God, I'm Such a Bitch

So today an elderly relative comes over, and is her wont starts to make conversation about whatever random thing happened to be on the front page of the Post this week. So she starts talking about Britney Spears, and I just way lost patience w/having a conversation re Britney Spears. I asked her, "Could you identify a single Britney Spears song? Have you ever seen her perform? If not, why do you have an opinion on her? Why do you care if she shaves her head? What relevance does she have in your life?" I just don't get it. It's like this one very un-21st century friend of mine: she never listened to pop music, still asks me if The Police are still popular, etc., and yet she has an opinion about Madonna. Why would you care about Madonna if you don't know a single Madonna song?

I know the answer: Zeitgeist, celebrity culture, frippity fra, so we know about the personalities even if we don't know the work that propelled them to fame in the first place. But still: I see most of these people through a haze. I can read a Beatles biography b/c I care, very much, about the Beatles (sue me, I never got over it); I can't imagine reading anything about, say, Mischa Barton, b/c she's irrelevant to me. I didn't watch The OC; I wasn't the demographic they were aimed at, and I don't think it was saying anything about the spirit of the age (I don't think American Idol is, either, though I've seen articles insisting I care about how nasty Simon Cowell is).

Or maybe it's just my inherent snobbiness: it's extremely disposable TV, not anything I'll own the boxed set to in 20 years. So maybe I should have played ball and tutted over Britney's shaved head; it's not like I haven't seen the pictures.