Got to thinking about this, hearing about Olivia Jade - the actress’ daughter involved in this college admission scandal. Apparently making serious coin as a “social media influencer.” I guess that - or the activities of the Kardashians - might require a "talent"for “self promotion” or something. :rolleyes: So I guess we might debate what constitutes “talent.”
I’ve long thought that actor Rupert Grint (sp?) the luckiest SOB around, for having lucked into the HP franchise due to his hair color!
I’d suggest a number of rap/hiphop artists, but I guess that gets to taste. And I thought models simply won the genetic lottery, but have to admit success at modeling involves something more than just being pretty.
Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, et al: anyone who does nothing but be “provocative”.
They’re not funny, not insightful, not even interesting in an ironic way. They just do… nothing. They add nothing to the world. They have no actual skills.
Sure he did. He did a perfectly good job and acted exactly the way Ron Weasley is described n the books. Nailed it. Does a great job in whatever else he’s in too. He was great in Sick Note. Everything thinks acting is soooo easy. It’s not; 99.9% of all people would make Rupert Grint look like Daniel Day-Lewis.
The thing about acting is that it’s a Darwinian thing. Many, many other young actors tried out to be Ron Weasley and were found wanting. Grint had to compete for his role in Snatch, Sick Note, etc. etc. If you’re no good, they hire someone else. Even people not really hired for acting ability have to bring something else to the table, like martial arts skills (Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme - and JCVD has some serious comedy chops) or just a lot of charisma, like Arnold.
The Kardashian phenomenon, though, really isn’t a matter of acting ability. It’s sheer marketing of… I dunno, something.
That said, it occurred to me there might be someone who’s gotten really rich from an invention who wasn’t really much of an inventor or a scientist, but got stupidly lucky.
Silly Bandz, for instance. They’re rubber bracelets kids wear. Cheap toy bracelets are old hat but, as it happens, Silly Bandz was the brand that took off. The guy who started selling them, Robert Croak, got ludicrously rich; it was simply a lottery win, nothing more. Croak might have other talents but his personal wealth is 99.99% Silly Bandz.
It’s harder than you think to respond to other people’s thoughts in an articulate way. Talk show hosts have to have the ability to come up with coherent responses to caller after caller after caller with very little time to think about what they’re going to say. A poster on a message board has the luxury of taking as much time as he wants to compose, write, edit, and re-edit. Talk show hosts have to respond on the fly. You may not like what they do with their skill, but they most assuredly have one.
I wouldn’t equate being able to construct a sentence about farting (Stern) with “articulate”.
I wouldn’t call agreeing with callers’ nonsensical racism and conspiracy theories (Limbaugh and the like) “coherent”.
All they have is the dubious ability to not care that they are spewing nonsense. That’s not a skill, IMHO. If they make ten cents doing it, they are overpaid.
Sorry, but they are talented. Not the kind of talent many people may like or find useful, but they do not just spout nonsense, all three of them carefully calculate what kind of nonsense will make them the most money. Especially Stern who had to come up with original material all the time. Limbaugh and Coulter mainly regurgitate the same old liberal hating pap and provide it to the dumbest among people, old racists, bigots, and other hateful scum. Stern’s audience will surprise you though, primarily married, college educated professionals earning over $100,000 a year.
I’ll go out on a limb here and wager you haven’t actually listened to Howard Stern. He isn’t always for me, but he is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, interviewers of our time. And while you might not find him funny, (and I find stretches of his program not funny, either) that doesn’t mean he isn’t funny. The idea that he is not possessed of talent is ridiculous.