No Second Acts vs. 15 Minutes of Fame

The famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about there being "no second acts in American lives" doesn't seem as meaningful as it once did. Perhaps that's because it's at war with Andy Warhol's saying about how in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. In any case, the latest proof of the Fitzgerald quote's increasing irrelevance came the other day with the news that rapper Luther Campbell of the infamously disgusting 2 Live Crew is pursuing a campaign to become mayor of Florida's Miami-Dade county. As a friend of mine observed, the only thing that would make this story better (i.e. more entertaining) would be if Campbell was running for mayor in Broward County, where he had so many obscenity-related legal troubles in the 80s/90s.