Wendy Williams in context

The Wendy Williams Show

Wendy Williams is a riot!  Her show, which I stumbled onto while someone else was watching, is continuously humorous and full of celebrity trivia.  I didn't know Tom Cruise and Katy Holmes had parted company!


Her show, in a gossip filled way, satisfies our casual interest in the rich and famous, the elite society of the entertainment world.  Fashion and flops, juicy tidbits about private matters, wardrobe failures and foolish public behavior.  
 
Of one celebrity mother and young daughter, "She's not your baby girl, girl, she's grown; you don't need to be picking her up like that!"

And from a guest, "If you want to protect your daughter from the paparazzi, then get her some (sun glasses) like you wear."  Hahaha!  Right, they'll never see her if she wears sunglasses!

In context.  So if memory serves, the first time I saw the show was shortly after returning home from Africa.  My friends there live in huts made of stone and clay with roofs of palm fronds.  They work from sunrise to sunset with their little gardens, those who have them, and at whatever trade they might find.  Kids may go to school, but only if mom and dad can afford the small fees.  The kids get a meal at school, usually; it's the only food some of them get for days or weeks at a time.

So as I watched the show, I couldn't understand it.  

I didn't get why they were talking about purses and shoes.  It wasn't intelligible that somebody wore the same dress as somebody else.  I couldn't make my mind join that world; it just wouldn't make the leap.

At the moment, it seems those on the show perhaps have nothing at all in their lives or even crossing their minds in common with the real world.  Odd, isn't it?  Moving beyond the entertainment and celebrity world to Americans in general,  there's another 80% of the world that is similarly unknown to us and rarely in our thoughts.  There's little overlap between our worlds in the things that we face and do each day.  So different is it in fact that if you had to live a few of their days, you'd be undone, I would imagine.

The experience of folks who've gone to see for themselves, who've stayed long enough to begin to care about the people they meet; it is pretty much uniform.  It's a worldview changer. 

Oh, and Wendy Williams is entertaining, I suppose, and perhaps a nice, serious-minded person under the persona.  Perhaps she has well-formed values and priorities beyond the fluff; I hope for her sake that she has a life.

Some of the world's finest folks live quite different lives with little in common with us.  Go see.  They'll welcome you to their world.


"Make a career of humanity... 

    You will make a greater person of yourself, 

       a greater nation of your country, and a finer

          world to live in."

                   ~Martin Luther King, Jr. (18 April 1959, Washington, DC)