Poor Mr. Warhol

Andy Warhol was right about the 15 minutes of fame. It’s a pity our highly evolved short-attention-spanned society replays it all in endless montages at the end of the year, thus obviating the original concept. “15 minutes plus reruns” doesn’t have the same ring.

Still, Warhol’s point was a good one. Once upon a time you had to do something significant to be known. Art, science, literature – don’t forget, mathematicians were rock stars back in the day. But even then not everyone was a Leibniz. Most of them were like most of us. All hail the ordinary! Forget the biggies, let’s look at the little people who made it all possible.

Imagine how different the past was to live through, rather than to read about. One of my beloved etiquette books points out that the genteel-est Victorian aristocracy had hygiene we would now find repellent. That’s the upper class. Think what normal people were like. Think about what they did, what they wore, where they pooped before plumbing. Garderobes and chamberpots, anyone? At least they couldn’t tweet about it.

History will know us by our TV, our tabloids, our video games and our eternal gonzobytes of Facebook updates. It’s not Caravaggio or Bronte, but that’s who we are and that’s what we do. Look at any of the “Top 100 of 2009” lists and know in your heart that this is as good as our culture gets and fame doesn’t always last a full 15 minutes.

It makes me want to tweet a haiku for posterity.