A growing awareness of this truth might explain why sales of celebrity memoirs have fallen off of late. According to the Guardian newspaper in Britain, a whole raft of celebrity-authored books tanked in the U.K. last year. In the U.S., as well, there have been several notable failures, particularly by cast members from the reality TV show “Jersey Shore.” Could the public finally be wising up?

Of course, the cause might just be the low caliber of the celebrities in question. I didn’t recognize any of the names the Guardian held up as fizzling memoirists — except for Alan Partridge, who isn’t even a real person. “I, Partridge” was in fact written by the actor-writer-director Steve Coogan, who created the character of Partridge for a television series parodying B-list chat-show hosts and other effluvia of the media world. His book is a parody of celebrity memoirs, and reportedly the only “significant” title in a genre whose sales have dropped 60 percent in the past year.

However, I suspect it’s mostly just wishful thinking that has some observers pegging the celebrity memoir as a fading trend. It’s hard for me to say for sure, though, because I seem to have a much lower than average interest in the people who write them. To be honest, apart from a couple of episodes of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” back when it first came out, I’ve never watched a reality TV show. (My feeling is that if I’m going to be entertained, I’ll go to professionals.) So I still don’t really know who Snooki is, and when I asked friends and acquaintances to fill me in around the time her book came out, they all said. “You’re lucky. You’re much better off not knowing.”

Most celebrities are actors of some kind, and my (somewhat limited) experience writing movie and television journalism has led me to conclude that actors are some of the least interesting people in the arts. That doesn’t mean I’m not regularly awestruck by the work they create; I just really don’t want to listen to them talk about it. Or about their personal lives. And I certainly don’t want to read about either one. The more famous and rich an actor is, the more controlled, frictionless and therefore insipid his or her life is likely to be. As Korda writes, “Years of standing in the limelight portraying other people for large amounts of money does not usually lead to a high degree of self-examination, let alone self-criticism.”

I’m not talking about creative visionaries like Patti Smith or innovators like Tina Fey, real writers whose ability to reflect thoughtfully on their own work and lives is unquestioned. Their books don’t exist for the sole reason that the people who wrote them are famous and know some other famous people; often, they aren’t even thought of as celebrity memoirs in the first place. The true celebrity memoir is “written” (that is, ghostwritten for) what used to be called “entertainment personalities,” namely, movie and television stars.

A movie star, like a politician, has usually spent much time, effort and money to construct a public persona, and, as Korda explains, such people are “seldom likely to want to deface their images, or to puncture the balloon of their egos merely to sell books.” (The money to be made on even a successful book is dwarfed by the fees for starring in Hollywood movies.) For this reason, most famous actors’ memoirs are bland and cautious, but even if they were willing to “tell the truth” — the thing, according to Korda, that every book publisher hopes for — that truth is unlikely to be worth the price of a hardcover book.

The example he uses is the film actor Glenn Ford, whose memoir the agent, Swifty Lazar (a more entertaining character than any actor Korda mentions), once tried to peddle. Ford had co-starred and been infatuated with Rita Hayworth (the Angelina Jolie of her time). But they’d never slept together, which put him in a fairly similar position to every other guy in America except Orson Welles. Who cares? And if Ford had slept with Hayworth? Is that really enough to justify the other 250 pages of a no-doubt tedious book chronicling Ford’s childhood in Canada and early theater work in Santa Monica? Sort of a moot point, that, since Ford clammed up at the very mention of the Hayworth non-affair.

Perhaps reality-TV stars have arisen to fill the candidness deficit created by people who are famous for some good reason. That movie star or top athlete is never going to ‘fess up about his or her private quarrels and most humiliating intimate or professional moments; they don’t have to. But reality-TV stars exist for the sole purpose of having embarrassing experiences in the public eye. They aren’t just willing to talk about this stuff: it’s their job. They’ve got nothing else to talk about.

