Mr Smith

For my own defense, I must say that I came across this by accident. In fact, I wouldn’t even know who Miley Cyrus was if my friend hadn’t told me that Billy Ray Cyrus has a daughter who is gaining huge popularity although still rather young. So,

OK, how can anyone have 5000 closest friends?! How can anyone have 5000 friends altogether? I’m not even sure someone can have 5000 acquaintances! Do you really think she even said ‘hi’ to all of them?

And what’s so special about the 16th birthday anyway? I know that in US you get your driver’s license at that age, but what else? And was it always (I mean, a few decades back) customary to make such a big deal out of 16th birthday, or is it something new?

Makedde

I think it is only Americans who make a big deal of turning 16. Turning 18 is more important.

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Reese

The "average" American doesn't make a big deal out of it. That sweet 16 is just a fantasy. If you get a car for your 16th you're extremely lucky, if you get a car and aren't required to get a part time job to help pay for it. You're not average.

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percy

I'll bet she get's a big house with a 4 car garage to put those cars in

ottopilot

she's projected to be a billionaire by age 18... I think she will be able to buy just about anything she wants.

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stevie667

Why do i now have the undying urge to knock out her two front teeth and give her an impromteu nose job?

But yeh, 5000 'friends' is a bit much, did she send out a nigerian man to go ask people to pay $10 for an invite for the promise of a kick ass party?

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Manic_Skafe

In these tough economic times, what could be more appropriate than a blatant celebration of wealth? And I highly doubt that the article meant "5000 friends" in the literal sense.

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Vigilante

16th birthdays are a big deal for girls in America, especially suburban girls, and definitely for girls known across the world with a father that is nearly as well known. Good for her, she got out of flipping burgers at McDonalds. I don't hate her for that, not sure why anyone here would...or for that matter want to knock out her teeth. Bit harsh, eh?

BTW she more than likely did say hi to every single one of those 5000 - with a mic.

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ratbastid

Okay, to get political and serious here for a sec, this is part of what needs addressing in the whole American (and perhaps beyond) social fabric.

She got out of flipping burgers, yeah, okay. But have you heard her actually sing live? She does all right, but I know people with WAY WAY WAY more raw talent whose opportunity to express it doesn't stretch any further than their church choir. REALLY. If she wasn't Billy Ray's daughter, she'd be nobody. She got out of flipping burgers by the random fluke of who her father is. REALLY. That's the whole story with Miley. The sperm that conceived her came from a famous guy's balls, now she gets to take over Disneyland for her birthday and will be a billionaire by 18.

I'm not grousing about fairness--I'm sure she's a hard working performer, and I'm not even talking about whether she deserves what she's got or not. But you just can't ignore the inequality of opportunity she represents.

Enough of my curmudgeondom. I now return you to your discussion of cake and ice cream.

Vigilante

Hey some people earn it, and some people are born into it. I just worry about what I got in the bank, because what she's got isn't going to make one shit in my life

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Jinn

I happen to think her music is fantastic and her live performances far outperform her peers.

This celebration is actually a derivation of the latin/spanish Quinceañera, a very non-American holiday. Every culture seems to have a 'coming of age' party for girls, and oftentimes boys as well.

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mcgeedo

Such anger! It's hard to believe the anger and jealousy that someone might have more than you do. Did she steal your money? Did she take welfare? Is any of your tax money supporting her?

Suppose you had a little grocery store. Suppose your 16 year old daughter showed a real aptitude for marketing groceries, and did better at it than even you did, and made a little money at it. Are there other girls out there who could do better? Maybe, but they didn't get the chance because you are the one with the little store. So she's a success, partly because of your work and partly because of her talent. Now, suppose I wanted to knock her teeth out because... well, I don't know why. Maybe the poster who has such jealousy and anger can enlighten me why.

And I'm also curious about "inequality of opportunity." Are we now to have socialized entertainment? Do we need a quota so that everyone can have their crack at fame, talented or not? Affirmative Action Entertainment LOL!!!

Frosstbyte

I think there's a lot of resentment for the amount of money people get for being in entertainment, especially when the entertainment they're involved in is pre-packaged pop drek. She might be a great manufactured teenybop pop star, but she's still a manufactured teenybop pop star. It's the same reason people resent the Olsen Twins, who have never done ANYTHING worthwhile except for being cute on Full House and yet wipe their asses with $100 bills.

Inciting violence is probably a bit much, but, you know, I definitely gagged a little when I found out how much the girls on The Hills make per episode. I also gagged a little when I heard that she would have over a billion dollars before she's 18. I'm sure the fact that I dislike the music she makes contributes to my feelings that she doesn't deserve to have that much money. But meh.

Derwood

The happiest man on earth is her creepy 20 year old boyfriend

roachboy

personally, i don't care about miley cyrus. i only know that she exists because of my addiction to the soup. which is also the reason i know about "the hills"--it is hard to say which is the greater mystery. it does not matter to me that she makes a ridiculous amount of money. it does not matter to me what she does for her 16th birthday, whether she has 500 friends or not. whatever. capitalism is in its cultural expressions as marx said it was--miley is interesting because of speculations about her net worth, she attracts people as a function of speculations about her net worth, and her sweet sixteen is an expression of that commodity nexus. happens all the time. it is not interesting.

if she were more vulgar about all this, maybe it'd become interesting.
but there's something supremely banal about a disney girl renting one of the corporate headquarters to entertain 5000 friends with idisney product, surrounded by disney product blah blah blah.

why i decided to post here is different: mcgeedo makes me laugh.
miley is a result of the synthetic pop combine. it hardly matters who is the singer or group being packaged. what matters is the packaging. so in this, while what the other rb says is true enough, i'm not sure if it's relevant in this case.

miley is the beneficiary of the corporate pop machine. she is an expression of that machine. she is that machine.
functionally speaking, in it's ability to engage in saturation marketing aimed at it's 12-16 year old demographic, it might as well be "socialized" in the sense that mcgeedo talks about above.
there's no real distinction between private and public at this level--all that matters is repetition.
those heroes of the "free market"---consumers---particular little consumers----consumers-in-training----like to like what they are told to like in the way they are told to like it. this is the officially sanctioned way of expressing your individuality.
the corporate pop machine is not that different from north korean pop, except that north korean pop is more interestingly campy. the american corporate pop machine is just as rigid as north korean pop in its range of personalities, choices of subject matter, arrangements, cliches....it is an extended demonstration of an kind of orwellian cultural politics, in the context of which the source of the financial backing is of no consequence at all.

but hey, kids who grow up expressing their individuality through corporate pop learn to express their individuality through corporate means early, so that when they get older they're able to easily find more corporate means of expression that they can use to express their individuality in exactly the same ways. as their ability to acquire Debt increases, so their ability to want in their individual ways exactly what everyone else wants in their individual ways increases. and so the great Nothing that is privately dominated american mass culture can continue to replicate itself, on and on.

in that context, even whether miley cyrus' ongs suck or not is secondary. it doesn't matter one way or another. yay capitalism.

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mcgeedo

Of course she's manufactured, in the same manner as all pop stars before her have been. With very few exceptions, entertainers are manufactured. So what?

I'm fascinated by the comment that she and people like her don't deserve their money. As I said before, they're not doing anything illegal. Do you only deserve your money if you happen to sweat on the wrong end of a shovel to earn it? Who gets to decide whether you deserve your money? My own opinion, stated in other threads, is that you "don't deserve your money" if your efforts are limited to cranking out fatherless babies and cashing your gummint check at the liquor store. But I don't get to decide that for them.

roachboy

i don't remember saying that she did or did not deserve anything.
that would have nothing to do with my argument, would it?

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mcgeedo

No, it was Frosstbyte who said that she didn't deserve her money.

Frosstbyte

When I say "deserve" I mean only the crudest analogy of how much I feel their contribution to society is worth versus how much they get compensated for it. I think Miley Cyrus brings literally nothing to the table, and her music and performance harms the overall progression of culture and music in our society. And she rakes in millions for doing so.

