Living in Hyper Reality

While the United States cannot be said to have a proper hereditary aristocracy (unless one count those crowned by money, such as Rockefellers, or by public mania, like the Kennedys), we have an upper class pursuing a variety of "lifestyles" who comprise our Dons, Boyars, Mandarins, or similar de facto in our society.
These people might be characterized by having lots of money, but since few go around wearing hats with their combined assets printed on them, they can be difficult to identify. And, these days, even to be a billionaire has gotten rather ho-hum, in a time when garbage collectors an assembly-line workers have become millionaires. Hence, a problem that the Lords Twit-Stickybottom or the Marquis de Fromage don't have to deal with.
What we do to fulfill Thorstein Veblen's dictum that wealth/power must be displayed is to parade these folk constantly in the media, the amount of attention and size of retinue or retainers, fawners, and general hangers-on determining public status, leaving us to simply assume the amount of decimal points in their net worth commanding such attention.
A century ago, this class was comprised largely of industrialists. There are some now, Trump, Gates, etc., but in general it's become in bad taste to generally proclaim one's status by mere empire-building. Hence, Trump secures his status by his alternate roles as sometime pundit and game show host on TV.
The main groups in the U.S. living in what one pundit has referred to as "hyper reality" are movie and other media personalities, sports figures, politicians...not by any means all of any of these categories. We have to have standards, after all. Added to this must be any member of the hoi polloi who happens to break through for their 15 minutes of fame on any given day....or who the media will grant an extended stay by by disappearing under particularly lurid circumstances, or be the victim of a particularly hideous or grotesque murder. We also must not omit the criminals perpetrating same, preferably in the categories of "mass murderer," "serial killer," "pedophile discovered to be living in neighborhood" or anyone providing adequate titillation on America's Most Wanted.
As the relentless egalitarianism of our age attempts to grind us all into the same mold, these people have been elevated by the only criterion that can possibly matter: popularity. It's all a big award show, and it should be named after only one of the dozens out there: The People's Choice Awards.
Unless you're caught up in popular culture, it's all so banal and tawdry as to defy description.....but that doesn't matter. Vox populi, vox dei, and the people have decreed -at least in the United States, that They Will Be Entertained. Do so, and you will be suitably rewarded, whether you are Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt, Donald & Ivana Trump, or Michelle & Barack Obama. The reward isn't just money, power, or status; it's the relentless attention that feeds back the simulacrum of of the reality of one's own importance. Thus, we have a class of people that anyone with a microphone and camera automatically assumes to be experts on anything whatever......and the person in question, due to the positive feedback they receive, largely believes this to be true.
This phenomenon can even be observed spreading throughout the media such that a person who might in past years be asked to pronounce on their own specialty or something they actually know about -motorcycle racing, for example- is now asked to forumulate Middle East policy.....and actually expected to advance an opinion, which will be presented as the absolute equal of anyone else's. To write such a thing is absolutely ludicrous, and would seem the subject of fiction; and yet it's our daily news. The show must go on.