Dealing with the Red Horse

A momentous and tragic event is unfolding in Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to make their way from the Middle East and Africa into Europe, with Germany for some, and Italy for others, being the intended endpoint.  The massive disaster is costing the loss of a lot of refugee lives.

It also threatens to grow worse, and as it does so, it will also have a demographic impact greater than any mass migration in recent history.  Because the migrants are heavily represented by Muslim Middle East populations (but not exclusively so), the event is even more demographically significant in some ways than the massive displaced person crisis that followed World War Two, which was huge, but which featured all Europeans within their own continent.  This crisis comes at a time of heavy, legal, immigration from the same region, into a region of the world that's in a population decline otherwise, but where the new populations have remained unassimilated and the trend is towards non assimilation.  European leaders, like those of Hungary, who worry that the influx is a Muslim invasion that will threaten the Christian identity of Europe are correct to worry, even while those nations like Germany that seek to accommodate the desperate populations are acting more Christian in their response.  Nobody knows what to do.

Notable in the crisis are a couple of salient facts.  One is that to date Islamic states have not opened their doors, although Turkey is suffering from being a highway to Europe.  Perhaps they really can't.  But some Islamic states are extremely wealthy, such as Saudi Arabia.  It would seem that they would or should step up to the plate, and that this crisis should not become exclusively a European one, with the migrant populations becoming permanently European in their situs.  That's a hard unpopular thing to say, but Middle Eastern nations have not borne their share of the global weight in recent decades, and here they can.

They clearly can't do it alone, however.  Many of these refugees are going to have to be housed in Europe until a way can be found to rapidly return them home.  If they can't be returned home soon, and they certainly cannot be now, they're going to have to be dispersed around the globe, there's no other way to be able to handle it.  South Africa, Japan, Russia, the United States, Argentina, Mexico, everyone will have to share a burden of this size.

And that's because this is the single biggest event occurring on the globe right now.  It's huge.  And it needs immediate attention.  If that attention is not received, it will grow worse.

And it will grow worse as the events causing this are growing worse.  Strife in Eritrea.  Ongoing civil war in Syria.  War in Iraq, and even ongoing war in Afghanistan.  These populations are fleeing war, a rational thing to do.

And given that they are fleeing wars, and those wars have been spilling over Europe's borders and even our own, we need to realize that pretending that these wars "are not our wars" is completely wrong.  They are.  They've become Europe's wars, as Europe is now the Displaced Persons Camp for the Middle East and Central Asia.  They're our wars as the violent radical forces that inspire these wars are gaining recruits in Europe and North America.  We can't ignore them, and we need to start paying attention to them right now.

That won't be easy.  But it's going to have to happen.

The world is engaged in Iraq right now, but in an anemic fashion.  That should end.  A concentrated Western effort could easily crush ISIL very rapidly, and that should be done. And if that were done, we're going to have to face that Iraq is gong to have to be occupied by competent administrators, i.e., western nations, for a fairly long time, together with states like Turkey, that are non western, but which are competent.  And the crisis in Syria needs to end, which can only come about through tremendous pressure that puts an end to the Baathist regime but which doesn't result in a new tyranny.

Time's run out.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...

We've commented several times on the University of Wyoming's sale of the Y Cross Ranch, as for in instance here:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...: This past week the respective Wyoming and Colorado university benefactors (or actually the Colorado one, in what I read) of this substantial...

The news has now broke that the purchaser of the ranch is a company owned by Pine Bluffs Wyoming businessman Toby Kimzey.

I don't know Kimzey at all, but this appears to be good news.  In spite of the huge purchase price, Kimzey appears to be set to actually ranch the land, as he is doing with several other locations he owns.

So, this story has a sort of accidentally happy ending, sort of. A ranch owned by an out of stater was bought by an in stater who will ranch it. The purchase price is sad evidence that in this day and age it's nearly impossible for anyone of average means to buy a working ranch, and indeed its impossible to make the land pay off for a rancher, which isn't good news for agriculture or our society. But this story could have had a much worse ending.  Kimzey even indicates that if the schools want to take students there, they can.