Again, I’m the opposite of an expert in this department, but I do have a certain perspective to offer. Because I don’t watch reality TV, my impression of it is constructed entirely from conversations with people who do watch it. With the exception of a handful of contest shows like “Project Runway,” I’ve never heard anyone speak of the characters in reality TV shows without contempt. Often they will go on and on about how awful these people are. Whatever lofty anthropological reasons some of them may offer for watching the shows, from my perspective it seems that their chief appeal lies in giving viewers someone to look down on.

But while Americans may take great pleasure in collectively groaning over whatever risible antics Snooki gets up to for a half-hour every week, it’s no surprise that this would not translate into sales of her book. Surely people buy celebrity books not because they’re anticipating a satisfying literary experience, but rather to own a tangible piece of that individual’s stardom. (Also: Autograph tours are an obligatory element in the publication of any celebrity-authored title, so they get a chance to meet their idol face-to-face.) It’s another way of expressing one’s fandom. If the whole point of Snooki is hating on her, why would anyone want to purchase a bookful of that?

Celebrity memoirs make some commenters very, very angry. Although the genre has been around (in one version or another) for at least a century, the latest iteration is often held up as Exhibit A in arguments for the disgraceful state of book publishing. I can’t get too worked up about this. It makes as much sense as ranting about the abundance and popularity of books on any topics that don’t interest me personally (i.e., golf — lotta golf books out there).

Besides, the indignation seems misdirected. Publishers publish these titles because (until recently, at least), they do sell. For all the hopeful talk of declining enthusiasm for the genre, it’s worth noting that “Kardashian Konfidential” has sold well over 100,000 copies. Paris Hilton’s “Confessions of an Heiress,” published in 2004, has sold over 1 million worldwide.

Doesn’t the problem here lie instead with the buyers of such books? (Seriously: Since I have such a hard time imagining why anyone would do so, if you have bought one of these celebrity memoirs, would you be so generous as to explain your motives in the comments thread?) Every time someone told me I was fortunate in not knowing who Snooki or Kim Kardashian are, I couldn’t help wondering why they chose to know so much about her themselves. Perhaps they secretly enjoy their own theatrical disgust with the state of American culture and society.

If we really wanted these annoying figures to go away, the solution is pretty simple: Stop paying attention to them. I’m here to testify that this is very easy to do. You, too, can know next to nothing about the Situation or Tila Tequila (whoever they are!), if they really bother you that much. A blank expression will pass over your face when their names are mentioned in conversation, and when you see placards announcing their forthcoming appearances at chain bookstores, you’ll frown vaguely, shrug and keep walking toward the shelves with the real books.

Further reading

Michael Korda on the dullness of Hollywood memoirs

The Guardian on flagging sales of celebrity memoirs

The Hollywood Reporter on the failure of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s “A Shore Thing.”

One thing I learned: Rich people like a little pushback. They enter a store acutely aware of their wealth and what it means in this context, and this knowledge, by definition, is tied up with their sense of self-worth, for better or worse. They want you to be serious and professional with them, but they also want you to be able to slap their hand when they go astray. Mostly, they want you to care, even if they’re talking about decorative pillows. They want you, in short, to be like Jeeves, or Bruce Wayne’s Alfred. They’re the boss, sure, but if you’re not in control, they’ll eat you alive.

“Will this candlestick work with that table?” they’d ask, and I’d sigh wearily. Feigning nonchalance despite my terrifying ignorance, I would not look at them when I talked. With regard to the candlesticks, I’d talk to the table itself — explain that it depended on the context, depended on the room. I’d ask questions about the windows, the paint, the ceiling, and then, eventually, I’d pretend to grasp the situation. At that point I’d declare that, yes, the candlestick would work on that table. They’d buy the candlestick, not the table. Of course, if I were a great salesman, I wouldn’t have asked questions, would have just demonstrated how such a table only worked with four of those candlesticks, especially when accompanied by certain handmade placemats and napkins, etc. They’d see a fictitious version of their life, conducted at that particular table, and they’d attempt to acquire it by buying it all. And, as with a great dentist, it’d all happen without them realizing that someone was working on them.

