Americans have inquiring minds. We want to know. We want to know about health care reform, the national deficit, and nuclear proliferation among rogue states. But more importantly, we want to know:

1. •What do some of our favorite Hollywood starlets look like without makeup?
   

2. •Are any of our favorite Hollywood starlets anorexic?
   

3. •Are any of our favorite Hollywood starlets overweight, and if so, what does their cellulite look like?
   

4. •Are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes getting along?oHol
   

5. •Are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie getting along?
   

6. •Has Jennifer Anniston found true love since Brad Pitt dumped her like a sucked-out crawfish head?
   

Yes, we are interested in every facet of celebrities’ lives: their marriages, their babies, their affairs, their arguments, their nasty divorces, their increasingly erratic behavior, their drug rehab, etc. But what does it take to achieve that kind of notoriety, other than a majority vote of the Board of Directors of the National Enquirer? There are many possible paths:

Marriage: Princess Di became a celebrity by marrying Prince Charles, who will, one day, if he outlives his mother, become King of England.

Birth: Prince William was born a celebrity because he will, one day, if he outlives both his father and grandmother, become King of England.

Multiple Births: Jon and Kate Gosselin became celebrities by having eight kids in the span of two months on the popular hit reality show Jon & Kate Breed Like Rabbits. Until he became a spermatozoal superstar, Jon was a computer technician. Now that Jon and Kate have split, Jon has become an international playboy who, surprisingly, still looks like a computer technician.

Achievement: You can actually earn your celebrity status by some great achievement in the music or film industry, like Michael Jackson did when he made the best-selling album of all time, Thriller.

Achievement Followed by Increasingly Bizarre Behavior: Although Thriller by itself was enough to make M.J. rich and famous for the rest of his life, his fame skyrocketed to a new level when he started appearing on the covers of supermarket tabloids with headlines such as: DOCTORS WARN MICHAEL: “ONE MORE COSMETIC SURGERY AND YOUR FACE WILL CAVE IN.”

Committing a Hideous Crime: O.J. Simpson comes to mind here, although it must be pointed out that O.J. didn’t criminally kill his wife and her friend; he only civilly killed them, which is a whole different legal matter, although in both instances, they ended up dead.

Bernie Madoff became famous by bilking people out of billions of dollars through an elaborate Fonzi Scheme in which he convinced investors that their money was backed by the full faith and credit of Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli. For a short period of time, Madoff garnered lots of publicity for his exploits, but you hardly hear from him anymore since he went to prison to serve 300 consecutive life sentences.

Once of the first celebrities of the tabloid era was Jackie Kennedy-Onassis. Jackie was the nearest thing America ever had to a queen. During her time in the White House, no one looked better in an evening gown than Jackie, although this didn’t stop her philandering president-husband from actively engaging in enough extracurricular activities to be nominated as the poster child for sex addiction. (Sex addiction – the terrible affliction with no known cure, except to have sex as often, and with as many women, as possible.)

After Camelot, Jackie went on to marry Aristotle Onassis, a Greek tycoon who made his fortune in the olive pit removal industry. Jackie’s marriage to Aristotle was a shock to many of her fans, who had become accustomed to seeing Jackie next to the handsome John Kennedy. Now they had to adjust to seeing her with someone whose face resembled that of the Incredible Hulk with horn-rimmed glasses. (If Jackie’s first marriage was Camelot, her second was Beauty and the Beast, which just goes to show that money is in the eyes of the beholder.)

Being rich and famous is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, at first you may enjoy all the wealth and fame, until you find out that every sex video you’ve ever made of even your most casual and brief sexual encounter is now being sold on the internet, and you’re not getting a dime!

Celebrities are often hounded by the paparazzi, which is Italian for thinly sliced sausage. The paparazzi love to take embarrassing photos of celebrities.

One celebrity website recently featured a story about Jon Gosselin entitled “Jon Erupts Again.” It included a photo of two big pimples on Jon’s forehead that, luckily, hadn’t yet burst, so no one got pregnant. (Just standing too close to Jon when he sneezes can result in triplets.)

Paparazzi can earn large sums of money for particularly revealing pictures. One popular tabloid reportedly paid $50,000 for a picture of Angelina Jolie picking her nose. Another tabloid once offered $75,000 for anyone who could get a picture of Michael Jackson’s face falling off. Still another purportedly offered $40,000 for a picture of George Clooney flossing. Even the photographer who took the picture of Jon Gosselin’s facial eruption got $25,000 per zit.

Even respectable news magazines such as Time and Newsweek have joined the race to the bottom by offering $100,000 cash to anyone who can get a photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an intelligent look on his face.

Surprisingly, the tabloids do have certain standards, and there are some pictures that are in such appallingly poor taste and are so devoid of any redeeming social value whatsoever that even the most disreputable tabloid will refuse to print them. I know this from years of personal experience unsuccessfully attempting to peddle graphic photos of Rosie O’Donnell’s hip cellulite.

Some people hold important and powerful positions but somehow avoid achieving fame and notoriety, such as Ben Bernanke, the present chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who is the most powerful unknown man in the world. Ben’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan, garnered much more attention when he was chairman. When Alan spoke, people stopped and listened, although nobody understood any of it, because it was all economic gobbledygook, which made Greenspan a much-revered economic wizard in the eyes of Congress.

But many people now say that Greenspan wasn’t a wizard after all but was, in fact, the man hiding behind the curtain who actually caused the financial crises by opposing the regulation of mortgage-backed securities – under the theory (get this) that Wall Street and the banks would regulate themselves! (Ha ha ha! Alan, if you need additional income since your 401(k) tanked, you may want to consider a second career as a comedian.)