Still, this entire story makes both CSU and UW look pretty bad.  Indeed, at least from the UW angle, the state's only four year university, which is an arm of the state, the story is really pathetic.  UW ought to be ashamed and frankly donors to the university should consider this story when being asked to give.

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

I've thought this perfectly obvious for years and I've wondered why it's never been noted.

Buffalo are large ungulates.

Cattle are large ungulates.

There were, reportedly, millions of buffalo.

Well. . . . 

Nonsensical Decadal Characterization

 A calendar for 1897. Featuring a calico cat and an artist, the way we typically think of the late 1890s. . .right?

You know you've heard or seen them.

"A look back at the turbulent 60s!"

"A tour through the Rockin' 50s"

"The Roaring 20s"

Or even just "The 80s".

Whatever.

All of these decadal references are darned near worthless, as whatever supposedly characterizes a decade, tends not to.

That doesn't mean that there aren't eras, even short ones of ten years or so, that are unique.  But they just don't start on the first year of a decade, and end on the last.  Indeed, that's highly deceptive.

Consider, for example, "the 60s", a decade we hear so much about because it supposedly "defines a generation".  Well, if it does, it defines it oddly.

The 1960s of course, started in 1960 and ended in 1969. But are 1960 and 1969 really in the same era?  They don't seem to be.

Indeed, the era up to 1964 is really part of what we consider to be the 1950s, really. Styles, haircuts, music, etc., all really fit into that "1950s" class of things. This is so much the case, in fact, that the movie that started off the whole 1950s nostalgia craze of the 1970s, American Graffiti, is set in the early 1960s not the 1950s.

It isn't really until 1965 that the "60s" started, and probably with our intervention in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, which started all the way back in 1958 in the form in which we entered it (or in 1945 in its French Indochina form), seems to be central to the "turbulent" 1960s, due to the war itself, I suppose, and the following opposition to it.  Conventional American ground forces went into Vietnam in 1965.

But they left in 1973.  And really, the 1970s at least as late as 1973 are really part of the "1960s". All the same protests, wars and controversy is party of it.  Shoot, Jimi Hendrix died in the early 1970s, not the 1960s, and so did Janis Joplin.

And regarding the 1960s, are the Cold War standoffs of the early 1960s really part of the same era that gave us Woodstock?  They don't seem to be.  Was the nation that was ready to go to war over Soviet missiles in Cuba the same one that was disenchanted with our involvement in Vietnam?

All that sort of means the 1970s, that "Me Decade", which should probably regarded as The Baby Boomers Second Decade, as they defined the "1960s" as well, really probably started in 1974, and probably ended perhaps in 1981 when Ronald Reagan became President.  Oddly, as a result of that, the "80s" fit about as neatly into a decadal calendar slotting as any decade, as a new era started when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, followed by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.

What about the aforementioned 1950s?  Well, they didn't really start until 1955.  Surely our image of the Korean War doesn't fit the 1950s. That's some other era, one that ran from 1946 to 1955.  It seemingly has no name, other than occasionally "the early Cold War", or "the post war".  It's not "the 40s", however, as that's World War Two, which as an era really runs from about 1938 until 1945.  And the post war era, in which people were eager to return to school, start families, buy consumer goods, take advantage of the GI Bill, etc., doesn't quite match the war years, but in some ways it does.  It sort of looks like them, in a home front sort of way, but it doesn't quite feel the same, and it didn't sound the same either, as the big bands, so notable for the sounds of the late 1930s and the war years, began to pass away pretty quickly after the war.

The "war years", that we associate with the "1940s" creeps into the 1930s, of course, but the 1930s is really thought of as The Great Depression, which started in 1929, truncating the Jazz Age, which started in 1919, with the end of World War One.  World War One, like World War Two, is really its own age, and while the war theoretically ran from 1914 to 1918, we probably ought to go back to at least 1912 for the era.

That would close out, sort of, The Progressive Era, which came up, sort of, with McKinley's second administration, or 1900.

So what area are we in now?  No way to tell.  You have to be past them, by some distance, to know.

