So do we throw our allegiances behind the celebrity or the potentially flawed hero? There was a time when we didn’t have to choose, when our celebrities and our heroes tended to be one and the same. People became famous for great deeds. Think George Washington, Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong. But celebrity and heroism went their separate ways some time ago. It’s become easier to obtain celebrity status, harder to be a hero. And when celebrity worship goes up against hero worship, the celebrities usually win.

That will be true at this year’s Oscars. The theme of the show is “a celebration of movie heroes,” the producers say. Yet even as our movie stars honor worthy heroes, the spotlight inevitably shines on the celebrities themselves. …

What the public felt entitled to know about the lives of famous people, and what the news media felt entitled to report, expanded in the wake of Watergate. Gerald and Betty Ford took up residence in the White House that August, and a month later the new first lady received a breast cancer diagnosis. She spoke frankly about it to the news media, inviting photographers to take pictures of her in her hospital room, wearing a housecoat. “Radical mastectomy,” People wrote in October 1974. “Suddenly, in the aftermath of Betty Ford’s surgery, millions of Americans knew what it meant.”