With Everyone on It, The Red Carpet Is Wearing Thin

The trophy show season kicks off today with the Golden Globe Awards, and the nominees presumably are hoping that at least a few viewers will tune in to actually honor their work in film and TV rather than to dissect their eveningwear. They hope in vain.

The time has long since passed when people even pretended that their priority in watching an awards show was to find out who the big winners were going to be. The shows are always about the dresses, the creative black tie, the cleavage, the Botox and the men who fall victim to the misguided notion that greasy hair and a lackadaisical attitude are somehow sexy.

But where once the lines were clearly drawn between celebrity and non-celebrity, gawkers and gawkees, they have become much blurrier. We have all become celebrities of a sort. The road to omni-fame began with reality shows. One could become famous for no discernible talent, but at least -- at least -- there were applications to fill out and auditions to ace. One had to do a little something before being publicly fired or pushed to the edge of starvation on a deserted island.

Now all hurdles have been removed thanks to YouTube, Facebook and the many photo clouds to which one can upload personal pictures for all the world to see and inevitably mock. Everyone is famous, and everyone is fair game. Life has been transformed into one endless red-carpet moment: a nonstop parade in which we twirl and pose, or bob and weave, and try to manage our personal image. And the truth is that no one can control it, not all the time. Not Tom Cruise. Not Jennifer Aniston. Not a president-to-be. Not even the recent college grad trying to clean up his MySpace page before hitting the interview circuit.

Pity the poor skier who tumbled out of the chairlift in Vail on New Year's Day and was left dangling upside down by one ski, with his pants yanked down practically to his ankles and his naked tush exposed. Surely no one was surprised that gawkers took his picture to amuse their friends. But can we at least pretend to be shocked that the images turned up on "Today" in the pitiless fourth hour?

Anyone can be used to promote a business, sell a tchotchke or fill a news hole. Some people -- actors, musicians, party hounds, "real housewives" -- indulge in this commercialism willingly. They happily take free this and that with the promise of carrying it prominently whenever cameras might be around, which is to say virtually all the time.

But really, anyone at any time can have his image used to help move merchandise. It used to be that children -- aside from professional models and such -- were exempt from having their images used for crass commercial endeavors. But once shutterbugs began shooting the children of celebrities, it wasn't long before publicists began combing through those pictures searching for usable product shots. And so now whenever Suri Cruise or one of the little members of Jolie-Pitt clan has a play date in the park, everyone can be told precisely who made their T-shirt or their pram.

When the presidential transition office released the images of the Obama girls heading off to their first day at Sidwell Friends, a publicist blasted out information on the brand of Sasha Obama's hoodie. Maybe wanting to dress like Sasha isn't such a bad thing, but using her to unwittingly sell products has a certain stench to it.

No one is immune from using a photo scrum to promote his cause or to craft his image. This is not a matter of calling a news conference and then standing at a lectern while the cameras roll and everyone manages to preserve a bit of dignity. That still happens. But public figures have also embraced the rolling photo op, the one in which the main character pretends to be shocked by the media interest. Really.

One had the sense that Roland Burris -- the Illinois politician who really, really, really wants to be a senator -- thought that his red-carpet moment on Capitol Hill on Tuesday was going to be a lot more glamorous. But he did not seem prepared for the claustrophobic effect of a horde of cameras pressing in on one diminutive man. And the weather did him no favors. Photographs show Burris clutching the lapels of his coat as he crouched under umbrellas that seemed to be doing a poor job of protecting him from the rain.

The pained expression on Burris's face during his red-carpet mishap brought on the same reaction as did the sight of actress Lara Flynn Boyle looking like a strung-out ballerina at the 2003 Golden Globes. What were you thinking? And just what sort of attention did you expect to attract?

It may be that in this era of constant image manipulation, everyone should engage a stylist. They help make sure that every garment is flattering on camera so even those surreptitious cellphone shots aren't too embarrassing. They might have prepped Burris for the weather. A nice trench coat would have served him well. Perhaps an elegant fedora would have helped him look a little less flustered. The first rule in image management, after all, is: Whatever happens, never let them catch you with your pants down.