It's a purely subjective view that doesn't mean much, but there are a lot of other people doing things that I think are much more worthwhile than her getting paid pennies. I don't mean deserve in the sense of she is getting something for nothing, just that I feel her compensation far exceeds the value of her services.

Which I guess is more an expression at my distaste for manufactured pop music (for the reasons outlined so eloquently by roach in his post) than it necessarily has anything to do with her.

roachboy

ok.

btw there are varying degrees of manufactured. and varying standards of it. back in the day, there were people who didn't like the monkees because they were understood as a fake band, even though they could, in fact, play and did, in fact, write a lot of their own material. mylie seems part of a different kind of machinery--the sort of thing that involves interchangeable producers making interchangeable beats over which interchangeable songs with vacant lyrics using more or less the same phrasing in more or less the same way as any other--the variation being in the hook---and these songs are entirely about the hook, a kind of taylorist bubblegum. it could be anyone. it could be you, mcgeedo, singing these tunes. it hardly matters whether you have any pitch--everything can be shifted and then, like roy orbison, you learn your recordings and perform those.

so what's strange about this machinery is that it presupposes from the outset that you're a copy of yourself, and that you tour as a copy of a copy. mylie takes being a copy of herself particularly far, in that she tours as a fictional character that her fictional character plays in a show. i'd be impressed if i had even the slightest sense that any of it was her idea, or that she even understood it as an idea--being a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy--and had fun with it. but there's no particular irony.

the worst crime in all this is being boring.

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mcgeedo

Thanks for the clarification, Frosst. Whether her contribution is worthwhile is a different topic, one that has been hotly debated by parents and children since Elvis and before, I suppose.

Derwood

She earns every penny she makes because she does her job: selling products for Disney. If you were the greatest salesperson at your company and brought in millions and millions of dollars in sales, you'd be well compensated as well

Aladdin Sane

Reported today:
October 17, 2008 --

THOUGH he's battling GOP accusations that he's an Ivy League elitist, Barack Obama has a lifestyle of the rich and famous, like TV show host Robin Leach, who always signed off, "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!" While he was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d'oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne, a tipster told Page Six.

Isn't life unfair! I want one of those lobsters and dammit, I deserve it!

BARACK OBAMA ORDERS EXPENSIVE ROOM SERVICE DURING WALDORF-ASTORIA MEETING- New York Post

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roachboy

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Bear Cub

It's a big deal, because people in 13 states can now say "yea, I'd hit that" without fear of reprimand!

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Aladdin Sane

It is not a non sequitur. There's plenty of previous talk in this thread about "resentment of wealth" and "inappropriate spending during tough economic times." I resent the hell outta Mrs. Obama's wealth and her double lobster lunch at this time of deep economic crisis as much as others resent Hanna Montana and her Mickey Mouse birthday bash.

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roachboy

aladdin:

the typical understanding of a topic, and of the logic to a thread, works at the level of it's subject matter, and not that of resemblances at the level of resentments that might be triggered by responses to a topic.

if you want to talk about lobster lunches and how unjust it all is that obama's wife had one in new york, make another thread.


btw, it may have seemed more a non sequitor to me than you because where i live lobster is not expensive.

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hunnychile

She's on that Britney track...in two years she'll be prego and unmarried or in a treatment facility. It's so Hollywood meets Disney!

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percy

Nothing new here. Every act in music, all music, is contrived to fit a mold. Straight up marketing

And your right, it doesn't matter if she sucks or not. What matters is the money she makes, thanks to all those marketing dollars. And I think she is very good at what she does. Whether people like her or not beyond the age of 14 I don't know, but she has alot of talent.

I wouldn't paint everyone with the same brush though and assume people blindly go throught life as individuals hooked on the next fad to express themselves. I know what your saying, but being in marketing myself, it's alittle more complicated than that. Sure 14 year old girls are going to jump on the bandwagon with their friends for whatever produce is introduced to them for consumption, but as we age and our individuality becomes more defined, so does our ideals to identify ourselves with what we want to be associated with. Not that the corporate structure lessens, just that it get's filtered by choice rather than duty.

