We Americans are childish about our celebrities and icons. We worship, then we denounce; we identify passionately with them and then, if they do something - anything - we dislike, we cast them off.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how Americans have an inconsistent and often superficial relationship with their celebrities, idolizing them only to quickly turn against them.
Margo Jefferson's quote comments on the fickle nature of public admiration in American culture, highlighting a cycle of adoration and repudiation towards celebrities and icons. It suggests that Americans often elevate public figures to a pedestal, forming intense emotional connections, yet when those figures falter or behave in ways that displeases the public, they are rapidly discarded and criticized. This behavior indicates a deeper commentary on societal values and the ephemeral nature of fame, which can be brutally mercurial.
In practice
In a discussion about the changing nature of celebrity culture on social media.
We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali--a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.
I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.
I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture.
Branding says a lot about luxury and about exclusion and about the choices that manufacturers make, but I think that what society does with it after it's produced is something else. And the African-American community has always been expert at taking things and repurposing them toward their own ends.
We know so much about the European food story, and we're getting to know about the American food story; but we know so little about the African food story.
No one's of Pakistani origin in any British show. That's why every actor of color is here working in the States. It's true.
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