Not that it particularly matters. Any one age is what it is. Except the easy mischaractrization of any one age does create some pretty false and superficial memories.  "The 1950s" as the age of teenage rock and roll doesn't really do much for a decade that featured wars in Korea, Indochina and the Middle East, and a titanic face off between the East and West, for example.  The years 1945 to 1955 are darned near forgotten except to historians.  The early 1960s are lumped into the 60s in a way that doesn't accurately reflect them at all.

Book query

Has anyone here read McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne"?

If so, what's  your opinion of it?

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Reporting the true depth of any business or industry can be difficult.  The very nature of large corporations and their focus on commercial...

Mid Week At Work: How to become a Norwegian conscript

Denali

Am I the only one who thought that Mt. McKinley had been renamed Denali about four decades ago? 

Truly, I thought the name had been officially changed way back then.

Glasses

I started wearing glasses when I was in junior high.

Well, actually I didn't.

I got glasses when I was in junior high.  I can't recall what grade, but probably 8th or 9th.  I didn't consistently wear them however, as I my eyes weren't bad enough to require it, and I didn't like wearing them.  Actually, I had a fairly difficult time adjusting to them, so I didn't.

I didn't even wear them when I first started driving, although that restriction was on my license.  But during high school I reached a point where I had to, more or less, although even then I would sometimes omit it, and could get away with that.

I largely did that during basic training at Ft. Sill, as I broke my field Army issue glasses, and was left with only my dress pair, which came off too early. So, unless I absolutely needed them, such as when shooting, I didn't wear them, and that worked fine.

 

 Me, wearing my GI glasses, at Ft. Sill.  We were apparently shooting on the day this photo was taken, as I'm wearing my glasses, and we're cleaning M16s.

Soon after that, I started wearing glasses full time.  It was irritating, however, in that the only glasses I could find at the time had really big lenses.  They were constantly touching your face in one way or another.

 

I'm the third in, from the right, here.  It's hard to tell in this photos, but I'm wearing some really large frame glasses.  I didn't like them.

Some of the glasses I had at that time also had "photogrey" lenses. That is, they'd darken in the sun.  I didn't like the idea, but at first the glare of glasses really bothered me.

Right about this time, and that'd be about 1983 or so, I experimented with contact lenses for the second time.  I'd tried it a couple of years earlier as well.  In neither instance did they work out for me.   They bothered my eyes tremendously, so in spite of not liking the glasses, I stuck to them.

Then, just before I went to law school in the Fall of 1987, I found a pair of my father's old frames that he hadn't worn in probably 25 or more years, and decided to give them a try. They were Bausch and Lomb ball grip frames.

 

Bausch & Lomb ball grip frames.  They're great. This pair of frames is presently at least 60 years old.

For the first time, I had a pair of glasses I really liked. The lenses are small, the frames are light. They temple frames won't come off. They're fantastic.  I've worn them ever since, and used a couple of additional old frames of my father's for an extra set of glasses and a pair of sunglasses.

I kept using these frames when I went to bifocals, as they can grind the now plastic lenses for that.

Well, a couple of years ago my vision deteriorated to where focusing on my computer became a problem.  My vision can be handled by my regular glasses at any other distance, and really isn't changing, except at that odd distance.  So hey had a pair of reading glasses made for me.  I didn't like switching back and forth, however, so I largely didn't wear them.

Up until recently that is.

Recently, I've had no choice, and after an eye examination, I had to have a second pair made, one for work, and one for home.

My reading glasses.

I hate them.

The ones I have at home are on a pair of rimless frames, much like my Bausch & Lombs. The frame is a bit heavier, but they're still not bad.  I thought it would look silly, however, to have a set of reading glasses with temple frames duplicating my regular glasses.

Of course, the new frames have a huge lens, reminding me of why I hated that kind of frame to start with.

I'm not blaming anyone. This is just part of life.  But it's the pits.

It's interesting, however, how many people hardly wear glasses ever.  Contact lenses and surgery have impacted that heavily.  Some people, however, wear them for an affectation.  I've thought about switching to contact lenses myself, but based on my past experiences with them, and the fact that I wear bifocals, I'm disinclined to do that.  Whenever I mention it as a possibility, the family is against it as well as they're used to seeing me with my rimless glasses.

But if I could omit glasses entirely, I would.