Fremen

Miley Cyrus makes my nieces happy with her manufactured pop music, and her on the whole wholesome image.
It's good enough for me.

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Supple Cow

Actually, that's the Nickelodeon track.

I like Miley and hope she keeps it clean as she gets older. Hilary Duff is another refreshing change, despite my general dislike for the manufactured pop machine. (I always preferred Looney Tunes to Disney cartoons because I felt like Disney pandered to the lowest common denominator - even as a child.) These days, I am more concerned about what kinds of good examples exist in the world rather than finding reasons to tear people down as bad examples. Everyone makes mistakes and everything in life is a trade-off.

I happen to value her "good girl" image more than every other female star's "independent thinking" or "going against the status quo" crap because she isn't selling the hypersexualization of young girls. Well, she wasn't for a while anyway. I am getting a little concerned about how her manager is going to handle this coming of age stuff. In any case, I see it as an asset that her father is a famous country music singer. I am hoping it keeps her from pulling any stupid sexy-teen stunts or doing coke or getting stupidly drunk and flashing people in public. I like that her biggest problem is that all the anti-establishment people think she is too manufactured. She's probably better off for it, and so are the little girls who like her.

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roachboy

nice.

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Mr Smith

It's interesting that the discussion mostly revolves around her money and whether she deserves it or not. I didn’t mention money in my introductory post.

It seems to me that more and more celebrities are gaining popularity because of how they spend their money and what they do when not on stage or on a movie set, and not because they sing or act great. But it’s the people who buy their albums and pay to go to their concerts, it’s the people who buy magazines with paparazzi photos, it’s the people who see their movies. Some of the celebrities have taken that to the extreme so that they don’t even sing, act or do anything; they just make headlines with things like – get arrested for drunk driving, go to rehab, come back from rehab, date someone famous, break up with someone famous, etc. Take Lindsay Lohan. Nobody talks about her movies. It’s all about how much she drank last night, did she take any drugs, and who she slept with afterwards. Oh, and of course, whether she did or didn’t wear anything under her skirt is of crucial importance. People actually watch TV and read magazines to find out such things.

And then you find out that Paris Hilton earns much more money than she spends on her parties and other silly expenses. Actually, she a good entrepreneur.

But I don’t resent money earned that way. The things they do is just a kind of marketing. I don’t resent the Olsen twins either. Do you resent a guy who is rich because he won the lottery? He also didn’t do almost anything to earn his money.

It appears that Miley is just taking the same path to get very, very rich.

highdro69

I'm glad someone else noticed that!
the dude is a 20 year old model who can pretty much bed any girl he wants, yet he settles on this sorta-cute 16 year old (she was 15 when they started dating)?!?!? That is some seriously creepy crap.
You guys are all arguing over the class warfare aspect of her blatantly tasteless gilded life, but I think it's kind of just another aspect of how rich celebrities don't live in the same world as us, and don't have the same mores as the rest of us.
A lot of people here have said they like her for her "good girl" and "wholesome" image, yet she's dating an obvious pedophile for reasons that can only be physical. And let us not forget the "tasteful" nudes of her in Vanity Fair. How can nudes of a minor ever be tasteful?
I do somewhat feel sorry for the girl for having this "celebrislut" lifestyle forced upon her, but where are her parents in all of this? Does Billy Ray really owe so much to the IRS that he has to condone his daughter sliding down the Hilton slope to pay his bills? Where's the motivation for such a horrible upbringing?

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Bear Cub

I highly doubt he's out to be a pedophile. The only physical attraction he probably has is the size of her bank account. She's worth more money than just about any model in the world.

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percy

I don't know. I wouldn't say it's as bad as you make it. Actually probably not at all.

Give the girl credit though. She is out there doing it, getting it done.

Beats anonymously bitching about someone elses life on a forum for which no one cares one way or the other what you say.

highdro69

and something tells me you don't even see the irony in your own statements
lawlz
get butt hurt more tho that I made your hero look skanky :-D

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percy

Edit - not worth the energy