In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan bears enter winter dens in October; in the South, later; even in Florida bears “hole up” during the coldest weather.

He must be expecting an onslaught, because Mr. Wainwright, 33, the singer-songwriter-rhinestone-lover, has been superfabulous lately.

This minor epidemic of affluenzas does not signal a politics that is, in analytical terms, creative. Rather, it signals a type of commentary that has reached an impasse, uncertain of how to further develop an interpretation of and response to the exigencies of global consumption. Even more damagingly, talk of ‘affluenza’ has become a dead end in a time beyond the millennial boom; an era that requires a far more nuanced understanding of why and how the West consumes than is evident in a trite, if pithy, labelling of the western individual as manic shopper.

Perhaps inevitably, as the manipulation of the stars' public images became ever more rigorous, so too did the efforts of gossip columnists such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper to uncover dirt and scandal.