It's Sad That People Care About Levi Johnston

Of all the aggravating pukes who have graced the tabloids lately, there is one who reigns supreme above the rest. He is emblematic of America's love for useless people. His name is Levi Johnston, and he is as distasteful a fame-seeker as they come.

You all know the tale: Johnston got with Bristol Palin. They found that she was with child. The two publicly acknowledged the pregnancy. They announced they would be married. They broke up. Johnston has pimped himself to the media.

There it is. Like so many of today's celebrities, Johnston is receiving attention for no good reason. The root of the word "celebrity" is "celebrate", though these days you don't have to do anything worth celebrating to be celebrated. In this case, a young man is famous for getting a seemingly pleasant, attractive young lady pregnant, leaving her, and then embarking upon a cross-country media campaign. He is no better than Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, or Rachel Uchitel, all of whom are famous for doing nothing (other than a lot of rich guys).

So what of this media campaign? What is Johnston's goal, exactly? To clear his name of any potential charges of negligence? No. To stump for his prior/potential mother-in-law's enemies out of revenge? No. To promote abstinence, or non-abstinence, or to talk about teenage parenthood, or grouse about what life under the thumb of Sarah Palin is like? No.

Johnston has no real angle at play, no direct line of attack, from what I can glean. He's been jetting from talk show to talk show, gracing the couch of Tyra Banks, the desk of Larry King, and so on. Dressed like Edward Cullen, replete with mall-boy bouffaint and clothes he couldn't afford a year ago, Levi has merely been fielding softball questions about his fifteen minutes of fame. Naturally, there's some bomb-lobbing towards the Palin family matriarch ("time to take the gloves off", he impotently promises here). Overall, though, there is no substance. He just seems to like attention for attention's sake.

In fact, Johnston does not seem to have anything worthwhile to say about his experiences. Consider the following exchange he had with Larry King last April, when Larry asked him how his relationships with the Palins fell apart:

Larry: So what happened?
Levi: I don't know what happened. I think somewhere along the lines, we just weren't hitting it off anymore and...
Larry: But they won't let you see your kid?
Levi:No. I can go over there and see him. But it's kind of an uncomfortable thing for me to go over there. You know, I want to be able to take him and do that kind of thing, go do the father thing with him and I can't.
Larry: Why can't you?
Levi: You know, I'm not sure...

"I don't know." "I'm not sure." Phrases of doubt, of non-clarity, of an utter and unabashed cluelessness, are peppered throughout the transcript. You really don't know, do you, Levi? Than why did you go on a major national news program? If I had fifteen minutes on Larry King, I don't know what I'd talk about, but I would try to prepare somehow.

Now, you might not like Bristol Palin or her message. However, at least she knows what she thinks. At least she actually thinks something. She has shared the experience of her teenage motherhood with other young people in order to educate them about the issues of abstinence and teen pregnancy. This strikes me as a reasonable line of thinking for a person in her position, or at least an intuitive way of connecting her life circumstances to larger societal issues. (Whether she should be parading around in public so much is a legitimate question; there is some contradiction between her role as an "abstinence spokesperson" and her own disavowing of abstinence as a viable lifestyle choice, and perhaps it would be most approrpriate for her family if she stayed out of the papers altogether).

Now, as the year winds down, we have been treated to far more of Levi Johnston than anyone could have imagined. Levi Johnston has posed for the pornographic Playgirl magazine. Apparently, he collected $100,000 to bare his rear end for the mag, though Levi's Johnston remains incognito. This outrageous move has secured him a place as a national joke, but being a joke in America can sometimes pay well, and therein lies my disgust.

After all, here we have a young man who could have been a role model for what a responsible teen father would look like. Instead he is merely someone who turned tail on his family in order to make some money doing porno, trashing his baby's grandmother, and booking talk segments. He could have had a nice life with a pretty girl, but nay, he has chosen the way of the well-paid boot-licker. He shall be the delight of the weak-minded, the laughingstock of the serious, and the talking-point of the clueless.

His lack of direction and values, and our own obsession with people of his ilk who seek publicity and shame themselves for the hell of it, do not bode well for us. That Levi Johnston has risen to such prominence is indicative of our country's maddening, base desire for mindless "infotainment" and juicy gossip. These things serve no purpose, and as they crowd the public's collective mind, attention to real public affairs material wanes.