Rant #2,417: Every Body Plays the Fool

Good morning.

It's July 29, and we are officially in the doldrums of summer.

The weather is hot, few of us want to really do anything but complain about the heat,and here it is, the beginning of the work week, and we have to wear our "Sunday Best" to go to work.

So let's start the week on a nice note, at least a nice visual note, if nothing else, but you are going to have to go through some verbiage before you get to the point of today's Rant.

In previous generations, there were personalities that we saw here and there, generally on TV screens, who defied description about what their purpose in life was.

On the male side, there was a guy like Monte Rock III, who was on all the talk shows, but what actually did he do?

Was he a hairdresser to the stars, an actor, a singer, or was he just ... Monte Rock III?

Om the female side, probably the all-time person in this regard, male or female, was Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was on every talk show under the sun during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and even into the 1980s, but viewers would be hard put to categorize her.

Was she an actress? Was she a beauty pageant winner? Or was she simply Eva Gabor's look-alike sister?

Who knows, but she used to really talk it up when she was a guest on such shows as "The Tonight Show."

Fast forward to 2019, the present time.

Such "celebrities" do not need television talk shows today to become this generation's version of Zsa Zsa Gabor; all they need is the Internet, a photographer, and BAM!, they are this generation's version of the Hungarian whatever-she-was.

In particular if the camera loves you as much as a bee loves honey.

Case in point--among numerous so-called female celebrities--is Britisher Elizabeth Hurley, who has become the Internet's version of Zsa Zsa, with a perk, and a nice perk for the male audience in particular--

She does her celebrity sitings usually with a bikini on.

Look, yes, Hurley is a beautiful woman, with curves that many actresses decide to purchase and have man made. She has them naturally.

And yes, she is something of a marvel at 54 years of age, not old in my book but I guess in Hollywood, is about double the age she should be to be viable.

Anyway, have you noticed--and yes, I have--that every couple of weeks, she puts up a new bikini photo, to show us how perfect she is?

She just put another one up, along with a short video where she appears to writhing in ecstasy at her bikini, body and looks, and yes, like any red-blooded male, I saw this on my Yahoo home page and took a long look at it.

And like Zsa Zsa, how would you describe Hurley?

Is she an actress, a model, or is she simply now, at the old age of 54, simply an Internet personality?

Look, the TV talk shows still exist, but they are not driven by celebrities anymore; they seem to be driven by politics.

So if Hurley was in her bikini running for office, she would be prime fodder for these shows (Tulsi Gabbard, where are you?).

Anyway, she isn't, so she keeps in the public eye by putting up these alluring, but not lascivious at all, photos of her in bikinis, writhing in her own beauty on beaches around the world.

No, even Zsa Zsa during her heyday would not do that. She left that to women like Jayne Mansfield to do, not her.

So what Hurley is doing is showing herself off, and keeping in the public mind, just in case anything comes up that she actually could do.

It is like mentions in gossip columns in past years; publicists used to fight tooth and nail to get their clients--and particularly their female ones--into columns like Earl Wilson wrote for decades.

Being in the public mind--even if it was a negative--was essential back then, being out of the publc's mind was a death knell for celebrities, and particularly those not named Katherine Hepburn.

So Hurley has gone the bikini route.

Look, you can say that she puts these photos up for all to see because she is the typical show-biz personality with a lot of baggage, and that is probably true.

But she looks so contented showing off her 54 year old figure on the Internet that the only person she could possibly be spiting is her former beau, Hugh Grant, who has to be the absolutely stupidest person in the world for giving her up, or he is one of the smartest people in the world, because he gave her up for a reason or reasons that we will never know about.

It is probably a mix of the two.

But whatever the case, Hurley is in her glory again on Yahoo, and we can all marvel at her, because let's face it: if she looked like Olive Oyl, would anybody really care?

I have some things to do tomorrow, so I won't be here on Tuesday, but I will be back in the saddle on Wednesday, and who knows, maybe Hurley will put up even more photos of herself being so full of her own beauty that she cannot contain herself and must put up more photos of herself in another bikini.

Yup, I will be watching for it.

You can bet on that.