Nothing's Gonna Stop Her Noooooowwww!!!

I have figured out Kim Kardashian. The last week has seen the kind of ridiculousness seldom seen outside of stupid romantic comedies. The climactic anticlimaxing culmination of a long national nightmare of being celebrated for the kind of avarice, arrogance, and vapid ignorance that in previous centuries inspired political cartoons featuring pigs as people. Unfortunately, even in the wake of this new fiasco it probably won't end.
She's built a grossly lucrative empire on more or less being present. By just being there. She's proven herself very adept at things like showing up, standing, posing, smiling, collecting a check...and of course getting peed on late at night.
She shows up at parties and clubs(which she gets paid for), on twitter(where she gets paid several thousand dollars to tweet about products), they put her name and face on products(more money). And then there's the Kardashian franchise of TV shows, I've posted about her before, and my opinions are no secret. I'll save most of the venom; that's been there, done that material. I'll just share what I figured out. Let's go to the tape

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKunZnUSl_s&feature=related

Prince's Welcome to America tour earlier this year. Madison Square Garden, NYC. Prince invites her onstage. Like an idiot, she just stands there. And that's pretty much a microcosm of the entire Kardashian experience.

On Dancing With the Stars, she was cut in week three. Not really a run to be proud of when you supposedly have that many fans to theoretically vote for you.

She records the song "Jam", which is permeated by lyrical Gems as "turn me up turn me up yeah yeah yeah" and "Maybach in the front/I pick out any boy that I want". As good as my vocabulary is, It is woefully inadequate at describing the level of suck intrinsic to this recording. How often does autotune not help?

And finally, the Humphries/Kardashian wedding. Several fortunes worth of dollars spent. People fly in from all over the world toting along $200,000 worth of gifts. Kim's there. Doing all the things she's good at. Showing up, standing, posing, smiling, collecting a check. And of course getting peed on probably later that night. In the subsequent months however, having to actually be married proved too much for her. Even with every possible advantage. None of the financial concerns most married couples have, not to mention the goodwill and support of literally millions of fans that most married couples never get. With every possible advantage a newlywed couple could ever need, she couldn't handle it.

Looking at the evidence, my extrapolation is that Kim Kardashian is great. She's awesome....as long as she doesn't have to actually DO anything. Onstage with Prince, frozen stiff. Dancing with the stars, one of the first gone. Records a song, makes most want to poke out their eardrums. A wedding with all the bells and whistles. Can't handle the marriage for more than 72 days. All she can do is be present. She can be there no problem, but don't ask her to contribute, because that's asking too much.

Kim Kardashian is the worlds first fully functional multi media mannequin. She's like a screwed up version of Kim Catrall's character in the movie Mannequin. In that movie the girl was alive until people actually looked at her, in which case she froze. She could be in the room, be draped in finery and put in a window that had been decorated with elegant and exotic backdrops. However, When people actually paid attention to her; actually got a good look at her, she became frozen and hollow. A fake person in a fake scenario used to make people pony up cash for the clothes, the jewelry, and the shiny happy life. A frozen fake smiling plastic statue.

Bad Girls and Plastic Princesses(part I)

I have long felt that in the wasteland that is the current state of American popular culture, the demographic that gets it the worst is little girls. Early teen girlsare constantly bombarded with not just wrong messages, but with Mixed messages, which can be even worse. These messages are unavoidable for little girls, beamed directly into their heads via music, television, commercials, and their peers. Mixed messages about what is expected of them as they head into their teen years, what their values should be, what should be respected, how to be considered respectable. These girls grow up and become a part of the problem, passing along these mixed messages to their younger sisters and eventually their daughters.

There are many perpetrators of these messages. Currently the one that irks me the most is porn star Kim Kardashian. I'm going to call her that whenever I make reference to her. I refuse to buy into the illusion that she is noteworthy for any other reason. She is on television, she is in magazines, she has fans because she videoed herself having sex with a dude, saw it released, and made a bunch of money off of it. Now she's famous because of it. Reports put her family's 2010 earnings at $65 million, between branding(putting their name on random crap like perfume), tv shows, public appearances and twitter advertising. That's right, companies pay Porn Star Kim Kardashian to talk about their products on her twitter feed. According to the Huffington post, she has 6 million twitter followers. Many of these followers are little girls like the ones I made reference to earlier. So what are they learning from the Kardashian family?

So porn star Kim Kardashian gets famous for having sex with a b-list r&b singer. She parlays that into a playboy spread. Lord knows how but, she parlays THAT into a show for not just her, but her entire family, and now there are actually several shows featuring these people. Shows that are basically her and her equally vapid, shallow and pointless family whining about various and sundry false dramas. After thorougly denouncing her pornstar history, she appeared completely naked in V magazine.

Several months ago, the Kardashians lent their name to a pre-paid credit card. The "Kardashian card" was marketed to young people "so they could learn about how to manage their money". Eventually it was revealed that the card saddled users with some decidedly predatory financial burdens including:

- A $99 up front annual fee for using the card

-monthly fee of $7.95 that kicks in after the initial purchase period.

-A $9.95 replacement fee for a lost card

-a $25 express fee to rush a card to you if there's an emergency.

there's more, but I'll spare you. The point is, they were marketing this to KIDS! The Kardashians ended up disassociating themselves with the card, releasing a statement that said in part: “The Kardashians have worked extremely long and hard to create a positive public persona that appeals to everyone, particularly young adults. Unfortunately, the negative spotlight turned on the Kardashians as a result of the Attorney General’s comments and actions threatens everything for which they have worked.”

Some of the hijinks engaged in on this show have included the two youngest Kardashian sisters(9 and 11 at the time) trying their skills on a stripper pole. There was an episode detailing Kim's (supposed) conflict about whether or not to pose for playboy, and an episode in which Kardashian brother Robert experiences a bout of priaprism after he drinks a beverage meant for his stepfather, Bruce Jenner. The Drink had been spiked by the family's matriarch, Kris Jenner, who oversees this tawdry den of materialism and questionable values. So let me get this straight: This is the work they've done to cultivate a positive public persona of themselves for young people? Somebody get me a striped shirt and a yellow flag to throw, because I'm calling bullshit.
Notice the wording. The statement basically says they removed themselves from this card NOT because the card was bad, but because it was bad for their image. I believe that it's only because the predatory nature of the Kardashian card was found out and publicized that they moved away from it. I don't believe for a moment they cared about the possiblity of some consumer getting hosed, because I can't believe that they didn't know about this going in. Quiet as it's kept, these chicks are business owners. That's the one non hate-able thing about them. they've got a relatively successful chain of boutiques. "Business owner" translates into "knows how to read small print". They knew everything about that card before they signed on and they signed on anyway, until it became an inconvenience to their q rating. Translation: They don't care about you. They don't care about your kids. They do care about your money. they care about helping to convince you that being like them means being happy, because the more people who believe that, the richer they get.
It would seem to me that the over arching message of the Kardashian "Phenomenon" is that the best way to have a life worth living is to be born rich, spend your father's hard earned money, whore yourself out at any opportunity to anyone. And in doing so, they help to corrupt our kids.