Bridget Fonda, who had married film composer Danny Elfman and had stopped appearing in movies, shopped there compulsively. I have vivid memories of loading cumbersome decorative pots into the trunk of Elfman’s Maserati. Zach de La Rocha, the former frontman of Rage Against the Machine, apparently had a lot of time on his hands, too, because he drove his cool Mercedes over all the time and drank coffee at the cafe attached to the store by himself. He looked desperately bored and was always alone. Nicole Richie was not alone when she came to the cafe, nor was Kevin Costner. Victoria Beckham wore her sunglasses indoors, throughout lunch. David Schwimmer came a few times, alone, and was precisely as bitter and patronizing as you’d expect him to be. Gary Oldman was completely banal, just a middle-aged man shopping for furniture with his impossibly gorgeous 20-something lady friend.

Sharon Stone was bitchy and magnificent, a bombshell even without her makeup. I liked her sass. Unfortunately, when she came in I was wearing my apron. We were supposed to wear these short black aprons, but sometimes they were more humiliating than other times. She was there to buy a Missoni bathrobe for someone and she kept trying to tell me that this guy was a titanic, an ogre. He was like the yeti, but bigger. We had a XXXL robe, but she still wasn’t convinced it was big enough. I’m 6-foot-2, built like Zach Galifianakis, but when I put the robe on for her and stood on my tippy toes, she just winced, told me he was at least twice my size.

Eventually, she gave in and bought the robe, plus several $250 coral-encrusted pillows.

The brittle-thin and very short character actress Linda Hunt — you’d recognize her if you saw her, she’s everywhere on TV, often with a prominent spot on unmemorable shows like “NCIS Los Angeles” — entered with her wife, who resembles Joan Didion. Hunt might have been the most appealing person I met that whole year in Los Angeles. She was grandmotherly, hilarious and familiar, even a little flirtatious as she chided me for trying to upsell her into buying a pair of $450 wicker chairs. Still, she wavered — she loved the chairs, really loved them, but she kept doubting herself, saying they were too big for someone her size. Then she’d acknowledge, with help from her wife, that the chairs would probably be used mainly by other normal-size people. In the end, I think she said something to the effect of, “I’m sorry, I know it’d be a good commission for you, but I just can’t do it,” and left empty-handed. She never learned my name, but she talked to me like I was a human being, like we were both human beings. When she left, I wanted to chase her out and buy her a beer.

Most people, learning that I was a writer, assumed I wrote screenplays and would give me their cards, begin talking about their film projects. I’d have to explain that I wrote for the page, for reading. At which point they would halt, midstream, and gaze at me with delight, like I was some charming curio in an antique shop, a lovely anachronism. Then they would walk away.

Jennifer Lopez didn’t ask me what I did outside of the furniture store, fortunately. She was pleasant enough, but her then-fiancée, Marc Anthony, stood to the side, glowering, and I was immediately possessed by a visceral hatred for him. She wore a white hat pulled down low on her head to prevent people from recognizing her, but when she leaned across the counter and locked eyes with me and I realized who she was and then briefly and involuntarily gawked at her, mouth ajar, she smiled sweetly, no doubt accustomed to stunned shopkeepers. You hope you’d remember that these people are just people, after all, people who have to floss and deal with bad traffic, who wear uncomfortable shoes and regret it, but then they’re in front of you all of a sudden asking you questions and it slips your mind. Like so much in Los Angeles, it’s humiliating. Lopez walked around the store and I followed, hypnotized by the pendulum swings of her hips. What I thought to myself was: “I am looking at Jennifer Lopez’s ass.” That was the depth of my insight.

She told me that she wanted many, many dainty English teacups. But our dainty English teacups weren’t quite dainty enough. Instead she bought 50 napkin rings. Or, she picked them out and Marc Anthony paid for them. He had a black American Express card, which signifies an ominous degree of wealth, and, looking at it, I noticed that his name was not “Marc Anthony” at all. He had a string of names and none of them were “Marc” or “Anthony.”

