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It is impossible to read any newspaper's entertainment section this week and not read something about Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan encapsulates Marshall's concept of celebrity as requiring a "relatively stable media system," (634). Moreover, the news items related to Lindsay Lohan show how celebrities do fit the characteristics of being "out of control" with many "scandals" and lots of "gossip" (Marshall 634). Celebrity culture feeds the media, and the media feeds celebrity culture. As Marshall puts it, the relationship is "symbiotic," (634). One needs only to remember the way the paparazzi were responsible for the death of Lady Diana to understand how the relationship between the media and celebrity culture is an unhealthy one. Moreover, the reader, even without being familiar at all with Lindsay Lohan, celebrates her staunch individuality by identifying with her, and transforming the self via a vicarious look into the future because the article is about her seeing a psychic.

2) Element: http://www.colbertnation.com

As Marshall points out, the new incarnation of the culture of celebrity depends directly on new media. Celebrities milk social media, creating a narcissistic platform. As a two-way mirror, the celebrity projects an image of self "out there," and the viewer can offer direct feedback via the social media site. This is true for Facebook as well as for Twitter. Some celebrities have opted to create entire personas that are based on new media.

One of the most quintessentially postmodern celebrities is Stephen Colbert. In his television show that runs on the Comedy Network, appropriately titled The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert has fashioned for himself an ironic and complex multulayered persona. He has become a conservative pundit modeled after the likes of Rush Limbaugh. To perpetuate his image, Colbert uses new media, allowing his shows to be viewed and streamed for free. Colbert also understands the power of Facebook and uses the social media platform to accomplish what Marshall refers to the ways social media is "changing the relationships and mediations between user and public personality" (635).

Work Cited

Marshall, P.David. "New Media -- New Self: The Changing Power of Celebrity"