What do I know about Courteney Cox?

She started off as Ian Copeland’s secretary and love interest.  And then she was featured in a Bruce Springsteen video back when we were innocent and didn’t realize she wasn’t a fresh young thing plucked from obscurity, but an actress.  Then she was on "Friends" and became rich and famous.

And I don’t care.  You see I’ve been around long enough to know that actors are playing a role.  In other words, they’re not the people you see on screen.  Furthermore, if you’re not self-centered, if you’re not narcissistic, you can’t make it as an actor.  So those of us in contact with these people don’t see them as objects of affection, but two dimensional icons to observe and pass by like billboards.

Did I care that Courteney and David Arquette were breaking up?  Someone had an affair…who cares?

Then I turn on Howard Stern and Mr. Arquette is testifying.

Have you ever been left?  I know it’s hard to leave, but it’s nothing like being left.  It’s like you’re playing third base and the pitcher picks up the ball and goes home.  Like you’re the quarterback, waiting for a hike, but there’s no ball.  You’re ready to give it your all, you’re still in the game, but there is no game.

And then you start to reel.  You love ’em.  You hate ’em.  But you’re ready to love ’em again if they love you.  But they don’t.  That’s the secret of being left.  The person doing the leaving checked out long ago, you’re the last to know, literally, they’ve discussed it with all their friends, even have a plan in order, by time you find out it’s a fait accompli, and it’s devastating.

But it’s worse if you’re a public figure.  Because your humiliation is public.  It’s intensified.  Which is why everybody lies.  Respect our privacy.  It was mutual.  BULLSHIT!  It’s never mutual.  If someone doesn’t want to leave more, if someone isn’t calling the shots, you weren’t in a relationship.  But in this phony world we live in, people accept the b.s.

But David Arquette did not want to hide behind the curtain.  And he wanted to get ahead of the story, and tell the truth.  That sure, he slept with that woman, that waitress, that….but he’d been separated from Courteney for four months.  He didn’t do anything wrong.  He went on Howard Stern to tell his side of the story.  Not versus his wife, Courteney Cox, but versus the press, that loves to beat up and judge anybody who walks into the agora and gets attention.

I know, I know, it’s the price of being famous.

But old school fame ain’t what it used to be.  It’s just too damn phony.  But David Arquette was being brutally honest.  Laughing, crying, what did Joni Mitchell say, it’s the same release?

The longer he talked the more you thought he was an idiot.  Then again, he said he wasn’t verbal and it was 4:20 in the morning.  But if you ran into him on the street after this performance, you’d slap him on the back, say hi, treat him nice, want to be his bud, because we’ve all been there, it’s part of the human condition, heartbreak.

We’re living in two worlds now.  The mainstream world and the real world.  And the real world plays out online.  And the mainstream world hates this.  Hates that it’s being challenged by this upstart.  But those participating online know the mainstream is pompous and oftentimes doesn’t get it right.  And the high and mighty mainstreamers are not interested in what the hoi polloi have to say.  They want their money, but not their opinion.  But now the average citizen has power.

I’m not talking about the Tea Party, white people backed by rich men protesting that they’re losing control of the country.  I’m talking about people who just don’t get how the rich can bitch when they can’t find a job, how congressmen are beholden to corporations, not people.  How the Supreme Court said corporations are better than people, much richer and able to support political candidates.

But it’s not only about Washington, D.C.  We’ve got the TV networks and the newspapers and the right wing bloviators on talk radio who excoriated David Arquette to the point where he apologized.  I don’t know what for.  He’s their fodder, he sells their magazines, now they’re going to tell him how to behave?  It’s his story.  It’s his truth.  If you can’t be honest, what have you got?

America.  The land of the duplicitous.  Where people lie and kiss butt and play a game whose rules were written not by the players, but the string-pullers, who jerk the players around.

But the players are sick and tired of it.

Yes, we’ve got to give Howard Stern credit.  He got the story.

And there’s no story without David Arquette.

And the facts were interesting, but not as great as the performance.  David Arquette gave the performance of a lifetime.  With Howard Stern as director and Robin Quivers assisting.  You just couldn’t turn it off.  Every human emotion was evidenced.  It was a roller coaster you refused to get off.  I would have poured quarters in the dashboard to keep the story going.  Because you just can’t get this honesty anywhere else.

Oh, you can get it from your buddy.  In the bar.  On the phone.  But when it comes to entertainment, it’s all phony all the time.  Fake reality TV shows.  Movies made for people who don’t exist.  And music so vapid, so whored out to labels and radio and TV and the Fortune 500, as to be impossible to relate to by normal human beings.  Sure, some will dance to the track for a while, but then the cuts are discarded, they’re meaningless.  The mainstream trots out sales figures, trumps up the story, but no one cares.  Otherwise Katy Perry would sell out stadiums, who’s gotten more publicity than her?  But it’s dishonest.  God, you almost think Katy showed cleavage on "Sesame Street" so her performance could be banned and she could get a ton of publicity.  I don’t really believe that, but then again, do I?

But listening to David Arquette on Howard Stern…  He didn’t call his publicist, or if he did, he ignored him.  There was no filter.  There was straight honesty.

Music used to specialize in this.  But music radio can’t compete with talk radio.  And no one can compete with Howard Stern, the King Of All Media, because he’s put in his 10,000 hours, he’s tapped into the zeitgeist, he’s honest, he not only excavates the truth from his guests, but from himself and his ragtag bunch of cronies.

Don’t listen.  Put him down.  The point is, Howard’s got rabid fans.  They built Sirius radio.  You should only have people who care so much about you.