Star salaries are recruitment tools, not for stars' actual labor but for the advertizing functions they play, vis-a-vis other profs (who wanna work with stars), grad students (who wanna study with stars), parents of prospective undergrads (who may possibly have read that profile of Stanley Fish in the NY Times Sunday Magazine: 'Oh yeah, he's that funny guy who drives a Jaguar! He's famous!'), and those who publish academic rankings (big names, big salaries, higher rankings, bigger salaries, bigger names....appropriately self-referential, no?). Stars are like big-name pro sports players who can market themselves as 'free agents' and get endorsements (in academy, they are called 'endowed chairs'); they are not really one of 'us'--the working class in general and college teachers in particular. Why? They can have 'private practice,' if they want, as talking heads (aka 'public intellectuals,' which actually means media intellectuals).
Another function that stars play is to serve as glamourous posterboys and girls for Merit Pay, which has been a great weapon against class consciousness, by further individualizing our labor.
And finally, all that glitz on the ruins of the humanities covers up the fact that the powers that be only want us to teach freshman composition, fail/disappoint some students in their first year (or even quarter), and basically act as human resources personnel for corporations.
Yoshie