On Celebrity News
“Like all other nations, we worship money and the possessors of it. . . . We like to read about rich people in the papers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed. . . ‘Rich Woman Fell Down Cellar—Not Hurt.’ The falling down the cellar is of no interest to us when the woman is not rich, but no rich woman can fall down cellar and we not yearn to know all about it and wish it was us.”
—Mark Twain (1835-1910), writer, in Autobiography, 1907
Editor’s Note: NEWS FLASH! Tragic Lindsay Lohan hangnail. Film @ 11!!
Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo: Beachdreams
NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily!
And, if we don’t have celebrity news to report, by jiminy we invent a celebrity! Consider this moron preacher in Gainesville (home of the University of Florida Gators, I might add) who will burn 200 Korans this Saturday, get his 15 minutes, make us the Great Satan all over again, and prove once and for all that our species is devolving into some lizard like entity incapable of rational thought. Oy vay!!!
ReplyDeleteBud Brewer
From Alert WORDster Javan Kienzle:
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of the infamous report of the the British journalist making his way through a crowd of survivors of a Congo siege, and calling out, "Anybody here been raped and speak English?"
--Edward Behr, foreign correspondent with a flair for reporting conflicts
Edward Behr, who has died aged 81, was the consummate foreign correspondent in the golden age, now fast disappearing in the wake of media empire cost-cutting. For nearly a half century, Behr reported on almost every conflict worth covering for American news magazines, notably Time and Newsweek. He also worked on acclaimed television documentaries for the BBC and French television.
But his forte was covering conflicts. That he did brilliantly from India to Vietnam, from Northern Ireland to Algeria and the Congo and beyond. Behr made his reputation in North Africa covering the twilight of French colonialism during the Algerian war of independence from 1954 to 1962 for Time.
A small, round, bespectacled man, Behr was a member of the so-called Maghreb Circus, a talented if raffish collection of mainly French correspondents constantly on the move, following the latest developments in Algiers, Rabat and Tunis. His often hilarious experiences gathered when covering dozens of conflicts provided fodder for arguably the funniest book on war reporting since Evelyn Waugh's Scoop.
"Anyone here been raped and speak English?" was the war reporter's irreverent but eminently practical question, and became the title of his book. The question was shouted out to hundreds of just rescued European survivors of a siege at Stanleyville in eastern Congo in November 1964 as they disembarked from US Air Force C-130s landing....
· Edward Behr, foreign correspondent and writer, born May 7 1926; died May 26 2007
Alert WORDster Javan Kienzle adds:
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of the infamous report of the the British journalist making his way through a crowd of survivors of a Congo siege, and calling out, "Anybody here been raped and speak English?"--Edward Behr (1926-2007)
Celebrity lives (rich people lives) only have drama all the time. That's what the media wants to put out. We as a society eat it up because it's fun to read that so & so had an affair with his nanny or that the world's most acclaimed actress has a drug problem. Rich, middle class, poor all have drama and problems. The difference is, rich people's business sells! Edward Behr bio is the paparazzi today.... selling crazy news around the world. Only his was factual because the rapes & violence was happening in the Congo and every where else he reported. - Romina Nedakovic
ReplyDeleteI'm shaking my head this morning over the recent trend in politician daughter celebrity - Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars (is she a "star" now, and why??) and John McCain's giggly daughter Meaghan on Jon Stewart - well at least she wrote a book, even if it's called Dirty Sexy Politics. On Leno last night Jay said that a judge called Snooki from Jersey Shore a "Lindsay Lohan wannabe" before he fined her and sentenced her to community service. Yes folks, our female youth of American celebrities, making a name for themselves... (((sigh))). Make us proud, girls! Drama sells!
ReplyDelete