When the big science revelation falls flat on the facts

 

Something that's been noted a lot recently, and which genuinely should cause people concern, is that Americans have come to have an increasing contempt for science.

That's bad.

An educated, modern people, should be informing itself by science in making important decisions. And the evidence is pretty clear that at least into the 1980s, they did.  But not so much now.

And part of the reason of that is that Americans also tend to get a pretty big dose of bad science, which doesn't help to build trust in science and scientist at all.

Part of that falls into the category of the big announcement that just flatly fails to comport with actual real work observations. And we've gotten a fair amount of that in the past several decades.  And I say that as a person with a science background.

We got a big dose of that the past couple of weeks. At least if you are a hunter or fisherman you did, as probably every urban dweller you know sent you the news about the study that was published in Science that humans are a Super Predator and the current methods of fish and game conservation are all wrong.

There's only one problem with that study.

It completely fails to comport with actual observed information gathered over the past couple of centuries.  Or at least if the reports about what it says are correct, it does.

The study raises fears that we're going to hunt and fish all wildlife into extinction as, basically, we're a Super Predator that uses technology (i.e., tools, because it includes our distant ancestors) and we take the best of our prey, and prey on other predators, and are wiping everything out.

Except, its pretty clearly we're not.

Indeed, the evidence is highly to the contrary.

All big game species hunted in North America and Europe have increased dramatically, in numbers, and in health, over the past century.  All of them.  The predators we're supposedly about to wipe out have, in the same areas, increased, not decreased, in the last century as well.  Large ungulates are reclaiming ground that they had retreated from a century ago, in prodigious numbers.  Ungulate species that were on the brink of extinction, such as the Pronghorn antelope, now exist in huge numbers.  Deer exist in insanely huge numbers.  Elk have increased.  About the only exceptions to these rules are wear predators (remember, which we are supposedly wiping out) have been reintroduced and there are no human controls.

And all this was due to modern game management, funded almost exclusively by hunters.

In other hunted species this si also largely true. Waterfowl populations, which were headed for a collapse, recovered with the exception of a very few species, but some waterfowl species have always gone up and down in numbers. Quite a few species of birds now exist in areas that they are not native to, and thrive, as they were introduced.  Again, things are going well.

And we hardly need mention small game species, the numbers of which are exploding.

So where's the data to support the Science article in North America and Europe, as to land animals?  It doesn't exist.

Indeed, what the article would largely support is the introduction of North American style game management where it doesn't exist.  And where some of those influences have crept in, that has worked. 

I'll not go much into South America, where once again, things are largely going fine.  They are in the large landmass of Russia as well.  Africa and Asia definitely have their problems, however, but that's because the hunting culture there is completely different than the one mentioned above.  Having said that, in Africa, where a peculiar sort of Trophy Hunting has come in, actually sees game animal numbers increasing, not decreasing. Even animals like lions, so recently in the news, are actually increasing substantially in areas where they are controlled via legal hunting.  Where trouble exists in Africa, it's due to poaching, not legal hunting.

I'll abstain commentary on fish, as I don't know enough about sport fishing to comment.  Maybe the article is more accurate there. But this leads to me to what I'd next note.

I'm not a "sport" fisherman, nor am I a "Trophy" hunter.  I fish and hunt but I'm more in the subsistence category.  I suspect most hunters fit into  my category in varying degrees, although articles of this type seem to miss that.  I can't blame them too much, as writing in the big game arena tends to focus on Trophy Hunting rather than Subsistence Hunting.  The difference is fairly significant, but to summarize it, I'm just as likely to take a doe deer or antelope than a buck, as I'm hunting for the table.  Around here, indeed, that was the norm up until perhaps the 1970s, when people who moved in, that trophy concepts came in.  But the game isn't really managed that way, and there are still plenty of Subsistence Hunters around here.  We aren't in a special defined category under the law, like in Alaska or the Yukon, but we exist, and that's what most hunters actually are. 

Which should be encouraged.  It's hunting of that type that's preserved wildlands nature around the world.  It's preserving the wild, and preserving the mental sanity of our increasingly loopy species, by keeping us in touch with what we actually are, and are meant to be by nature.  Truth be known, the soccer mom driving the SUV all around during the day, and who lives in a McMansion, and doesn't raise or take any of her own food is a much bigger threat to wildlife than any hunter is.

