Are you throwing down with me over this Imus thing, Jeff? Are you? Because you may be from Brooklyn, baby, but I’m a middle-aged housewife from the mean streets of San Diego and I am fueled by the twin rages of hormones and dieting… and I am telling you to bring it on! 😉
Jeff poses the musical question: Are astrology writers going too far in profiling celebrities? Does probing the psyches of these troubled individuals do them an ethical disservice? As you may know, I recently wrote a post about flawed media icon Don Imus that not only vented my feminist spleen but also suggested a particular disposition of mind at the time he made certain damning remarks that resulted in his firing. Creatively inspired by noting Imus’ Venus in Gemini, I probed his mind – guilty as charged! Careful readers will note, however, that I framed my statements with helpful phrases like “I think”, to alert readers to the facts that 1) astrology does not offer me clairvoyance into the workings of Mr. Imus’ mind; and 2) I’m not reporting facts, but opinion. But in a world in which Fox “News” is considered journalism, I suppose one can’t be too careful about clearly stating one’s bias.
With all due respect to ISAR, of which I’m a member – whose ethical guidelines insist that astrological analyses concerning public figures stick to what’s in the public domain – what else could astrologers possibly write about a celebrity or public figure other than what is in the public domain? Unless we know the celebrity personally, anything else is obviously speculation. Astrology cannot be used to x-ray people’s minds. I have never – not once, in 17 years – looked at a client’s chart in advance and formed a mental picture that was remotely in the same zip code as their reality. Yes, I know the themes that are operating, but the map is not the territory. I do not know that person.
If presented with Don Imus’ chart and not told a thing about him – had I never seen or heard a minute of his program – I would never have assumed his Venus in Gemini was misbehaving in such spectacular fashion. I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt. As his astrologer, I would automatically place myself in the role of his champion. But in light of his very public actions, I interpreted that Venus in Gemini differently.
Now if a blogger starts speculating about a celebrity, or extrapolating a bit too enthusiastically and then claims it as astrological canon, that’s when I’ll cry foul. That’s not what I see people doing in astrology blogs, though. Mostly I see them scratching their heads and saying, “Unh?”, just like the rest of the baffled public. WTF, Mel Gibson? Britney, get ahold of yourself!
Astrology is a way of making sense of things that make no sense, and so is entertainment. Sometimes celebrities are a symbolic prompt to help us untangle larger issues. I think celebrities are sort of like modern day Gods that act out our projected mythology. I would argue that when we speculate about the inner lives of celebrities, it’s not even about them. How can it be, when we don’t know them at all? Don Imus means little or nothing in my life, but I thought his situation said something interesting about Gemini, so I pretended to crawl inside his ugly head for a minute and played with what I imagined was lying around. And then took a nice, long shower. By next week I’ll have completely forgotten about Don Imus, but I’ll still remember just how ugly Gemini can be when it gets contaminated. Thus, Don has served his Celebrity Deity purpose in my life.
It’s always worth discussing the ethics of our profession. We should never claim more on astrology’s behalf than it can deliver, nor use it to cause harm. But I’m sorry – the ethics of an astrologer who speculates, based on astrology (and the in-studio chortling between Don and his staff), that Don Imus might actually have enjoyed saying the lousy thing he said, are a lot less interesting to me than the ethics of a person who accuses complete strangers – scholars and athletes – of sexual promiscuity, based strictly on gender and race.
So in conclusion, I don’t much care if Mr. Imus or anybody else wants to take exception to my probing his psyche. It’s not like I read his diary or petitioned a registrar for his birth records (his bloody birth date is all over the web). He’s the one who sold his public personna as a commodity and made reams of dough cracking wise at the expense of others. These are not the acts of a private person. As far as I’m concerned, such a person is fair game for a certain degree of creative musing and speculation – just as long as I don’t claim that my astrological musings are astrological facts.
