What are celebrities for?

What are celebrities for? Not to serve as role models, or as people we admire or envy, or as people we emulate or follow. No. We need celebrities for one absolute necessity: to have someone to gossip about. Now that so many of us live lives of isolation in big cities, instead of lives of community in small towns (our only community is the office), we need celebs to give us a sense of community. We need them so we have something to share. We used to gossip about the neighbors; now we gossip about celebs. Thank God they're there to fulfil this most vital of human needs. That's what makes Paris Hilton so appealing. As a rich, spoiled, pretty, shameless hedonist, she's the ultimate gossip fodder.