Baseballs First Naughty Hall of Famers – Daily Beast

America’s particular obsession with celebrity, our elaborate, artificial, often misleading, hero-creation industry, reflects a deep national craving, a vast emptiness in the heart of the American soul. The nineteenth century novelist Henry James complained that America—the homeland he abandoned for Great Britain—lacked institutional anchors. The center of the New World, he lamented, has “No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools….” Instead, Americans often use our celebrities as national bonding agents, to create a common culture with shared references, shared anchors. But athletes, movie stars, tycoons, and, today, manufactured celebs who are famous for being famous, and sometimes famous for being infamous, are particularly unstable stabilizers, unbalanced ballasts.