I Shouldn't Care

I tend to think that as a nation we spend way way too much on celebrity news. Really I think that the majority of what we see as news is really meta-news. It's not about the guy's opinions, its about how the guy's opinions will poll. It's not about the athlete's performance, its about the terms of his contract. It isn't about the actor's performance in the piece, its about their behavior on the street. Somewhere along the way the news people got the idea that we were actually more interested in the backstory than we were in the story.

All in all this is a real bad thing. We are pretty much a nation of people missing the forest for the trees. Really, it is the fast food of news, and what a weekend it was for the high fructose corn syrup pulp providers.

I can't help it, the Lindsay Lohan story and the Mel Gibson story are just totally compelling.

I loved that a movie exec would take a star to task for blowing off work. Having exactly one 10th of one toe in that business I have some small appreciation of what it must cost a film maker if a star doesn't show up. Money down the toilet. Did you see the letter he wrote and had messengered to her room - atypically bypassing her "people?" If not, you can here.

Excellent job sir. I hope it works.

And then as if that wasn't enough for the celebrity sweet tooth to be satiated Mel Gibson goes and loses his mind. Then we get story after story about whether the man's career is over. I have news for the newsies, with like a bizzillion dollars in gross sales accumulated for his Hollywood movies and then a respectable showing for a film he totally financed himself I think there is very little Mel Gibson could do to end his career short of retiring. The people that produce movies worship money and for a long time Mel Gibson has been the Karl Malone of movies - he delivered.

Come to think of it, Karl Malone didn't do too poorly for himself after the gross mistake of saying he wouldn't play with Magic once he announced he was HIV positive.

So, there will be hemming and hawing. People will threaten boycotts. And his next film will have the highest grossing box office of any September release. No such thing as bad publicity right?

He apologized for the tirade. I think this commenter on another site had the best possible spin, too bad he didn't use it:

Actually, he was misquoted in his tirade. He was so drunk he mistook the officer for a Mexican border control guard (I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but he WAS drunk) and began trying to imitate a Mexican accent, doing his best Speedy Gonzalez: "Joos are respunseebul for all dee wars in dee worl. Joos are a boonch of borda huppas...

I guess given a choice a little celebrity news is a nice change of pace from Bush, Afghanistan, Hezbollah, Iraq...