Ann1231's Blog

I'm on a couple of boards now that has bickering going on because of "celebrity spokepersons". I don't get it. Why do we need a celebrity to validate what we have? Does it make the disease any more real? No. Does it make it "ok" to have? no. It might make it the flavor of the month disease which we don't need. I truly don't get why people think it's such a grand thing to have a celebrity vocalize their disease. It doesn't change my life or my disease if celebrity 'X' has it. It doesn't make me want to run up and down the street proclaiming I'm just like celebrity 'X'. It's quite frankly none of my damn business who has this or any other disease. If someone wants to come out and say 'hey, I have this, and this is what it is' and gives a decent and accurate account of the disease and how to seek help or assistance with said disease, fine, great, but for me, it's no different than if joe blow from the next town puts an article in the paper about it. It would have the same credibility, the same substance, the same affect for me. What is this country's fascination with celebrities and if a celebrity does it, has it, wants it, than it's suddenly better than everything else? I'd rather hear a news segment on my local news channel or a feature with a medical professional on CNN or TIME or something like that. THAT would carry a whole lot more weight with me than if the celebrity of the month has the disease of the month.

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I don't think I will ever understand this obsession with celebrities and their private lives and/or how we "need" them to speak for us. If it's so important to (collective or individual) you that word gets out about this or any other issue than damn it, get out and do it yourself. Don't sit and wait for someone else to do it. Contact your local news station and ask them to run a segment on their news. Many news stations have a medical segment and love to have viewer input. I had an issue years ago with a city ordinance and I contacted my local news asking them to run the flip side of the story and they did several segments and it made a huge difference, the ridiculous ordinance did not go thru and that was very much due to getting the word out about the OTHER side of the story. This is no different. If it's that important, there are many ways to make your voice heard. Contact your local newspaper and see if they would run a story, contact your tv stations, contact your health magazines, radio stations. Many of them are more than willing to run stories on things like this.

rant over......for now