oh pretty, pretty Leonardo

(originally posted 3/5/2013. If you look into you’ll be shocked at just how much time ol’ Leonardo spends on yachts even to this day. I kid you not. His individual carbon footprint is bigger than most small towns.)

So I get myself all worked up when I read that Leonardo DiCaprio is looking to take a break from acting and get back to raising awareness about the threat of global warming. “I would like to improve the world a bit,” he told the Germany’s Bild newspaper. “I will fly around the world doing good for the environment.”

When I hear a statement like that I can only assume that Leonardo DiCaprio, as pretty as he might be, is at least half retarded.

Then I take a second and let cooler heads prevail. He is only parroting the same stupid shit he hears other celebrities saying. He reminds me of a dog I saw taking a shit the other day. After he was done, no doubt mimicking the actions of other dogs he’d seen, he starts to kick his back legs as if burying the offending turd. A very nice thought but in this case all he did was step in it with both of his back paws at which point he then went sprinting back into his owner’s house and tracked dog shit all over the carpeting.

That is Leonardo DiCaprio in a nutshell and I should hold him responsible for his dumb comments the same amount the dog’s owner blames the dog for getting shit all over the place. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a smack on that pretty nose, and I’ll be the first one with the rolled up newspaper, but in the big picture he’s going to go off and lecture the masses whatever opinion they hold on the topic.

That’s celebrity.

Now the easy thing to do here is go off on a tirade about how celebrities deserve neither their wealth nor their influence over our culture but to do so not only makes the writer appear impotent but is also a bit disingenuous given the point of writing in the first place is to be heard and the reason you want to be heard, in the last place, is to acquire both fame and fortune.

Trying to be a vanguard of credibility is a tricky business.

Of course celebrities take themselves too seriously but that’s only because we take them too seriously. Can you imagine if the reporter who was interviewing Leonardo had looked at him and said “Are you kidding me? Do you know the first thing about carbon footprints? Are you a fucking moron?” Of course not, because it will never happen. Everyone present will gaze at Leonardo as if he, and he alone, can bring to end the terrible problem of global warming.

But back to writing about it.

If you write enough you end up coming off as a giant know-it-all. Sitting back and pointing out all the dumb things celebrities say might seem easy enough but in the aforementioned-end you come off as just as big a douche as the celebrities you’re attacking. Unless! Unless you hold yourself to the same standards and you’re not afraid to call yourself out with the same enthusiasm you do the empty-headed elite. And I don’t mean that mock self-deprecating crap that you see so many people resort too. I mean honest-to-goodness tearing yourself a new one every now and then.

It’s actually relatively simple, all you need to do is stop worrying what the people reading think about you personally. They shouldn’t care in the first place, all they should be concerned with is what you’re writing. Just throw in an example now and then about what a dickhole you can be and you’re all set. Being flawed is almost a prerequisite for seeing flaws in the big picture. I know what a complete hypocrite Leonardo is about the environment because if I were him I’d be the same hypocrite. In our 2013 culture being a hypocrite pays.

That is not to say we shouldn’t all be raging against the machine, it’s just a suggestion that you don’t lose sight of the fact that you are not any better than the big cogs in this machine. You’re just less well-known.

For now.

Until you become rich and famous all you can do is hoist the trembling fist from time to time and hope that eventually pretty, pretty Leonardo is eventually called out for being such a colossal fucktard.