None of which is to say that there aren't problems.  The commercialization of everything in American life is introducing problems by inserting a certain manor lord mentality amongst those with means that didn't previously exist, and that does cause the reduction, ultimately, of availability of everything.  Urbanization is a big problem. And technology is indeed a problem, as people are defeating the limits of the natural world, but also making themselves irrelevant at the same time in everything. 

But another problem is the release, in this fashion, of science that's simply contrary to the observed data.

We've seen a lot of bad science in recent decades.  Immunization causes Downes Syndrome.  Aluminum cookware causes Alzheimer's.  All sort of bad dietary information.  Other examples could be given.  And when this is the case, it causes contempt for science. And that's a terrible thing.  That plays to the ignoring of real problems, which is a huge problem. Scientist ought to therefore be careful about releasing studies that the observed data just doesn't support, or which is speculative in the extreme.  I'm not blaming scientist for the increasing degree of contempt of science, but stuff like this doesn't help.

Monday at the Bar: The Op Ed in the Wyoming Lawyer on the UBE

Since that time we've endured the UBE as the bar exam for Wyoming and started to live with the sour fruits of that adoption.  In this month's issue of the Wyoming Lawyer, the magazine that members of the Wyoming State Bar all receive, an excellent op ed appears regarding how Wyoming lawyers are carrying the freight for the massive increase in out of state lawyers admitted to practice here.

Monday at the bar: New York Times: Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs

Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs.

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Bulding

Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Building:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...: Today the price of oil actually declined below $40/bbl.  This is probably temporary, but how amazing.

And indeed it did prove to be temporary, but perhaps signalling how down in the dumps and perhaps permanent these price depressions may be (as in economic permanent, that is long term), a jump in the price to $45-$47/bbl was due to Saudi Arabia sending troops into northern Yemen in order to keep rebels there from consolidating their forces.  So it's regional instability in the Middle East, with a major oil producer, i.e., the one keeping the price low, that's caused the price to jump.

On the other hand, it turns out that Ecuador has been producing  oil below its cost.  It's oil has been selling for $30/bbl, and they only break even at $39/bbl.  Its crazy for them to sell it at that cost, but there must be some internal economic reason for them to keep selling it at a lost.  In most real free markets, they'd shut their wells in.  Perhaps they will, and indeed, they'll have to, resulting in taking that oil off the market for a time.

Random Snippets: G.K. Chesterton: "The new rebel is a skeptic"

“BUT the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. ...

G. K. Chesterton

Friday Farming: Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

 

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself"

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself": "THOROUGHLY worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I rem...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...: Some things are hard to forget.  To that point, almost twenty years ago, I purchased a book by Don Berkebile entitled, Horse-Drawn Commerci...

 That is one freakin' huge wagon.

Fickle fame

Some recent news items have interestingly portrayed the fickle nature of American fame, and how shallow and vapid it is.  Interesting to watch in progress.

One aspect of American fame is that the same things and personages that raise somebody to fame stand eager to rip them to shreds when they get there.  It'd be easy to say, and potentially correct as well, that having participated in the creation of their image, they are set up for a fall if they don't meet that expectation, but it's a little more than that in my view.

A recent example of that would involve the entire Josh Duggar saga. Now, readers of this blog, and there are darned few, know that I'm not a fan of the Duggars and never have been.  I always thought them a bit odd, or perhaps more than a bit odd, and I've chaffed at the occasional comments that they represent "conservative Christianity".  No they don't, if "conservative" Christianity is meant to include the millions of conservative Christians in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (the majority, fwiw, of Christians on earth), or those conservative Christians in numerous other denominations. No, the Duggars were interesting because they clearly belonged to something akin to a tiny sect, given their dress and lifestyle, and that provided part, but only part, of the fascination.  The remainder of the fascination was based on their just having a big family, something that wasn't unusual in the world until very recently.

Now, the Duggars traded on that fascination and turned it into a television career.  I have a problem with that, although I guess I can't fully blame them. But then, they were perfectly set up to be ripped apart when things went bad, and they did, in a bizarre fashion, mostly due to the icky behavior of Josh Duggar, who turns out to have lived a fairly hypocritical life.

