Footnotes on a Life Ill-Lived #15

² Not even them, anymore. A fractious & fractured media environment has destroyed the rock star. And huzzah! One more defeat for what Walter Benjamin would have called the cult value of art, another blow against the cult of personality. I don’t wish to seem overly sanctimonious, or to pretend that I, too, have not loved the occasional rock star, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s fundamentally bad for societies and psyches to worship icons. It obliterates thought, negates responsibility, and ultimately causes us to idolize the despicable — perhaps, even, what is depicable about the admirable. But I digress.