Fifteen minutes of fame

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Oct 28 16:46:18 UTC 2006


IIRC, what Warhol said was:

"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."

For me, the interpretation of this line is as obscure as that of any
verse from the Bible. When I became familiar with it, I took the line
to mean that, at some unknowable point in the future, the *entirety*
of mankind will *simultaneously* be famous for fifteen minutes.

Clearly, I'm out of step with the overwhelming majority of, at least,
Americans, given that the standard interpretation appears to be that,
at some unknowable point in the future, random *individuals* will, for
some random, more-or-less trivial deed, acquire a trivial amount of
fame that will endure for a trivial amount of time, to wit, fifteen
minutes.

-Wilson
--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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