I am giving up "idolspizing." Right now.

Thanks to Mark Morford's column on SF Gate today -- which I really should add to my daily dose of enlightened, Buddhist self-help delivered by the wise Cary Tennis over at Salon -- I have realized that I must curtail my tendency to gloat over the implosion of people like Kaavya Viswanathan (plagiarizing author of How Opal Mehta...), James Frey (lying author of A Million Little Pieces), and JT Leroy (altogether fictional author). It just isn't healthy, mentally.

Morford writes:

It goes something like this: You gotta learn to celebrate success, no matter what. Welcome it and exult in it and let it breathe, toss a blessing to success whenever and wherever you see it, in whatever form. Because when you do, its energy will only come back to you and smack your life with hot licks of possibility. It opens things up. Makes space. Kicks down karmic roadblocks. Offers up lovely shiny things in your general direction.

Conversely, wallow in envy and feel resentful and throw a middle finger to the fates when someone else gets heaps of bounty and, well, your life will stink and stress and bleed like a tumor. Easy enough, right? Sound cheesy? Too New Agey? Too bad.

So, I henceforth renounce my idolspizing. When I read about how Dave Eggers is hanging out with Spike Jonze as they make a movie of Where The Wild Things Are, I will take a deep breath and exhale a warm feeling of gladness for him. After all, don't I want novelists -- especially those with talent -- to become pop-culture heroes more than the Paris Hiltons of the world? Basically, in times like these, we should be celebrating the success of anyone with an IQ over 100. There's a real shortage of actual achievement in this world, and Morford's right: anyone who manages to get their passion out there merely makes room for the rest of us to follow them.