From the

previews, I figured "Ed TV" was just a cheap

knock-off of "The Truman Show," so I didn't go.

I rented it

recently, though, because there just wasn't much to

choose from, and I was pleasantly surprised. Whereas

"Truman" was a cute sit-com built mainly around

the comedic personality of Jim Carey, "Ed TV"

was a biting satire with snappy dialogue and interesting

social commentary.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the movie absolutely

nailed a societal ill that has long been near the top of

my list - hero worship.

It's a

story about an average (maybe even a little below

average) underachiever who accepts a chance to have his

everyday life filmed for a new experimental television

show.

It's a

farfetched premise, but not really all that farfetched.

People pay good money to look into the lives of other

people through voyeur-cams on the Internet. Why not a

cable TV show that takes the concept a step further and

follows a regular person through his everyday ups and

downs?

The cameras

follow Ed to his brother's pad, where all of America

discover's that the brother has a sleep-over guest who is

not his regular girlfriend. The consequences of this, and

the fact that the girlfriend happens to be watching

"ED TV" at the time, is a voyeur's dream, and

the show takes off, making Ed an instant celebrity.

Fans

"love" him.

And that's

where the underlying message begins to take shape. A

hundred million people don't fall in love with Ed because

he is a great person, a person of talent, integrity and

all the other qualities we all would like to have. They

fall in love with him because he is famous.

Suddenly,

Gallup is taking polls about whether Ed should keep his

girlfriend or throw her over for some model, or whether

he should spend time with his deadbeat biological dad,

who shows up unexpectedly to bask in the spotlight.

At some

point, on a talk show that obviously represents the

"Politically Correct" genre, a sociologist

points out that fame has become a virtue unto itself. No

longer do we become famous because we are special. We

become special, in the eyes of the masses, merely because

we are famous.

How true!

The only

way they could have made the point more perfectly would

have been if they had killed Ed off. Then the audience

would have been treated to film of thousands of

brokenhearted fans piling flowers, cards, prayer books

and the like in front of the video store where Ed worked,

and in front of his apartment.

Instead of

a guy who had no ambition other than to collect his pay

and spend it at the local beer hall, Ed would have been

eulogized as one of the great thinkers of the 20th

century, a giant of our time, the last best hope of

future generations.

Like Diana,

JFK Jr., Elvis and a multitude of others, he would have

been deified. Lonely, pitiable middle-aged women would

have used closets or small rooms in their trailers as

shrines to Ed, to display their collections of

autographed souvenirs.

Television

and other mass media portray public figures, whether in

politics, sports, big business or entertainment, as

heroes or villains, and we who make up the great unwashed

play our parts to perfection, worshipping or reviling

according to the demands of the script.

And we long

for our own 15 minutes of fame, willingly playing the

fool in order to attract the attention of a camera at a

ball game, on a game show, at a disaster...

How empty

we must feel our real lives to be, that we willingly hand

the strings to the Puppetmasters and dance to their

manipulations.

Will we

ever reach the point that we are not so malleable, not so

ready to believe that having one's face on the cover of

Time makes one any smarter, stronger or better?

If the

answer to that is no, then maybe we need to stop taking

our newborns to the pediatrician once a month, and set

them up with their own agents instead.

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