According to PEOPLE.com, “Teresa Giudice is taking a lot of heat for allegedly spending $60,000 on home furnishings and luxury items immediately after filing for bankruptcy last October, but her attorney says that was her money to spend any way she wanted.”
So, why is she taking heat, and from whom?
Come on.
We’re talking about a New Jersey “Housewives” co-star who flips tables, starts random fights with her (albeit troubled cast member, Danielle), uses made-up words like “cleansiness” and makes a living by spending her husband’s money. It is her job to keep up the luxurious image of her family, and, as such, she must spend!
Shouldn’t we be happy that the $60,000 came from her own doing, and not her husband’s work? According to her attorney, that ridiculous sum of money she just spent on home furnishings was part of an advance she received from her book deal.
No word on whether she actually wrote “her” book, but in our society, such manic payments and expenditures are okay—regardless of whether the beneficiary makes any life-changing contributions back to her environment.
Besides, we’re the very viewers that created the economy of overzealous celebs who buy $60,000 home furnishings.
We created the economy of nothingness: we unwind from our own stressful lives by watching “nothingness” television (i.e. anything that contains fighting, screaming, and catchphrases we can use like “who gonna check me boo?”), which we pay cable companies to show.
The cable companies, enthralled with the fact that that we love watching nothingness, order more shows from the network channels, who pay TV directors to develop more and more programs about nothing.
In other words, we donate our time, money and integrity, just so that the Teresa Guidices of the world can be adorned with celebrity. We enable the creation of such personas, and we sustain the economy of nothingness by making sure we follow every season of nothing.
After we make this nothingness empire larger than life, book deals about nothing start flying all over the place: signaling a demand to read what the Teresa Guidices has to say, and not just watch her. Television is no longer good enough for our nothingness—now, we want DVDs, coffee mugs, tee-shirts and books about this nothingness.
As the economy of nothingness shows its bottom vis-à-vis some of these “celebrities” we created, we suddenly grow upset because the smart cookie, Teresa, who has pimped our viewership wants to get some furnishings that costs more than many people make?
No. Let’s halt the faux outrage, ladies and gentleman. You know, and I know, that we’re the ones holding the remote control.
