampala. Never heard of them? No, neither had I until recently. They are an extremely surly and charmless bunch. By the way, Ochola flaunts her bosom — barely covering them up, she actually thinks that they will compensate for her lack of talent and acumen.

It might just work out for her because with a bust that large, whenever Ochola walks into a room, it is her bust that walks in first while the rest of her follows later. And get this, it makes her day!

Zari thinks that by throwing money about and getting involved in fights in the toilets of Ange Noir, she is boosting her celeb status. Alas, what the poor misguided soul does not seem to comprehend is that it is not money, nor driving a car that has personalised plates, or living in South Africa that makes somebody a celeb.

And somebody should also take her aside and find out if she is bleaching. If she is, please tell her that a real celeb woman that she aspires to be keeps her skin natural.

TRUE CELEBRITY IMAGES WILL NEVER FADE
But for some weird reason we have taken them to heart that we can’t get enough of them. And they’ve done nothing, said nothing and, in fact, are utterly without any appealing characteristics. Today, the magazines and entertainment shows are populated with people who don’t have much talent, but loads of chutzpah and who are managing to crawl up the ladder of populist celebdom by fair means or foul.

But newspaper and TV bosses know it’s cheaper to get unknowns who might become famous (or wannabes desperate for those 15 minutes of fame) than to get a team of people researching for weeks on end the life of a real celeb which nobody will want to read.

So today’s minor celebrities — lacking any true discernable talent to maintain their fame and desperate for as much attention as possible — need to behave ever more outrageously to garner headlines. Every day the news is full of some starlet or wannabe with her boobs hanging out or dressing like a tramp in cheapest of mivumba rags.

But the saddest part about our obsession with sub-lebrities is that so many young girls strive to emulate them. If Ochola wears a blouse that barely conceals her bosom, then a good crop of many young girls seem to think that if its OK for her, its OK for them too.

True celebrity is not just a passing fad. True celebrities’ images won’t fade — unlike those of the sorry crop of nobodies who are now passing for ‘stars’.

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