Swine before pearls. Well, diamonds, actually. Rihanna, a chanteuse of renown, wore two megabucks worth of jewelry to the Grammy awards, including 100 carats on her bracelet, 30 carats on  her earrings, and who knows how much on the various rings that covered her fingers. (A side note: “grammy”is derived from “gramophone,” an early brand of record player. It was  in direct competition with the “phonograph,” another brand of record player. You can see why the trade association chose to honor the gramophone. If they had made the other choice, the award would be the “phony” which, while undoubtedly more accurate, would not have been well received by the awardees.)

She doesn’t own them, of course. It is standard procedure for the glitterati to rent or borrow jewelry with a value approximately equal to the GDP of Luxembourg for gala events like the Grammys, the Oscars, the Hermans, and public hangings. One wonders why, since everybody knows that they don’t own them. (If I had loaned or rented two thousand large in ice to a fame-addled entertainer, I would be petrified that she would hock them and fly to Tierra del Fuego, secure in the knowledge that her fans would still follow her on Twitter and Facebook and that she could avoid extradition for years.)

Now, Rihanna does have a petty good excuse. She recorded a song/video entitled “Diamonds” that made it way up on the pop charts. But how about Jennifer Lopez, who wore five megabucks, or Carrie Underwood who wore thirty-one megabucks.  That’s a lot of money, even to me.

Why not wear fake jewelry that they could even keep? In part, it’s the fear that they might be found out. Nah, they can’t be that sensitive. Think about the amount of lip-syncing that goes on, and that’s much easier to detect than a cubic zircon. Mostly, it’s the fantastic feeling of seeming richer than everybody else. If you got, it flaunt it. Even if you don’t really “got it” for keeps.

It’s form over substance, Dear Reader, a signature characteristic of collapsing civilizations. The grammyphites know their audience: teenie boppers, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, swine all! For these cohorts, the image is the reality. Marshall McLuhan got it right.

But this attitude provides us with unlimited fun opportunities!

We can rent a glitzy tux and crash swanky parties! We can put on surgical greens and collect enough livers to provide pate for the whole crowd! We can put on business suits, enter the corridors of power, and embezzle gazillions! We can run for political office even if we have no qualifications at all!!

NYAHAHAHAH!