Watching a train wreck

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | February 13, 2007 | Peter Leo

[Lorianne]

Tim Rutten of The Los Angeles Times: "One of the cheapest journalistic tricks is to get a piece of a tawdry media frenzy by denouncing it. The writer gets to wallow in whatever gutter has everybody's attention while still being wry and high-minded. The readers get to join the fun without losing their self-respect. And yet.... When a story takes on the sheer scope and intensity of the Anna Nicole Smith frenzy there's something willful in the unexamined impulse to look away.

"There was something almost touchingly retro about her wretched train wreck of a life. She wasn't, in fact, celebrated just for being a celebrity. She'd earned her notoriety the old-fashioned way: She took her clothes off for it, then married rich. Americans have a hard time abiding a tale of struggle without reward, or a story without a happy ending, which is why we so often confer a disproportionate attention on the plucky but dubious dead."

[John 19-21]

Question for peter leo:

Cynical much?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

When a story takes on the sheer scope and intensity of the Anna Nicole Smith frenzy there's something willful in the unexamined impulse to look away.

When a story is thrust in the face of the public to the exclusion of everything else, there's something willful about the gatekeeping.

There.