Adulation Inflation

There's a bit of business that inevitably comes up whenever a friend or acquaintance experiences some level of fame. I hear something like this:

"Sure, I'm just a golf columnist [or singer/songwriter or ceramicist or small town mayor or juicing blogger], but sometimes I find that I actually made a difference. For example, I received an email [or text or YouTube comment or photograph of a tattoo] from someone whose blah-blah-blah was devastated with blah-blah-blah, and they told me that the sheer blah-blah-blah of my blah-blah-blah gave them the strength to get through."

I've been through this more than a dozen times with other people (and more often on my own paltry steam), and I know my prescribed response. "My God," I'm supposed to reply. "That's FANTASTIC! You! Are! Fantastic!"

But I can't manage it with conviction, because I'm crawling out of my skin with embarrassment knowing that anyone remotely prominent gets these stories by the bucketload. They're so formulaic that they seem mass-produced, but no. It's a certain sort of person with a certain goal.

If you ever met Chris Rock or Michael Phelps or Ruth Reichl, and told them "You're greeeeat. You're soooo greeeeat," you can easily anticipate receiving a glassy-eyed "thanks" at best. Adulation inflation is a thing, so if you want to have A Real Moment with the celebrity, you must cut through with something more galvanizing than "you inspired me".

And that's what this is. Cutting through.

Everyone who takes this route imagines they found a unique penetration tactic. But, no, it's utterly formulaic. Let's render it in MadLibs™:

Your [noun] inspired my [related person] to [verb] in a moment when [related person] was [adjective].

My quandary is this: do I tell them? Or let them swell their self-regard to turgid magnificence by buying into this hackneyed form of 21st century fawning?

But how, you might ask, does this apply to Natalie Harp, the president's constant fawning companion?

Here's how author Michael Wolff (who first broke the story of her outsized influence three years ago) explains her "rise":

"She had a story in which she had...a serious cancer that would likely kill her...This story has a lot of holes.

"She then maintained that she had been cured of this cancer because in the first administration there was a Trump supported bill that gave greater access to experimental treatments. So she maintained that because of access to those treatments, her cancer was cured. This then made her claim 'Trump saved my life.'

"And that gave her a speaking berth during the Republican convention in 2020. She was given television time to say "Donald Trump saved my life." This then gave her more access to Trump world, and, in fact, got her a job."

Natalie Harp perfected the form.