Lulled by the celebritariat

from Prospect Magazine:
"Writing in the 1960s, the sociologist WG Runciman...argued that ordinary people tolerate high levels of inequality because they don’t compare themselves with those at the top, but with people like themselves.

However, this argument doesn’t seem plausible any longer...people now compare themselves with the most successful members of society, thereby increasing their insecurity and sense of deprivation. This appears to be tied up with the decline of deference.

The rich and the poor no longer live in two nations, at least not socially. Economic divisions may be more pronounced than ever, but we support the same football teams, watch the same television programmes, go to the same movies. Mass culture is for everyone, not just the masses.

If this is the case, I believe it is largely due to the emergence of a new class that my father didn’t anticipate and which, for want of a better word, I shall call the “celebritariat.”

One of the criticisms levelled at Britain’s professional elites is that they have become closed shops, creating insurmountable barriers to entry. The same could not be said of the celebritariat, a class that is constantly being refreshed...

If the celebritariat really does play a role in legitimising economic inequality, it is also because ordinary people imagine that they, too, could become members.

Will the day come when the celebritariat endangers its own existence by becoming a self-perpetuating elite, closed off to new members? There are signs that this is beginning to happen, with the children of famous people inheriting their celebrity status, just as aristocrats inherited their parents estates."