Varia

February 2nd 2007 - It's not that NOTHING is happening in the news. It's just that none of it seems important enough to warrant my prestigious attention. Furthermore, certain topics have been overused to a level rivaling perversion therefore I will gladly dedicate this blog post to worldwide media and their everlasting quest to devour every trivial piece of information available.

As you may or may not have heard, Australian actor Heath Ledger died. Considering he made few movies and not much else, I heavily question the overexposure of his death. Past the point of questioning, I denounce the endless interviews with the 79 last people he spoke to, or who spoke to him, or who served him fast food, or who saw him while at a bus stop. Finally I abhor and smirk at the pseudo-social surveys popping up in local journals across North America following the actor's death. Did we need Heath Ledger to die to promote surveys and investigations about medication abuse, teen suicide rates, clinical depression...? No! We much less needed to be asked those stupid rhetorical questions the media use to link their pop news with society right before a commercial (Could his death have been prevented? Does the lure of success place too much pressure on our youth? Was Heath Ledger's apparent suicide a strong protest about the commercialization of the Superbowl?). A similar media blitz surrounded the deaths of Brandon Lee and River Phoenix in the 1990s. They were also very young actors who had a promising, budding career before they accidentally died and subsequently were deified to the point that, had they lived, they would have surely been the next Peter O'Toole and Marlon Brando. All in all, as I mentioned in a past blog (Aren't dead people so freaking great!), any media reconstruction of these people’s lives at this point only serves their own interest. Let the dead rest in peace for the love of Ogd (is this typo intentional? We'll find out! Right after this...)

Moving on to some crucial breaking news about Britney Spears and her hair and children...something about an ambulance...Vaseline...Botswana...a small ferret. Sorry about that, I find her life so depressing and uninteresting in a world where there have literally been millions of people whose lives were more interesting that I can't even convince myself to write a cynical comment about it. I am blaming this rambling Spears storyline on you, the reader, because no self-respecting medium could spend 6 months covering this if there wasn't a rabid fan base to satisfy. Moving on.

Today, French president Nicolas Sarkozy got married to fashion model/singer (a professional denomination requiring no less than 2 Ph.D.s) Carla Bruni. He quickly married her one month or so after meeting her and leaving his former wife. This useless bit of news is my favorite in recent weeks. The simple reason is that the controversy surrounding this story is entirely foreign to France. American and British media have closely monitored the situation and have added it to every major broadcast in their respective countries while no French channel of newspaper would diffuse it. Why, you ask? A cover-up, you suggest? Never heard of these people, you think? THEY ARE SIMPLY NOT INTERESTED. The French are currently making more news with the fact that the USA is so interested in this slice of trivia than with the affair itself. I am only curious about how the president got married without divorcing the first one (perhaps Henry VIII was correct when he described the French as syphilitic, sex-crazed polygamist (OK I made that up)).
Similarly and in the same country, an Associated Press (USA) reporter once asked ex-French president Jacques Chirac about his alleged extra-marital affair during a press conference. With his trademarked air of dignity and childish nonchalance, Chirac responded with 'et alors?' (So?). At this point, the French journalists laughed to the point of tears, the American reporter was very confused and the French Press had a field day with the event rather than with the affair. Public People's private lives are a) private and b) not necessarily more interesting than any one else's.

In conclusion, everyone has a fetish (with varying degrees) in regards to the public sphere and its private backstage. I personally like studying all constitutional and judicial policy coming out of the Kremlin since Putin's 1999 election (Don't judge me, it's not zoophilia or anything.). Some people take slow walks in their neighbourhood to look through people's windows. Some people like watching a non-stop cavalcade of celebrity TV until they think Mary Heart is their close friend. A liberal hippy would tell you that it's not right to judge but beware; I will cruelly judge any reader who tends towards excessive indulgence of his/her fetish.

(Don't bother; I close my blinds during the day)

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(Pictured: A young Queen Elisabeth II who will lose all actual power and be relegated to a figment of the people's voyeurism - Vladimir Putin plays peek-a-boo at the European Union)