Can boy bands help you forget about bad news?
In this moment of economic doom, let’s turn our attention to One Direction.
I’m serious. The real news of the day, this stock market turmoil, is too scary to think about. After reading dozens of stories on Monday — and biting my nails with every new mention of “Fear Index,” “carnage,” “massive sell-off,” “nightmare scenario” and, most troubling, how it feels like “the end of the world” — I’m genuinely freaked out.
And I don’t even own stocks. Still, my measly RRSP is shrinking and this “free fall” is setting off internal alarm bells usually reserved for a new Michael Bay film. Should I storm my CIBC branch and liberate my meagre savings, which I could then stash more securely in a sock under my mattress? I don’t want to be working until I’m 95, stumbling around a dystopian, post-capitalist biosphere in papier-mâché slippers and a belly full of Purina because others make markets collapse.
So with your indulgence, let’s turn to the sweetly ridiculous world of entertainment to distract us from the diabolically unpredictable world of global finance and the unsettling possibility that Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, may be the antichrist.
It’s not the money that’s mad. It’s the money experts who keep barking insanity.
We could talk about Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late Steve (The Crocodile Hunter) Irwin, who is grown up and about to compete on Dancing With the Stars. Or maybe Taylor Swift’s upcoming new video? Or maybe something on that creepy lout Josh Duggar. Or perhaps the dinner party Barbra Streisand hosted Saturday and the bizarre guest list, including Lady Gaga, John Travolta and Ryan Murphy, which sounds as jarringly random as a baseball game between the Jays and Smurfs.
No, sadly, none of this will distract us. Not anymore. It will just lead to tangents on how familial wealth provides immunity to economic upheaval or how money unites people who have nothing in common, like short-sellers and shareholders. Let’s talk about something else. One Direction is taking an “indefinite break.”
Hang on. Now I’m thinking about boy bands and economic disparity. Isn’t One Direction popular in China, ground zero for the collapse? Also, why do the four remaining band members telegraph subliminal cues about unattainable prosperity? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one of them in a “Black Monday” T-shirt.
You’ve got Harry Styles and his flowing mane, a sign of wealth and power in ancient Greece. You’ve got that Liam Payne kid and his penchant for black top hats, just like a banker in the 1920s. Niall Horan, meanwhile, loves his plaid, just like today’s young capitalists on Bay Street. Even the name “Louis Tomlinson,” the fourth one, I think, screams “1 per cent.” Let’s talk about something else. Floyd Mayweather Jr. is back in the news. Good. The flamboyant boxer is always a reliable go-to for diversion. Maybe he’s booked for another pay-per-view hugging contest. No, wait; it seems he’s making headlines for blowing $4.8 million (U.S.) on a rare Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita car.
Really? People are losing their shirts and this showy braggadocio is blowing $5 mil on a new ride? I hope the “hyper car” is gassed up and ready to do 0-60 in 2.9 seconds when Mayweather is eventually confronted by a violent mob of former traders who’ve renounced the free market system and dedicated their remaining years to robbing the stupidly rich. So now I’m under my desk, humming “What Makes You Beautiful” and wondering why celebrities never speak out during a financial crisis. They won’t shut up over natural disasters or social ills.
But when the markets crash — and millions around the world are affected as billions of dollars vanish in a flash of plummeting ticker prices and graph lines — where are the Bonos and the Angelina Jolies? Where are the telethons and earnest speeches before the United Nations?
One Direction and Mayweather could halt this financial slide by investing the $400+ million they’ll collectively earn this year in the, I’m not sure, commodities sector? Asian benchmarks? I know this sounds idiotic. But it also explains why finding mindless distraction amid economic uncertainty is getting so hard today: celebrities care less about entertaining and more about making a killing in Hollywood, which serves as its own unregulated market.
Too many celebrities, just like too many investors, want to get rich fast. They have no sense of consequence.
Let’s talk about something else. vmenon@thestar.ca