A week later, the two of them were married in a small ceremony with about 50 guests. Then the napkin rings made sense.

A week before her divorce from John Stamos became public information Rebecca Romijn-Stamos entered five minutes before closing with a tall gay man who wore comically long and pointy shoes. I didn’t recognize her. It’d been a long day, a long six months in Los Angeles, and I was deeply tired. The two of them were fondling the $5,000 mink throw, as so many people did, so I flatly asked if they wanted me to put it on hold for them. That was usually how I scared people away from the blanket. But she said yes, she wanted it to be put on hold. This struck me as nonsense, because no one wanted a $5,000 mink throw. So I handed her a yellow HOLD card and a pen and said that if she put her name and number on the card, I’d attach it to the blanket and I’d call if someone else made a move for it in the next couple days.

Then I went back to counting my till.

She started writing and then stopped, looked up at me, and said, “Wait, you’re going to leave this card out here? I’m not going to write my number on it.”

I put the money down, looked back at her. It took a couple more seconds before I realized who she was. I told her I’d hold the blanket for one day without the hold card. Then I gave her a business card with my name on it and said if she still wanted the blanket tomorrow, she could call me. As a teenager, I had scrutinized her airbrushed body in Victoria’s Secret catalogs, but when she’d stood right in front of me, I had no idea who she was.

The next day, I answered the phone and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos asked for me. By name. “I’ve decided to take it,” she said.

“OK,” I said and imagined her lying on the throw. Then I thought about all the many hands I had seen fondling the blanket before.

She picked it up the following day, without the aid of her clown-shoed decorator. I had wrapped it up and placed it in a huge bag, which I passed to her once I’d run her credit card and taken a duplicate. A couple of days later, her publicist announced that she and John Stamos were getting a divorce. Then the mink throw made sense.

Personally, I wanted everything in the store. I wanted the objects and I wanted the people. I wanted to eat them all up, gnaw on their bones. At first, I didn’t care about it all, thought it a lot of silliness, but soon enough I was fantasizing, actively, daily, about owning those gorgeous Italian wine glasses, they were $50 each, and about the house where I’d put my immense and uncomfortable sofa. I imagined the parties on my private beach, shaded by the French marquee that no one else in L.A. owned. Or, no one except Bridget Fonda.

While driving home to the apartment I shared with two roommates in Silverlake, I’d pick out the famous guests that would come to my beachfront house, pictured myself drinking a martini in the setting sun as the sea breeze rippled through my white suit. These things had never seemed relevant before. Now, I felt mortified by my sensible late ’90s Volvo, my cheap cellphone. Somewhere nearby, someone was sharing a platter of immaculate sushi with Sarah Michelle Gellar, who’s a year younger than me and prettier in person, while I was consuming starchy blocks of Trader Joe’s faux-sushi. What I needed, evidently, was a Maserati, a beachfront house in Malibu. What I needed was a better pair of sunglasses, and a life appropriate to those glasses. Until then, I was not alive, I was auditioning for life.

Updike wrote, “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face,” but after living in L.A. for a while, the proper reply became obvious: With a mask like that, who needs a face?

In late August, I quit my job and packed my worldly possessions into my sedan and drove north for dreary and obsessively modest Seattle, where I still live. The AC was broken and it was at least 115 degrees in the plains of central California. The wind didn’t cool me down, just turned my car into a convection oven, but I dared not close the windows. Stereo all the way up, I locked in the cruise control at 25 miles an hour above the speed limit. And while I did, officially, ride off into the sunset in the end, there was — I’m glad to report — no epiphany, no heart-pounding climax. Like some great shimmering mirage, the entire fantasy merely evaporated from view. I wasn’t even out of California before it was gone.

So why is the Hitler reference so hard for public figures to avoid? You’d think it would be the first rule of celebrityhood, handed to all dreamers as they get off the bus in New York or Hollywood: Whatever you say, leave Hitler out of it. (Unless  you’re making one of those Internet viral videos of Hitler reacting to pop culture news.)

