Two weeks ago, actor Robert Blake was charged and arraigned for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. As he spoke to reporters outside the courthouse, Blake’s attorney, Harlan Braun, told reporters that his client was “basically philosophical” about the whole matter. According to Braun, Blake’s words, upon hearing of the charges, were “here we go.”

Although it probably didn’t occur to him, Blake’s words apply to a lot more than his upcoming trial. American culture is about to witness another example of how our attitudes, opinions and even our most important institutions are distorted by our preoccupation with celebrity.

By “another example,” I’m referring to the last Los Angeles murder trial involving a sometime actor: O.J. Simpson. It may be hard to believe now, but prior to the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, Simpson was considered a “has been.” It had been more than a decade since he stepped on a football field and two decades since he broke the all-time single-season rushing record. His best work as an actor, if you can use that phrase without irony, was also at least a decade behind him.

None of that mattered when Brown turned up dead. All that mattered was that Simpson was “famous.” No sooner had that white Bronco started its surrealistic drive down the freeway than an industry was born, one whose purpose was to simultaneously stoke and satisfy public demand for information on all things Simpson, and I don’t mean Homer, Lisa and Bart. Coverage and analysis of the trial became the staple of cable news coverage and, in turn, created new celebrities whose subsequent cosmetic surgeries became the subject of public fascination.

Eight years later, it’s looking like a case of déjà vu all over again. Only this time this “celebrity” in question is even more of a “has been” than Simpson. Blake, whose career started with The Little Rascals, hasn’t made a movie of consequence since In Cold Blood in 1967. And the role he is best known for was on a show, Baretta, that hasn’t aired since 1978!

As The New York Times, among others, tells us, this lack of recent success didn’t keep Bakley from pursuing Blake precisely because he fit the criteria for being a celebrity. Articles and news reports chronicled her sad and desperate attempts to become the wife of a famous man, no matter how attenuated his claim to fame had become, and how she ended up with Blake after earlier attempts to land another celebrity husband had failed.

Just as Blake’s fading star didn’t deter Bakley from pursuing him, his diminished profile won’t keep reporters and the public from following every development in the trial. Just like O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, years after he warranted the designation “star,” is about to become a household name ― probably to a greater extent than when he was actually working. If the number of satellite trucks and reporters outside the Van Nuys police station is any indication, what is a tragic story, regardless of Blake’s guilt or innocence, is about to become a media circus.

And if you think about it, that’s pretty absurd. Columnist Arianna Huffington, who I haven’t agreed with a whole lot lately, compared the media to “addicts” in decrying “their overwrought, over-the-top, overkill coverage of the arrest of D-grade celebrity Robert Blake.” Huffington is right about the coverage, but she’s leaving someone out of her explanation for why we’re about to witness another media frenzy: us.

The truth is that Americans are absurdly interested in the lives of people we have come to call “celebrities.” It’s this fascination that drives the coverage, not the other way around. If that weren’t true, your reading material at the checkout line would be very different: no People, Us, In Style, not to mention Star and National Enquirer.

The circus in Van Nuys, and what it represents, isn’t something that happened overnight. Our preoccupation with what we call “celebrities” has been building for the better part of a century. In 1898, Americans were asked “what person of whom you have ever heard or read would you most like to resemble?” Nearly all those named were historical figures like Julius Caesar, George Washington or Clara Barton. There were no entertainers on the list.

By 1948, the answers to a similar question included some actors and musicians, as well as athletes, but political and historical figures still made up 86 percent of the list. By 1986, the only political figure in the top 10 was President Ronald Reagan. The rest of the list were actors and entertainers such as Clint Eastwood, Eddie Murphy and Molly Ringwald.

If all you’re thinking is “Molly Ringwald? Who’s that?” you’re missing the point. The real lesson contained in these lists is not how tastes have changed but rather the change, as Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio put it, “in American attitudes toward what is honorable and what is to be respected.”

This shift Myers is referring to can be seen in our language. As media and social critic Neal Gabler notes in his book Life The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, the word “celebrity” is of recent vintage. It has only come into currency in the past 50 years or so. Previously, people were referred to as “famous” or “renowned.”

The shift was more than rhetorical. The requirements for being a celebrity and the requirements for renown or fame are very different. There’s nothing new about people pursuing fame and paying attention to those who had attained it. (Although there is something new about how mass communications makes every move made by celebrities almost instantly accessible.) John Milton called the desire for fame the “spur” for the creation of great works of art. And the Founding Fathers not only understood the attraction of renown, they counted on men’s love of renown to motivate them to do great things. As Alexander Hamilton put it, love of fame was the “ruling passion of the noblest minds.”

Of course, what they had in mind were actions like leading men in battle or working for the common good. They didn’t foresee the way that the word “celebrity” would replace “renown,” and they certainly did not anticipate historian Daniel Boorstin’s definition of a “celebrity:” someone who is “known for his well-knownness.”

This verbal trajectory runs parallel to a moral trajectory, what Myers was getting at in his comment about what we deem honorable and respectable. Renown and fame are rooted in accomplishments. (Indeed, “accomplished” was a word that was used to describe the people we admired.) Celebrity, as Gabler tells us, is about how we are perceived. What matters is the status of being a celebrity, not how you acquired it or what you’ve done to merit public attention and the esteem of your fellows. If you doubt this, ask yourself why two dozen attractive women would risk public rejection and humiliation on the ABC series The Bachelor if not for a shot at “well-knownness.”

“Well-knownness” blurs the lines between notoriety and notoriousness, between being famous and being infamous. It’s agnostic about questions of vice and virtue, and even right and wrong. This agnosticism also makes “well knownness” shallow and absurd, as the attention paid to what Huffington calls a “D-grade celebrity” reminds us.

But the difference between the satellite trucks outside the jail and the attention paid to “A-grade” celebrities is one of degree, not kind. Ignore the names, and strip away the trappings, and they both say the same thing about what’s important and worthy of our respect. And while we may find while this particular example of celebrity culture run amuck laughable, we shouldn’t forget that, as a culture, we’re in basic philosophical agreement with the folks in the trucks.