Celebrity creep ...

... continues to afflict civilization. See Is it ever ... at the Literary Saloon. (Hat tip, Maxine Clarke.) The fascination with celebrities fascinates me - a little. People think they're interested in, say, Julia Roberts. But what they know of Julia Roberts is an image seen on the screen or on the covers of magazines or in newspapers. Julia Roberts is someone who is telegenic in a peculiar way and a person who makes her living delivering lines written by someone else. She may, for all I know, be wonderfully intelligent and insightful. But I have seen no evidence to that effect. And that is certainly not how she became a celebrity. This attachment people have to images reminds one of nothing so much as the goings on (or lack of same) Plato's cave.