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It came from the remarkable book written by Richard Schickel, a really good (if elitist) media critic, Intimate Strangers: The Process of Celebrity. Look it up on Amazon; it should be cheap, since it was ignored by almost everybody, but it happened to predict this stuff.
Included in the book, besides an examination of celebrity in the days of silent Hollywood, are two sensible critiques of the celebrity lives of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. How these two sought transcendence through celebrity and how they failed in their individual ways.
One other interesting thing: Schickel recognizes the assassins of our day as being seekers of celebrity, too. Specificaly John Hinckley, Jr., who seals the connection with his attraction to Jodie Foster and Taxi Driver.
If you don't believe it happens today, wait for the inevitable post in this or another entertainment thread by a guy named Gary Owen. No, not the radio announcer. He sits and tells you how many people were killed in Bush's war for oil - as if he gave a damn about them, or anybody but himself. If the war were to end tomorrow he would find something else to bitch about like traffic accidents or AIDS or shin splints. Much as I complain about Havrilesky's ignorance, intellectual laziness and conceit, not even I would be cruel enough to wish her a visit from Owen.
