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[wombat]

Sadly Paul is probably right that more Americans care about TV stars than prime ministers of foreign countries.

Of course my favorite celebrity story is the time Chris Onstad signed my arm. But as I am sure I have mentioned before, I once let Robert DeNiro touch a naked mole rat.

My other possible stories bring us back to the question of what counts as a celebrity: Supreme Court justices, anyone? I guess so, because if one died, people would start waiting for two more deaths?

[Ben-San]

Yeah, I could handle about three of those prunes dying off. Replace 'em with more people Wombat went to HS with.

I see two main classes of celebrity, big giraffe/little pond and the reflection thereof.

Playing within that classification I'd rank our contenders thus:

Andy Johns: a striper in California's inland delta (near Stockton, preferably).

Carmine Infantino: a large mouth bass in the Delaware river.

Hal Clement: a steelhead in the Columbia river.

Annette Funicello: a walleye in Lake Michigan.

Margaret Thatcher: fuck*ng Shamu, a killer whale roaming the seas eternal.

Honestly I don't know enough about giraffe or bodies of water to evaluate this metaphor but I still like it because it makes me imagine a big ol' trout who loves to talk about planets.

[pmcd9]

Andy Johns: a striper in California's inland delta (near Stockton, preferably).

I do tend to conflate Andy Johns with his much more well known brother Glyn. But c'mon, Andy engineered the lion share of Led Zeppelin's albums as well as Exile on Main Street. That's big in my opinion.

[side_show]

I think there's different levels of celebrity: local celebrity, genre/subculture celebrity, B grade celebrity, A list and universal celebrity.  I think politics runs sort of parallel to celebrities, which can but doesn't always intersect.  Then there's infamy, which is also parallel and which can but doesn't always intersect.  

[pmcd9]

That's some pretty awesome thinking there Ash.

[jaydub]

[Gratuitous Northern California snark about SoCal diversion of Delta's waters omitted]

[AugustWest]

My "celebrity story" that I'm most pleased about is the time I had lunch with Hal Clement.

That's cool as SHIT!

I think the term "celebrity" implies an associated community or culture.  I would define a celebrity as a person who is known of our about by a significant (majority?) portion of the given community.