Do Celebrities Really Desesrve so Much Media Attention?

December 7 was the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, so what was the day's big Internet buzz? Alec Baldwin. Poor Alec got himself kicked to the tarmac for refusing to stop playing the video game, "Words With Friends," while on a plane. An American Airlines Facebook post explained what happened next: "...the passenger was extremely rude to the crew, calling them inappropriate names and using offensive language. Given the facts above, the passenger was removed from the flight and denied boarding."

Alec broke an FAA regulation, then behaved like a jerk. He got what he deserved; but did he deserve the media attention that followed? His highly publicized tantrum-on-a-plane was just one more example of celebrity media hype gone wild. Were he an everyday schmoe, he might have been arrested, and no one would have known about the incident nor cared. Because he was a celebrity, even the Christian Science Monitor weighed in on whether or not game playing fliers are a flight risk.

Too much celebrity information

Consider that whole Kardashian thing. Reality show fame opened up their daily fluff to media scrutiny. They aren't feeding the poor or helping war orphans. Okay, Khloe did that naked PETA thing, but like many other celebrity stories, Kardashian tales are mostly humdrum at best. Why do people soak them up like thirsty sponges? It's because celebrity media hype is everywhere and too hard to ignore?

TV Shows like TMZ and E thrive because of it. Major news sources write about it. The internet is saturated with entertainment blogs, vlogs, videos and celebrity blurbs. Stars interact with fans on twitter and Facebook. The numbers are staggering. A recent Yahoo! Search showed 98 million "Kardashian" hits. Googling "Alec Baldwin" turned up 200 million. You can't avoid it?

Is there really that much celebrity hype?

Lexicalist.com, a site that analyzes online word usage, says "Kardashian" is written an average of once every 76,429 internet words. Compare that to "economy," used once every 91,950 words. Lexicalist's Justin Bieber statistics reveal his internet demographic is not just smitten adolescent girls. It spans preteen to Boomer, with nearly 37% males. Kardashians and Alec Baldwin stats show similarly wide demographics. Everybody's into it.

So there's no escaping celebrity media hype. It's everywhere; but that doesn't mean you can't ignore it and read about Pearl Harbor instead.