But Batali’s blunder is just the latest in the last six months. Megan Fox was quickly dismissed from her “Transformers” role in June, after comparing director Michael Bay to the father of fascism. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets,” she gaffed. Stephen Spielberg was less than thrilled.

In August, Kanye West, while onstage at the Big Chill Festival in the U.K., made the perplexing connection between his numerous haters and Hitler’s. Just last month, Hank Williams Jr. lost his “Monday Night Football” gig for suggesting if President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner spent an afternoon on the links, it would be like “Hitler playing golf with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

Some Hitler referencers think they are trying to make sophisticated points, or have the hubris to believe they can walk the third rail without getting electrocuted.  “Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German Industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support,” said Oliver Stone. “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” He ended up apologizing. John Galliano, the Christian Dior designer, likely believed he was being daring when he said he loved Hitler. He lost his job and a French court fined him $8,400 for using anti-Semitic language.

And who knows what Lars von Trier was thinking in May when, promoting “Melancholia” — and as Kirsten Dunst sat next to him in agony — said, “I understand Hitler,” and “He’s not what you would call a good guy but I’m … I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit.” He got booted from the Cannes Film Festival.

While many of these celebrities are known for unpredictable commentary, the conundrum lies in the near epidemic level at which Hitler is freely referenced without context, rhyme or reason. It seems that for these celebrities, to mention Hitler usually turns out to be like using a machine gun to scratch an itch. It’s retroactive, dangerous and self-destructive. And yet these instances keep growing in number.

Los Angeles psychiatrist Soroya Bacchus sees narcissism at the heart of the matter.

“Kanye West, Megan Fox, and celebrity chef Mario Batali (among many others) all share one common personality trait – narcissism. When a person, celebrity or not, has narcissistic tendencies, they are more prone to identify with people in positions of power,” she said. “When Kanye and other celebrities make Hitler comparisons without regard, it’s because they feel they exist on a similar plane to him in terms of influence rather than identifying with his belief system.

“The ego-driven mind causes celebrities to see themselves as being as powerful as men like Hitler, and therefore imbeds the belief system that they have a right to reference him – often without regard for normal social stigmas.”

Not everyone, however, agrees that Hitler should be off-limits for historical comparison.

Laura Kipnis, author of “How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior,” has an easier time letting Batali off the hook. In her opinion, his comment wasn’t so far out of context.

“I have a hard time mustering criticism about Batali’s remarks because I basically agree with him: the bankerati are evil, and the names Hitler and Stalin are available synonyms for evil. To try to enforce greater precision in political speech in the current context, the age of shock jocks and Ann Coulter, seems almost quaint.

“If the criticism is that Batali isn’t being historically nuanced enough, because Wall Street business guys aren’t actually genocidal maniacs, OK, but they’ve certainly caused enough immiseration.”

But public relations veteran Howard Bragman, the vice chairman of Reputation.com, says there’s an easier lesson to learn. “I wish some of these celebrities would read publications that have covered the other celebrities that made this same mistake and learn from it. Using a Hitler comparison is almost always a mistake. It’s never funny and it’s never a good point of comparison.”

On the other hand, he said, Batali might be thankful he made his gaffe this week — when folks like Joe Paterno, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have been in slightly hotter water.

Johansson’s accused hacker, Christopher Chaney, has since pleaded not guilty of breaking into the emails and cellphones of more than 50 people – including a 13-year-old. Chaney has been indicted on multiple counts of computer hacking, aggravated identify theft and illegal wiretapping. He faces up to 121 years in prison.

Aside from her almost quaint use of an old-fashioned word like “porno” (must be a side effect of all that hanging out with Woody Allen) and Vanity Fair’s typical fawning over a celebrity’s alleged “insouciance” and “sauciness,” Johansson’s accidental NSFW story is both a cautionary tale and a giant “up yours.”

