Love Nuke

For most of the last century, Americans — and especially religious Americans — have been expressing concern about who is a hero in America. Religious Americans today are particularly distressed about celebrity culture and the inclination of their children to find something heroic in the antics of Lady Gaga or whoever else may be the latest focus of celebrity gossip. A number of weighty theories have developed about the meaning of America’s celebrity obsession; some claim that celebrities have been deified by young people who lack a moral center and that celebrity worship has become a substitute for traditional religion. I offer three thoughts on the subject of American heroes.

First, young Americans do not worship celebrities. They do not see Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen as worthy of emulation or sources of inspiration. They love celebrities and the gossip surrounding them but mostly as a source of entertainment and distraction. Of course, celebrity status is inflated today because of our media-saturated culture; we can learn more details, engage in more gossip, and be endlessly titillated by inside stories and frank language. Nonetheless, young people are fully aware that most celebrity lives are devoid of real purpose or value. And even for the young, their interest has a strong element of schadenfreude: They watch the rise of celebrities, knowing that in most cases the rise will be followed quickly by a fall. Indeed, if young people have a problem, it is not that celebrities are their heroes; it is that they have no heroes at all.

Second, when it comes to heroes, parents have hardly set a good example. Even when they recognize authentic heroes, they seem unable to remember them and honor them in an appropriate way. The 9/11 First Responders are the most recent example. At a defining moment in our country’s history, these Americans responded with great devotion, love of country, and physical courage to guarantee the safety and security of their fellow citizens. And yet, a decade later, with many suffering and dying of disease, they were brushed aside by a political establishment that had acclaimed their actions and sang their praises. If it had not been for the intervention of John Stewart — a comedian — it is likely that these heroes would have been ignored and forgotten. I am not certain that this is a matter of American self-absorption, but it is certainly indicative of fleeting attention spans and an absence of moral seriousness.

Third, in a world devoid of heroes, religious Americans have a special responsibility to offer the young examples of heroes with whom they can identify and who inspire personal transformation. We have a ready source of such heroes in our religious texts, and especially the Bible. There we find accounts of spiritual heroes, moral heroes and military heroes, who can serve as an example to the young and who offer practical values that enrich their lives. In my own classes, I often focus on lesser known Biblical characters, because the young like to find their inspiration in unconventional places. As one example, I ask them to consider the case of Pharoah’s daughter. This young woman is given no name in the Biblical account and appears in only a few verses in the early sections of the Exodus story (Exodus 2:5-10). Why is she a hero? There are multiple reasons, as young people quickly point out. Because in a heartless society she demonstrated compassion toward an abandoned child. Because she defied the cruel edicts of an absolute ruler who had called for the murder of innocent children. Because she was courageous — adopting a child, after all, was a demonstrative public act, certain to infuriate Egyptian rulers. Because in saving the child she was defying not only the authorities but her own father — a sensitive and difficult point, but an important one. Because in rebelling against the apparatus of the Egyptian state, she was rejecting the privileges of her own class and siding with an oppressed minority. Did this nameless heroine make a difference? Well, yes. She changed the course of history.

Lady Gaga is bizarre and interesting, and celebrity figures are a wonderful diversion. Nonetheless, true heroes, such as this brave daughter of an ancient ruler, are in a different moral category. A society without heroes is a society in moral peril, and our children are hungry for role models who can give their life purpose. Turning to our ancient texts and traditions, religious Americans need to fill the vacuum.

LADY GaGa had a low-key New Year’s Eve celebration over the weekend.

The Poker Face hitmaker and her boyfriend Luc Carl dined with friends at West Village, New York, tapas bar Caliu, but left at about 11:30 p.m. once patrons started to recognize her in a long, tight, black dress with a train, according to New York Post gossip column Page Six.

Recent reports claimed GaGa has decided she’s desperate to teach fashion and art appreciation at a prestigious New York City university.

“She wants to be a college lecturer and has asked about a position at the famous Parsons School For Design,” a source told a British tabloid newspaper.

“She wants to use her fashion sense and avant garde art obsession to launch an academic career.

“She’s pitched to be an artist-in-residence.

“Nothing has been finalized yet, but she’d like to teach in the fashion design program.

“She wants to incorporate elements of music study, popular culture and media studies.

“If it goes well, she’d be interested in a more perm­anent arrangement.

“She thinks teaching would make people see she is much more than just a flamboyant pop star.”

A list of Hollywood celebrities has “killed” in an attempt to raise money for charity. These artists have signed all the social media networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook, to raise a target amount of $ 1 million (S $ 1.3 million) to charity Keep a Child Alive.

This love is an initiative of the R&B singer Alicia Keys and a campaign called “Digital Life sacrifice” has bare celebrity photos.

Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Usher are just one of the celebrities who participated in this campaign, December 1, which is also World AIDS Day.

They just log on social networking platforms, when the U.S. $ 1,000,000 has been reached.

With the one-year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death just days away, the King of Pop’s father, Joe, has opened up about his son’s death and the status of Michael’s children.

“I wanted [Katherine] to step in and go in and … keep him cheered up,” Joe said of his wife and Michael’s mother, Katherine Jackson, in a video posted on News of the World’s website on Sunday. “She didn’t want to do that because she was afraid she was invading his privacy.”

He added that the pair fought over the subject — and that things might have been different had she gone to Michael as the pop star prepared for his planned “This Is It” concerts at London’s O2 Arena, which were set to kick off last summer.

“We argued about that several times. ‘Katherine, if you don’t go see him, he won’t be with us too long,’” Joe can be heard saying in the News of the World video. “I thought he was looking kind of funny and frail a little bit. I told her, ‘This would have not have happened if you had been with him a while because he would have been more relaxed. By you being with him, things would’ve went much better than what they did. We gone lost our son now.’”

On Monday, however, Katherine’s attorney issued a statement to Access Hollywood, over her husband’s remarks.

“Joe Jackson’s statements and conduct toward Mrs. Jackson are outrageous,” Katherine’s attorney, Adam Streisand said. “The world knows Mrs. Jackson has always been a loving and caring mother and grandmother, and she had a very special relationship with Michael. The world also knows who Joe Jackson is and he seems bent on never letting us forget.”

Joe appeared to be in better spirits when he spoke about Michael’s children — Paris, Prince Michael and Blanket, revealing that they had spent time with Paris and Prince Michael’s birth mother, Debbie Rowe.

Only in Hollywood: Lindsay Lohan’s lawyer is asking a judge to delay her trial because people hate her. Seriously, he claims she can’t get a fair shake with a jury.

Ed McPherson represents Lindsay in the civil lawsuit in which people allege that she terrorized them during a wild, drunken Pacific Coast Highway joyride in 2007.

This is the same incident for which Lindsay received a DUI, and which she is now on probation (and free on bail, and wearing a SCRAM device) as a result of.

Her attorney says the recent ankle monitor debacle is exactly why the civil lawsuit must be postponed – ’cause everyone wants her to crash and burn so bad!

According to McPherson, “Every facet of the criminal proceeding and every facet of Ms. Lohan’s life … have been reported on TMZ and other media outlets.”

Are THG, TMZ and our ilk biasing jurors against Linds?

Saying this occurs “literally on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis, there are current widespread public feelings of intense negativity against Ms. Lohan.”

Referencing comments left on celebrity gossip sites, some of which are quite foul, McPherson says it’s highly likely the jury pool will be tainted against her.

Since jury trials are not held anonymously and on message boards, he may be reaching a little bit there. But he does make another, more valid argument.

Since Lindsay could end up in jail for six months if the judge in her criminal case rules she violated her probation, the civil suit should be delayed, he says.

It won’t be. The judge in the civil case already denied Lindsay’s motion to postpone, though the issue may be revisited at her probation hearing on July 6.

Gary Coleman’s estranged parents abandoned their effort to bury him in his native Illinois Friday after a Utah attorney revealed the actor named an executor in a 1999 will.

“Of course it’s disappointing. We’d be inhuman if it wasn’t, but we’re not up for a fight,” Coleman’s mother, Sue Coleman, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We just want him finally put away to rest.”

Gary Coleman died May 28 in Utah from a brain hemorrhage at age 42.

Salt Lake City Attorney Kent Alderman said he has a will Coleman wrote that he will take to a Utah County court sometime next week. The will was written before Coleman moved to Utah and met his future wife during filming for the 2006 comedy “Church Ball.” Alderman wouldn’t reveal details of the will, including the name of the executor, but said Coleman will not be buried this weekend.

“We will submit that for probate next week and find out if this is the last will. We believe it is. Nobody’s come up with a more recent one,” Alderman said.

Frederick Jackman, an attorney for Gary Coleman’s parents, said the person named in the will is Dion Mial, a friend and former manager of the former child TV star. A message left at a listing for Mial in Las Vegas was not immediately returned Friday.

Sue Coleman and husband Willie Coleman had been seeking to take custody of their son’s body and return it to his boyhood home in Illinois once it was discovered this week that he had divorced wife Shannon Price in 2008. It was Price — who was named in an advanced health care directive — who ordered that Gary Coleman be taken off of life support.

His parents have said they learned about his hospitalization and death from media reports and they had wanted to reconcile with their son before his death.

“We know that we loved him. We know deep in his heart he loves us,” Sue Coleman said Friday. “That’s the way it is.”

She said she wasn’t aware of any funeral details outlined in the will and that she had not spoken with Mial in probably 20 years.