“Don’t judge, please” and the more common “I’m not judging you but here’s my judgment anyway”….. the sanctimoniousness by the upright brigade that borders on arrogance and is the antithesis of intellect that they ask for.

In the past few days I have seen loads of posts about celebrity events. I have seen people commenting on their marriages, deaths, political affiliations and outfits. Besides death, all things that the celebrity culture thrives on have been talked about.

Documenting celebrity lifestyles and life events are a huge part of celebrity popularity and a huge part of the jobs that their publicists perform. Also, blogs and documents about celebrities are a legitimate industry and one of the most lucrative sides of blogging. Case in point! Perez Hilton, TMZ, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Reality TV, Bravo, CW, Big Brother, Big Boss, The Real Housewives franchise.

Many celebrities today actually wouldn’t have been celebrities if we didn’t have the tabloid culture and the blogging culture. The Kardashians have been reported to be “famous for being famous”. Who made them famous? People like you and me who write and read about them. And also people who don’t agree with us and seemingly stay above the fray but are too deep in it to extricate themselves. All of us!

It’s okay if you stay above the celebrity news and gossip. Some might say that people who are above this type of frivolity in their lives shouldn’t even be commenting on things pertinent to celebrities but that’s impossible for sanctimony. Sanctimony thrives on setting a standard, living in it, reveling in it, getting flustered when someone shows them a different angle that is more convincing than their bubble of nothingness, gets its claws out and then what ensues is the assumption by sanctimony of the other person being “uncultured”, “frivolous”, “too free to indulge in trivial celebrity crap” and “too beneath sanctimony to even have an opinion”.

“Please don’t judge” for people who eat their meals and have clothes on their back because of the constant judgment-laden columns and interviews written by them is stupid of us. I’m talking about reality stars particularly. These newest assortment of celebrities are actually people who pay newspapers and other magazines to write about them. Is there something wrong about it? Nope! If that’s how they have valued themselves and their worth then it’s totally valid and legitimate. I don’t see how they’re any different from a physician like myself if I ever went into private practice and paid a newspaper to advertise my practice. The problem is the belief that medicine is something that smart people do and acting is done by people who are deviants at baseline and mediocre in other areas of their lives or just too good looking to really need a job.

But this isn’t about celebrities. This is about people who take an interest in them and emulate them. Well, the sanctimonious brigade can’t swallow that. For all the lectures that I’ve heard from Muslim sanctimonious women on how TV and film are the reason why we aren’t more intellectual, the actual problem is that these women aren’t intellectuals either. They just THINK they’re intellectual. Actually if they had any intellect they’d be able to accept a difference in choice and taste as an evolutionary process of the human species. But who are we kidding? People who get too involved with themselves don’t have time for intellectual conversations and debates. They have no time for experiences. They have time for mundane, sweeping, blanket judgments only.

So the next time you feel that a woman is frivolous and not an intellectual on social media and is essentially not harming anyone by discussing what has already been documented in widely-circulated magazines, step back. Check your sanctimony. Check your personal lack of intellect in judging her for no reason. Yes! The same judgment that you are asking her to not have for a celebrity shouldn’t come from you for her either. It’s not becoming. It reeks of false holiness. It makes you look like a petulant child who wants the world and the people in it to humor him at all times. Don’t do it. You’re not the intellect compass.