There is probably no more telling fact about the culture of suicide bombers than that their actions turn them into celebrities.  In the areas where they live, following the completion of their chosen tasks, their names and pictures appear everywhere, and they are celebrated.

Most of us are by this point aware of how their religious leaders instill in them a faith that by becoming "martyrs," they will ascend to heaven.  But what we probably ought to be paying more attention to is their certain knowledge that their actions will raise them to the contemporary secular state of grace known as celebrity.

In a media-centric dissociative world in which celebrities have become our secular gods and heroes, is there any higher aspiration than to enter into this transcendent company?