Word: worshipping
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...among us hasn't fallen victim to a little celebrity worship? Whether the object of our affections are movie stars, athletes, poets or politicians (just look at how many Americans are getting a buzz off Sarah Palin and Barack Obama), we're hungry for information about them. We want to know what they're saying, what they're wearing, where they're going and whom they're with. Indeed, billion-dollar industries revolve around our indefatigable obsession with celebrities. And now new scientific research has found that celebri-crushes are not only common but maybe even healthy: a study published...
Shira Gabriel, a psychologist at the University at Buffalo, conducted a series of three studies on celebrity worship, focusing specifically on how admiration from afar may affect the admirer's self-esteem. "It was seven or eight years ago during the Michael Jackson trial," she says, "and I was fascinated by the people who were obsessed with him, who flew to the trial and made banners. I thought, What would bring somebody to do something like that?" One possible reason, which Gabriel decided to explore, was the vicarious pleasure that regular people get from following the lives of famous people...
Though it borders on creepy, it's not an entirely surprising idea. And from a scientific point of view, it was intriguing to Gabriel: Could science actually measure the psychological benefit of celebrity worship? Gabriel enlisted a group of 348 college students, one-fifth of whom admitted to having a celebrity crush. She gave all the students an 11-item self-esteem questionnaire; their responses allowed researchers to rank the participants according to their baseline level of self-esteem. Next, she instructed the students to spend five minutes writing an essay about their favorite celebrity, an exercise designed to bring...
...When it comes to their own political realm, they think more secularly than the secular," he said then, on a conference call with supporters. "Some really worship at the altar of electability...
...mounted on a high marble plinth. His hooves and horns are 18-carat gold. His head is crowned by a gold Egyptian solar disk. Seen head-on, he's a false idol whose headgear is simultaneously silly and mesmerizing. (Hirst is assuming his buyers know the Bible story about worshipping a false god, just like the one they are about to worship.) But the beast is best seen in profile, the view that leaves you to reconcile as best you can his hieratic gravity with the laugh-out-loud abundance of his genitals. When Hirst is good, he's good...