Gene Veith on our cult of celebrity

Reports are that Barack Obama is appointing as Surgeon General that doctor guy on CNN, Sanjay Gupta. By that logic, Michelle Malkin suggests Judge Judy for the next Supreme Court opening.

Comedian Al Franken will likely be the Senator from Minnesota. Kennedy princess Carolyn Kennedy may well be the Senator from New York. We already have a body-builder action-movie star as governor of California.

Maybe we should just turn everything over to the celebrities whom we adore. Some societies have had aristocracy (rule of the “best”) and others have had plutocracy (rule of the rich). We used to have democracy (rule of “the people”) until the people found that boring and an interruption of their entertainment. I think we are ready for celebritocracy (rule of the celebrities).

[That is a new word, as far as I know. Use it and make it spread. It would be the pinnacle of my achievements to add a word to the English language and to get a credit in a future edition of The Oxford English Dictionary. UPDATE: Bob Hunter tells me the word is already out there. Foiled again! FURTHER UPDATE: Others of you are piling on. Stop tormenting me for my failure!]

What other celebrities would you suggest for high government office?

OK, I’ll go first:

(1) Kiefer Sullivan for Director of the CIA. (As Jack Bauer, he would surely know more about espionage than Leon Panetta.)

(2) Sen. Fred Thompson for Attorney General. (He did such a good job at that on Law and Order.)