If you love her, leave her in peace.
May 12, 2009
People who devour the details of celebrities’ personal lives should read the interview with Farrah Fawcett published in the Los Angeles Times on Monday. The interview – the only one the actress has given in more than two years – was conducted in August and was published in advance of a television program regarding Fawcett’s struggle for privacy, to be broadcast this weekend.
Fawcett was able to prove that an employee of UCLA Medical Center had illegally gained access to Fawcett’s medical records and had sold the information to the National Enquirer. That employee eventually resigned and has since died of cancer – the same disease for which Fawcett was being treated at UCLA.
The reporting of Fawcett’s illness has been revolting – and not only in the Enquirer. I have complained before about the nearly gleeful manner in which some television news anchors spit out the “headlines” on the latest developments in the woman’s illness – which appears to be terminal.
The L.A. Times story included an explanation from Brandy Navarre – identified as vice president of a “paparazzi agency” – for the compulsion to hound a woman who may be dying.
“Particularly when it’s something sexy or scandalous,” Navarre told the paper, “or on the negative side, something kind of tragic and sad, for whatever reason, the public is interested in those types of stories.”
The public is interested, see? And that’s what made it profitable for a hospital employee to commit a federal crime and for a so-called newspaper to induce her with cash to do what the editors clearly knew was a crime. Navarre attributed the interest in the case to “the public’s love of this woman.”
If the public loves this woman, why doesn’t the public – and the media that serve the public – respect the privacy they would expect for themselves under such circumstances and leave Farrah Fawcett alone.
“Pssssst! ‘Farrah Fawcett.’ Pass it on.”
May 3, 2009
I’m taking a break from the usual blogging today to put the WordPress system to the test. I have noticed what I think are odd results in the list of terms that readers ostensibly searched in order to reach my journal. By now I have dozens of entries in this blog, but the readers who come in through search terms seem to have an inordinate fixation with Hope Davis, Farrah Fawcett, and Andrew Johnson – the latter having been the 17th president of these United States.
Now, I think the world of Hope Davis as an actress, I sympathize with Farrah Fawcett for her health problems, and I have a perhaps inexplicable fascination with Andrew Johnson. However, I have referred to Hope Davis and Farrah Fawcett only once each in this journal, and I may have referred to Andrew Johnson twice or, at the most, three times. And yet those terms show up every day on the report, and the journal entry that mentioned Hope Davis – it consisted of my comments on one of her movies – has become my “all-time leader.”
So I have deliberately referred to all three of those personalities in this little rant to see if this entry, too, causes activity in the report on search terms.
More about this when the results are in.
Stand back – there’s nothing to see here.
April 7, 2009
I probably should know better, but I usually have Fox 5 News on while I’m waiting for the nightly “Seinfeld” rerun, and that’s often the source of agita. Last night, for instance, anchor Dari Alexander began a report on the recent illness of actress Farah Fawcett by saying that Fawcett’s friends “deny that she’s at death’s door.” Think about it. What is that – wishful thinking? The story, when Alexander got around to telling it, was that Fawcett’s doctor reported that the actress had been hospitalized because of a blood clot that was a side effect of recent cancer treatment. In fact, producer Craig Nevius did say yesterday that Fawcett was “not at death’s door,” but Nevius wasn’t quoted in the Fox report. (The Fox web site does have a full AP story – with a tasteful lead – on its web site.) Real journalists know the connotation of a word like “deny.” Fawcett isn’t accused of a crime; she’s sick. It might make her feel better if the turkey buzzards weren’t so gleeful about it.