Celebrities love to invoke the First Amendment as long as it doesn’t apply to those engaged in keeping their cosmetically-enhanced faces splashed across half a dozen weeklies and dozens more free domestic tabloids, keeping their careers vibrant if not tranquil, as Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh documents:
The celebrities saw how effectively the royals managed to pin blame for Princess Di’s drunk-driving death on the press, and they’re trying to get some sort of precautionary principle going—through either some new L.A. city ordinance, or more coercive policing, or just by waving the bloody shirt until the press backs off. Since they have a considerably stronger hold on the public attention span than some bottom-feeding photographer, they’ll almost certainly pull it off. …
Contemporary celebrities have already reneged on every other part of fame’s social contract. Every millimeter of access is now controlled by hardcore publicists like the attempted murderer Lizzie Grubman. Titanic megastars now insist on being lauded as down-to-earth folks in their ridiculous baseball caps and shades. You’ve got glamorous actresses sharing the details of their pregnancies with the whole world, sixty-year-old harridans who refuse to play old and then bellyache that there are no good roles for older women. Now the stars are trying to get out of the one thing they still owe us: the opportunity to gawk and laugh at their stupid hijinx. Don’t let them get away with it! Free the paparazzi!
But remember, they want to be taken seriously as artists. Then create some art, dammit!
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.