We here at Bloody Nib Manor have never been especially fond of professional actors or athletes. We've always held them in our esteem as college philosophy professors. In other words, adolescents living a prolonged adolescence. Often a much too long prolonged adolescence.
Ask yourself this question:
Why should a man or woman be paid a lot of money to do the same thing that you did for free, or had to pay to do (child sports and theatre) as a child or as a young person? If your answer is because of the excellence of their performance you've made the wrong answer. Those same people who are paid a mighty sum of money to pretend to be who they aren't or who play a game better than the average bear would, if they were really interested in the thing that they excel in, do that thing as a hobby while working at the local machine shop or as a para-legal because, according to their own words, they have a "passion" for it,
But they don't have a passion for their acting or sport. They have a passion for the money it brings them. No man or woman over the age of 30 would risk ruining his or her knees by playing weekend football or soccer while working a 9 to 5 job. And acting, while easier on the body than athletics, reveals the actors and wannabes by the few people sitting in the seats of the local Little Theatre. The person who is now a big star would have, after a half dozen plays with a quarter filled theatres would have chucked it all and gone back to the job at the bank. The "passion" lasts as long as the money does.
The Romans of the Classical and Empire times, while liking theatre and various sports, held actors and professional athletes in low regard. Those two groups were considered little more than jesters who offered a moment's distraction from daily life. To be sure, many upper class Roman men longed for a female athlete and often impregnated one, and the Roman matrons got all hot and bothered by an actor or a gladiator. But it was considered shameful. A man consorting with proper prostitutes was considered more comely than having a fling with a female athlete (there were few, if any, female actors at the time).
In 17th and 18th century England the theatres were considered little more than whorehouses for the upper class. Professional athletes were considered meat to be bet upon much like dogs in bull-baiting or fighting cocks.
But for some reason both "professions" have become respectable. And instead of looking at them with at askance, we seem to have made them heroes and heroines of almost Homeric dimensions. They have become all-wise gods of some sort and not just experts in their fields.
And this is just not true. The average guy working at the 7-11 or you mechanic or plumber or preacher or para-legal is more aware of what is going on the world than the average actor or athlete simply because they live in the real world and have to break a sweat to make the rent, feed their kids or/and pay for Obamacare. They are down on the ground. Actors and actresses are often made much of because they are accidents of birth (they are pretty or good liars) and professional athletes are accidents of birth by their talents. But their talents, both the theatre crowd and the stadium crowd, are not wise. They are not cultured. They are vulgar and esily swayed because they want to be something that they are not. They want to be considered smart and wise because they know the gag better than we do. They know that they are, in the big picture, nothing. They will soon be forgotten by the people who now adore them. A new model will come along.
Your old great granny and her granny and their wisdom and smarts will be more of you and your DNA and be much longer remembered than a paid liar or a paid athlete. Their names may go into a book. But your granny's wisdom lives in the blood and will be passed on to the kids who call you granny or gramps.
And those bastards hate that.
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