Back to Victorian values

[fpb]

The speech of Michael Paster, the California judge who condemned the photographer John Rutter to more time than most robbers get, for the crime of trying to blackmail Cameron Diaz (http://www.teentoday.co.uk/gossip/gossipstory783.shtml), has a strangely Victorian

Comments

[fpb]

I think a lot of people will be either indifferent or positively hostile, because the manipulation of the image of "stars" and the rest goes with a certain kind of rhetoric that suggest to people that they themselves are making the choice of taking an interest in these things, of approving or at least enjoying the kind of life and attitude described here. And which conversely sees on anyone who maintains the right to disapprove as anything from a killjoy to a potential tyrant. People are taught to be afraid of making any judgement in the matter of sexual morality, lest they should become bluenoses. And all the while it is the users and exploiters of these "glamorous" images of sexual "freedom" who are doing all the manipulating; and this is how they react when the manipulation threatens to slip out of their hands. It has taken me forty years to free myself of this conditioning and learn that a spade is indeed a spade.

(Unless of course it is coloured, in which case it is not a spade but an insult, and I will not use it.)

[fpb]

Either I write another essay, or I leave this alone for the time, and I don't think I want to write another essay just this minute. Only one point: spade is an old-fashioned insult for a black man, coming probably from the expression "black as the ace of spades". When I said that I like to call a spade a spade, the objection sprang to my mind: unles, of course...

[rfachir]

Two arguments:
1. Shrek is a fantastic, relatively wholesome movie (maybe because no one actually photographed anyone). The sequel is good, too.

2. Cameron Diaz is a moron. The only smart thing she does is listen to her handlers. I thought it was an act in the first interviews, but she really is either frighteningly impaired or the best 365x24x7 actress ever. (Looking at her family I have to say it's not an act.)

If I was a judge, I'd have to hammer him just for "picking on a retard". I'm not against making money from celebrities, but she really is pitiful.

[fpb]

Can you point me to some sources to substantiate what you say about Cameron Diaz? She strikes me as a successful courtesan type, but of course I do not know that much about her.

[rfachir]

I can't reference the Entertainment Tonight interviews I've watched over the years, but I googled her and came up with this collection of recent quotes. Nothing too damning, even with the obvious bias, but based on the other stuff I've seen, I wouldn't trust her alone in the house for an evening. She makes Jessica Simpson look brilliant.

http://www.anklebitingpundits.com/index.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=77

[fpb]

I see - but, more than out-and-out stupidity, the quotes I read suggest to me a person with no life experience at all, intellectually abused by her family and social circle when she was too young to know the difference. It also suggests that her parents were flower children rich enough and lucky enough to survive the effects of their own sixties and seventies experimentation, but not sensible enough to see through it as the rest of us have - perhaps rich enough to be sheltered from its effects. Cameron is certainly walking in the clouds, and has the education of a chipmunk. But this does not deny her the kind of smarts I really postulated, which are those of the successful courtesan - the ability to look after herself and get the favour of rich and important men in all circumstances. (These days, it also ought to include rich and influential lesbians.)

[patchworkmind]

Justice was served... it's walking papers.

As a science fiction writer wrote about such issues, it's not whether or not justice will be served but "How much justice can you afford?"