Focus on the superficial draws attention away from what’s important.

I have visited a few doctors recently, and looking at the magazines in their waiting rooms has confirmed a trend that has bothered me lately. The newsmakers who are presented to us as celebrities by the mass media are nearly all entertainers. The people who get their pictures in “People” magazine or in the “Parade” Sunday supplement to the newspaper are already familiar to us as movie stars, TV personalities, or Top 40 singers. Countless books by and about entertainers crowd the bookstores. The personal lives of the stars even qualify as news.

Certainly famous entertainers have always fascinated the reading and viewing public, but these days they crowd out nearly everyone else. Only occasionally a professional athlete sneaks into our view, especially these days if he or she has taken steroids.

It was not always like this. The media used to sometimes focus our attention on other types of people: scientists, lawyers, artists, doctors, writers. But people who create things, who help others or who have original ideas are no longer given space in the media. People who entertain us now dominate as media heroes.

Not anyone who works in entertainment qualifies. The camera operator, the studio musician, the stunt man or the animator remain anonymous. The spotlight shines only on the stars, those already in front of the camera. I think it’s worth questioning this trend.

The media produces many of the role models whom our children learn to revere and emulate. The superficiality of media stars’ lives, with their emphasis on clothes and parties, has contributed to the overemphasis on physical appearance that permeates our culture. The moral messages propagated by the incessant attention to entertainers’ conspicuous consumption, continual partner-swapping and brainless antics are seductively unhealthy for young people.

The focus on entertainers devalues those who pursue the more productive pursuits that keep our society functioning. True local heroes, who dedicate their lives to the well-being of their communities, stand little chance of receiving the attention they deserve.

One reason this is happening is that our news media are increasingly owned by the same corporations that produce movies and music. Viacom owns the CBS network, dozens of radio stations, Paramount Pictures and Simon and Schuster books. Time Warner owns Time magazine, Warner Brothers studios, CNN and TNT.

The movie stars from one corporate division show up in the news reports of another division. Media celebrities not only sell us products, they also are the products who are sold to us as people to admire.

More and more media faces are being promoted as potential political leaders, who can translate their widespread recognition into votes. It’s absurd that media celebrity of any kind, no matter how it has been acquired, is a qualification for political leadership.

What does it mean that Americans are being bombarded with the faces of entertainers? Just as movies and TV are a distraction from real life, the media’s focus on entertainers serves to distract us from the realities of our national life. As the media focuses more on entertainment, it brings us less of the information that we need to function in our increasingly complex society.

The biggest questions of modern life – about the economy, about the environment, about international politics, about social justice, about war – have been pushed off the screen by the incessant focus on pretty faces. Meanwhile, the very conglomerates that dominate our media gain an increasing role in influencing political decisions through their control over information and money.

The Roman Empire is said to have collapsed as its population focused on gladiators and circuses. I’m not sure that’s the truth, but I do think that our culture’s obsession with stars prevents us from grappling with the real issues in American life.

Steve Hochstadt teaches history at Bates College. He can be reached by e-mail at: [email protected].