In Which I Need To Edit This Later
Perhaps, if things go well, I, too, will have some snarky asshole writing about me. Last week I had an audition for a hush-hush commercial that if I dropped the name of the company they would send a swat team to swoop in through the windows of my house (not that cinematic, since we live on the ground floor), grab my children and sell them into slavery. I signed a non-disclosure agreement pretty much allowing them to do it. Another audition looms on the horizon which I’m also not at liberty to divulge. So, who knows?
Paul Day is a no-talent hack who must’ve spread wide for whichever producer was coked up enough to hire him. I’ve never seen such horror on the screen since Stalin’s Dance Til Ya Die party of 1931.
Message boards will fill with spiteful assessments of me. I’ll need a new email address since some hanger-on will steal my Sidekick and dump the contents on the Internet turning my current addesses into the inboxes from hell. I’ll have thrown the freedom of my anonimity away and become fair game for any half-assed blogger who’s bored enough to take a shot at me.
Hopefully, I’ll get paid well.
For the second time, I’ve been contacted by a stranger who wound up in the spotlight. The first was a woman who I suggested might be adopted by the right-wing as the next Terri Schiavo*. Hugh Hewitt, the techno wingnut, raved on about the insensitive drug company that was withholding an expiremental and possibly life-saving drug from her. If I recall, however, he didn’t have a problem with drug companies writing the Medicare reform bill to bilk old people of their Social Security checks. Just shows t’ go ya. Anyway, both she and her fiance wrote and gently chastised me for my post on the matter and suggested that I could not possibly know what they were going through and not to judge them. I tried to assure them that I was not a heartless monster but I found it odd and troubling how an issue that affected one single person could somehow wind up a national news story while tens of thousands of people suffer without an inch of column space or a second on CNN.
Three months ago I wrote about the abomination that is Intervention. Tonight the post got a comment from the sister of the addict featured in the show. It said, among other things, not to judge her.
I’m not sure how much more plainly it can be said – If you put yourself into the media stream, you’re going to be judged. The law of averages says that somebody will take exception to you and/or your cause. Have we become so media deadened that people can’t even consider this possiblity? Do they feel that it’s their right to appear on televison, turn out the lights when they’re done and be left alone? Do the producer’s of Intervention or the Hugh Hewitt’s of the world sit down with the newest junkie or cause celeb and explain exactly how this might change their life? “I know you realize,” they might say, “that millions of people will be watching you, but do you really get what that means? In this age of instant communication, anybody can say anything about you they want. Anybody. So if you feel at all nervous about the prospect of someone 400 miles away writing about you, you need to work that out before we start filming. Oh. And change your phone to an unlisted number.” According to The Money Shot : Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows, most producers don’t take the time.
And, sorry, I don’t see much difference between Jerry Springer and Intervention. Would I have a different feeling if it were on PBS? I think PBS would do the show completely differently.
*As she died in July of last year, I’ll leave her name out it rather than put out another link on the Internet. Oddly, someone hit this blog last week on a search of her name.
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