Based on comments around the Web Wednesday, it’s clear that some still consider a lady who shows off the goods – even  for her lawfully wedded husband – to be the mayor of Tramptown. Let’s hear from the trolls! “Everyone has already seen her naked in movies,” wrote a commenter on E! “It’s not like she had any real pride or respect to protect.” “One way to avoid getting mugged is to not walk in the worst parts of town. One way to avoid having your nudie pics on the Internet is to NOT TAKE ANY!” explained another on CNN. “Sorry Scarlett, you may not be at fault, but you sure are dumb.” And as a commentor on Us Weekly’s site speculated, “Anyone who does this has some sort of problem. Voyeurism … exhibitionism. She could have removed or discarded.”

But the woman who famously showed off all those best angles on the cover of Vanity Fair five years ago is not the skank here. The skank is the person who violated Johansson’s privacy and distributed something meant for one person to the world. And if you want to judge ScarJo — who, by the way, already appears well over it — feel free to imagine the most intimate thing you’ve ever written in an email, the most revealing photo you’ve ever taken and how unquestionably unforgivable it would be for someone to steal that and show it to the world.

It is a sad fact of modern life that if you make racy pictures or sex tapes, there’s always a chance they may fall into the wrong hands. That’s just the risk we run every time we get a little naughty in the bathroom mirror. But if you’re willing to accept the potential for your butt shots going viral, the act itself is nothing to be ashamed of — and nothing to apologize for. You don’t have to be a famous sex symbol to appreciate that we’re all sexual beings, or that there are all kinds of ways of being playful, flirty and seductive. And you don’t have to have anywhere near the kind of angles Johansson does to be comfortable enough with your own body to share pictures with the person you love.  Maybe now ScarlettJohanssoning can have a new meaning – a phrase to imply not giving a damn what the rest of the world thinks of your private life.

Meanwhile, Simpson seems to be swelling up like a tick these days, but is keeping her lips firmly zipped. The New York Post speculated that Simpson — who has made a career of belching and flatulence on her reality show, and who on Tuesday tweeted a photo of herself on a toilet — might have discovered discretion in the hope of a six-figure payoff. Simpson, who’s engaged to former San Francisco 49er Eric Johnson, is allegedly shopping around her exclusive story – and access to the obligatory post-baby photo spread — to the cool tune of $500,000. Because why get knocked up if you can’t leverage the crap out of it? But regardless of her motives, Simpson appears to have committed the cardinal sin of waiting too long to make hay of her blessed event. When and if she finally grants that big tell-all, it’ll likely be the biggest “No duh” since Ricky Martin came out. “Is she or isn’t she?” sells magazines. But “Guess why I can’t see my feet, y’all?” is, with every passing day, considerably less of a tabloid bombshell.

Which brings us to poor Jen. Child-free and 42, Aniston is the reigning queen of baby speculation. Does a week go by without her face on the cover of some supermarket rag, the words “baby” and “drama” or “at last” or “heartbreak” blazing somewhere nearby? If I were Jennifer Aniston, I think I’d get pregnant just to shut Bonnie Fuller the hell up.

Maybe it’s because Aniston seems to have so much — she’s rich, successful and was just voted America’s “hottest body” in a new Fitness and Yahoo! poll – that the idea that she’s in fact a barren, miserable crone holds some public fascination. She can’t possibly be happy just being a beautiful movie star, right? RIGHT? I mean, Brad Pitt left her and now he’s got six kids – doesn’t that say something?

Maybe. Or maybe, crazy as this may sound to some, Jennifer Aniston is cool with not being a mother. It happens! All the time! But the frantic attention her stubbornly unpregnant body gets definitely says something about where we are as a culture that we continue to define women – powerful, attractive, wealthy women – by their ability to reproduce. That they can either parlay their fertility into a branding opportunity, or apologetically admit that the few extra ounces on the undisputed hottest body in America are not in fact an imminent bundle of joy. You’ve come a long way, babymakers.

We are all – the famous and the not, the MTV teen moms and the pampered housewives, the perfectly dressed  supermoms and the contentedly child-free – more than the contents of our uteri. That’s why I strongly believe the government needs to stay out of our wombs. And it’s high time Us magazine scrams as well.