NOT A CHANCE
As Deborah Schoeneman explains in 4% Famous, America will never lose interest in celebrities
BY DOUG FRENCH

America is a gossip nation. Americans can't get enough details, juicy or mundane, about the famous or the infamous. Here in Las Vegas, not many Review-Journal readers make it back to the editorial section, but mention an item in Norm! and most likely everyone has perused Norm Clarke's "Vegas Confidential" column to see which Hollywood and sports stars were in town to party. An entire cable network - the E! Channel - is devoted to tracking every movement of celebrities. Even the networks run shows like "Access Hollywood" to keep the masses up to date on their heroes and obsessions. There are even dozens of people who seem to be famous for no other reason than that they are famous.

Given the demand for stars and gossip, Hollywood has had to generate more stars. The proliferation of reality series, star searches and the like have served to make more people famous, whether worthy or not. But, this mass manufacturing of stars of various intensities has served to provide the public with more people to fixate on, thus taking their minds off taxes, wars and inflation.

The public is so hungry for idols that even people who cook food are the new celebrities, which provides a central character to Deborah Schoeneman's novel 4% Famous. Schoeneman knows her territory, having covered the gossip, real estate and society beats for the New York Observer, the New York Post and New York magazine. Her fast-paced story draws from her work in all of those areas, and of course the book is set in New York.

The Cornell graduate is only 29, according to her website, giving her the perfect perspective to tell the story of Kate Simon, a serious journalist who gets the opportunity to write gossip for the New York Examiner. Kate's running mates on the social circuit in search of love and bits for column boldface are Tim Mack and Blake Bradley. All three are young, single and wish they were doing something else but writing gossip. But despite the minimal pay and lack of respect, the continual perks of free meals, drinks and clothes, plus the nightly parties rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, make the job hard to walk away from.

Along with drinking, drugging and sleeping around, some love affairs begin and end in the book and we learn about how those gossip columns get their material. There is a cottage industry of publicists geared up to plant stories that will further the career of A-listers, B-listers and even chefs who are trying to promote restaurants.

Of course there are varying degrees of famous, thus the book's title. New York celebrities are 10 percent famous, while an international celebrity might be 85 percent-plus. And if a gossip columnist becomes very popular, they maybe get to 4 percent. But, the Randy Restaurateur that the idealistic Kate falls head over uni for is all about adding percentage points and holds a deep dark secret past. She learns the "don't sleep with the sources" rule the hard way.

Schoeneman deftly intertwines the lives of Wall Street titans and old money New York society with young jet setters, wannabe actresses (referred to as "mattresses") and the near famous. The young gossip hounds grow up during the course of the book in the most seductive and difficult environment possible: the city that never sleeps. But will America ever grow up, start minding their own business, and stop obsessing about celebrities? Not a chance. LW

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine, is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies.