JEFF PEARLMAN

JEFF PEARLMAN

Why do we care about Kim Kardashian?

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Kim Kardashian has either broken up with Reggie Bush (and is dating Miles Austin), or—under pressure from her mother and Bruce Jenner—they’re engaged to get married.

I know this because I breathe air, and if you breathe air on American soil in the Lord’s Year 2010, you hear about Kim Kardashian and her wacky sisters—one of whom married an athlete she’d known for a month; the other of whom supposedly just broke up with the dweeb father of her out-of-wedlock baby.

Fuck—did I just write that sentence? How do I possibly have this much information in my brain about the Kardashians? Why do I know that the three older sisters also have two young sisters? Why do I know that Kim just had Botox? Why can I offer you the details of Lamar Odom’s proposal? And, dammit, where the hell are my car keys?

I don’t understand our obsession with celebrity—only I understand it all too well. We are bored. At least we think we’re bored. And, along those lines, we believe other lives are more exciting than ours. Which, TV proves to us thanks to the reality genre, they’re generally not. The Kardashians sit around the pool, look for things to eat, spend five boring hours modeling in their undies, try and train a poodle, etc. They, like us, are bound by the confines of existence. Unless you’re ingesting large quanitites of shrooms (Which I’ve never done. But which I always wanted to do. And probably still want to do. But won’t do. Because I’m 38 with kids, and it just doesn’t seem wise). But then you could trip, vomit, lose your brain …

… and find yourself watching the Kardashians on TV.