The point isn't to defend him. Registering on a cheaters website is downright icky, in my view (and says a lot about how bizarrely dependant on technology we've become. . . do we need to register to cheat on spouses. . . seriously?).  No, it's just that the same media that made such a big deal out of them, is now ripping them down, and for conduct that it pretty much celebrates in other people (the cheating that is, not the other stuff).

Indeed, it's weird how fickle fame is.  If a public figure of the Duggars type, or a politician, cheats on his spouse, he's pretty much doomed.  Hollywood stars, on the other hand, get a pass and it'll just be passed off as some sort of tragedy for everyone, including the cheater.  Very fickle.

In contrast to this, we  have people who seemingly trade on their good public images for ongoing fame, as they convert their prior lives into one of trouble.  Fame is not only fickle, it's apparently addictive.

We've been given a potential example of that in the story of Bruce Jenner.  Jenner was originally famous for being an Olympic athlete.  Even at that time, fwiw, it seems to me that people speculated on him having same gender attractions, but that's another story.  Later, long after most athletes would be a thing of distant memory, he became famous again for being the second spouse of a family that's become seemingly fasmous for its female members being famous.  Or perhaps appearing on the cover of magazines with very little clothing on.  Now, he has announced as have a gender issue and he's becoming a woman, if a person can changed genders, which our DNA says we may not.

That's been celebrated and he's been announced as some species of hero.  In the meantime, he was involved with a fatal car wreck and will be charged with manslaughter, apparently.  That gets less press.  Odd.

It's particularly odd if we recall that Tiger Woods had a car accident that resulted in endless press attention, in part because he was . . . cheating on his spouse.  

Now, both are athletes, so why does Woods get the negative attention and Jenner does not.  I guess there's the cheating angle again, but Woods never set himself up as a public paragon of virtue (nor did he do the opposite).  Indeed, Woods is a Buddhist and therefore he certainly isn't a Duggaresque figure, although I'll confess I have no idea what the Buddhist position on monogamy is.

For another example, we have the weird story of the constant "look at me" displays by a certain female singer that rose up in the Disney child star factory.  I have problems with that entity in and of itself, but the displays, rather than the bold acts of individualism they're proclaimed to be, are more in the nature of childish spoiled brat displays.  Yet they are both fascinated and gawked at.  A similar meltdown, much less spectacular, has been given to at least one other female actress who ended up in constant trouble with the law, and while on a break from court displayed what she had in the Ossified Freak's journal.  Not so celebrated.  Yet another is just regarded as a pathetic meltdown.  Why is one celebrated and the other pitied?  Who knows.  Perhaps the difference is the degree to which the meltdown is genuine.

Speaking of the Ossified Freak, a young woman who rose to some level of fame as being one of the "girlfriends" of that fellow, which presumably entails certain conduct and to which other titles would have attached in a prior era, went on to marry some sort of athlete and convert that marriage into a television show. Why anyone would care about this sufficiently to watch it is hard to explain.  Following that, that fellow fell into some sort of scandal and now the same female figure is a character on a "boot camp" for troubled marriages.  I'd think that a television camera following you around in these circumstances would be troublesome in and of itself, but there you have it.  But here too, why do we care about this, and why does this sort of weirdness lend itself to a televised following? 

Indeed, that sort of public voyeurism may have been at least partially pioneered when it turned out that a really boring married couple, but one that included a former actress known for her portrayal of a girl in a California upper class high school, took that turn when it turned out that the husband was cheating on her.  He didn't get the Duggar treatment, as after all, he's an actor.  But from there on out there were endless episodes of the wife blubbering.  Heck, they both were cheating on other spouses when they started their relationship, so, D'oh!  But apparently not.  Anyhow, why would a person attempt to trade on that misery for fame?

Perhaps the most famous celebrity meltdown of recent years was the sad tale of Michael Jackson, who rose to fame on his music (which I never liked) but who spent his later years sort of freakishly altering himself.  Very odd and sad, but while the press noted his sad decline, the fame had clearly precipitated it.  So, he essentially was on display as a circus star the entire time. Very odd indeed.