Fame Factor

I can't deny it: In some ways, I benefitted from being fired by CNN.

But it's not like I planned it that way.

A few nights ago on the Fox network's latest bid at ushering in the Idiot Apocalypse, The Moment of Truth, a 26-year-old woman named Lauren Cheri admitted on national television that she slept around and didn't really want to be married to her husband. In keeping with the show's format -- one apparently conceived by the Marquis de Sade -- the husband in question was sitting just a few feet away as his wife did to his dignity what half the teams in the NFL team did to the Miami Dolphins last season. Oh, and just because it's been awhile since a TV show drove someone to suicide -- the question that brought all of this to light was posed by none other than Lauren Cheri's ex-boyfriend.

Needless to say, it was great television.

Supposedly Cheri's husband -- who's a New York City cop incidentally -- had already suspected that his wife was cheating on him before he let her be hooked to a lie detector in front of 8-million people. If that's the case, it makes it slightly harder to feel sorry for the guy; he must've known what the hell he was getting himself into. If not, the NYPD needs to take his gun away immediately; no one with that little common sense should be walking around armed. I suppose it's possible that, knowing what he knew about his wife, he figured he'd try to at least make the best of a bad situation and turn his wife's infidelity into a gold-mine.

According to Lauren Cheri, that's what she was trying to do.

Cheri now claims that her game-show confession was the centerpiece of a master-plan to thrust her into the limelight and bring her fame and fortune -- I guess to catapult her from ordinary bleach-blonde, silicone-enhanced, dumbshit wife of a cop to universally-loathed, gold-digging, dumbshit divorced laughing-stock. Sad to say, so far the only thing her calculated Moment of Truth has gotten her is some views on YouTube, a broken marriage and, in all probability, an invisible target on her back should she ever set foot in her soon-to-be-ex-husband's precinct again. In an interview circulating this weekend, she says she's received no personal windfall so far and would now very much like to save her relationship with her humiliated hubby.

The fact that Lauren Cheri seems legitimately stunned that no one's beating down her door with job offers, samples of her new fragrance line, bags of money and invitations to party with Lindsay Lohan is really the saddest part of this story, for reasons which should be glaringly obvious.

It's no secret that we live in a world where anyone can be famous, for any reason, and where infamy and fame are interchangable; each produces the same result. Rather than turning a blind camera-eye, the media have gleefully canonized human flotsam like Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith, creating and perpetuating an entirely new class of celebrities: those who are famous simply for being famous. Factor in the 24/7 press's insatiable hunger for fresh meat and even the most average among us -- the victims of circumstances ranging from the tragic to the ridiculous -- can achieve a level of notoriety that rivals that of most movie stars; 15-minute media darlings, from runaway brides, to killer husbands, to the loved ones of missing kids, spend so much time in our living rooms that they become as familiar to us as our own families.

It's never been a better time for crass opportunism and anyone armed with an agenda, a complete lack of shame, and a little circular reasoning -- enough to make someone believe that being a person on TV makes one a TV personality -- now stands ready to make a gruesome spectacle out of him or herself in front of millions. The formula is simple: Take your most unseemly quality, whether it be a willingness to eat live cockroaches or court Flavor Flav, or maybe just the fact that you're a despicable liar; cop to it on camera and/or in front of an audience; become a punchline on Best Week Ever; be somebody.

Of course a little attention isn't always its own reward, as Lauren Cheri is now learning.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've thought quite a bit about whether the relatively tiny spotlight I found myself in was really earned. Getting fired from a job shouldn't be grounds for an automatic infusion of notoriety and I'm not sure I ever deserved any; some have made the point that had my ideals truly been strong, I would've quit long before CNN caught me trying to have it both ways. It's a fair argument I suppose -- though I might still challenge my detractors to simply walk away from the only career they've ever known.

In the end, for me at least, it comes down to the fact that I've willingly put most of my spare time and effort into this site for more than a year-and-a-half; some of what I've written here I'm very proud of and some, though not all, I think is worth being seen by more than a handful of dedicated readers. I can't say that I'm thrilled with the event that drew a lot of eyes in this direction, but I'm pleased with what they found when they got here.

What this accidental recognition will mean in the long run, who knows.

Lauren Cheri didn't even get the hundred-thousand dollar prize -- and she was actually trying.