Fame and Misfortune (Lynn Kerstan)

Breaking News!

I glanced over at the TV. According to the fluffy, over-groomed anchorwoman, Anna Nicole Smith had collapsed in a Hollywood, Florida hotel. Paramedics had been summoned. No other information was available.

Which didn’t stop the anchorette from rabbiting on about possible causes and outcomes of this dire event. I’d gone back to sorting tax receipts until one statement caught my ear. "We’re dispatching a crew to the scene!"

A crew? Because a C-List celebrity passed out?? Don’t you people have anything better to do?!

After a long interlude featuring lame commentary and stock footage of Anna Nicole looking beautiful, young, stoned, worn, plump, slender, skanky, and sweet, the station cut to a location outside the hotel. Every TV crew in the states contiguous to Florida must have been assigned to the story. Trucks and vans lined the streets. Cameras, mikes, reporters, and support teams clustered around a small platform, awaiting a briefing.

The hapless official, when he arrived, had little information to provide. "That’s all we know at this time," he repeated several times, trying to break free. But the reporters kept shouting questions, pretty much the same five stupid questions using different words, and the official kept saying he didn’t know. Finally the desperate reporters turned on the curious onlookers and started interviewing them. They didn’t know anything either. Most didn’t even know who Anna Nicole was.

Not long after, her premature death was confirmed. And the ghoulish TV crews repeated again and again throughout the long day a short tape that showed the gurney with a blanket-covered body being moved from one vehicle to another, a distance of maybe ten feet. Someone tracked the number of Anna Nicole Smith references on the cable news channels from 3pm-12pm ET on the day she died. MSNBC, 170. CNN, 141. Fox, 112.

Like most people, I’m saddened by her death and concerned for the welfare of her baby daughter. But I’m furious that in a time of mourning, mother and child have been thrown to the sharks like chum.

What it is about Bad Things Happening to Beautiful or Famous or Accomplished Women that makes for a news-dominating story? Is it the public’s voracious appetite for gossip? Schadenfreude as we watch the rich and favored brought down? The relentless 24-hour TV news cycle that demands grist for its bloody mill?

Specifically, why are we served a constant diet of runaway brides, murdered young (pretty) women, female teen celebrities with eating disorders, female stars with substance abuse problems, a female astronaut stalking a love-rival with possibly lethal intent . . . ? Well, you’ve seen the stories.

Famous-men-running-amok can lead the news, but drunk driving and substance abuse is old hat these days. Testosterone-driven acting out gets more attention, but it happens pretty fast. A fella steals a tank and rams cars with it. A disgruntled worker shoots up the office, or a guy murders the girlfriend or family he thinks done him wrong. Big story, short legs.

It’s troubled women and their twisted fates that seize and hold the low ground of press coverage. As I’m typing this, I realize I need to change the TV channel. Next up, the latest about Anna Nicole Smith. Nooooooo!

To be sure, public fascination with celebrities is nothing new. Gladiators fought to become Roman Idols (and, yes, to survive). Great ladies sent them lascivious tokens of affection and had them brought to their beds.

In the mid-1700s, two actresses come down from Ireland caught the imagination of London. Maria and Elizabeth Gunning, so beautiful that artists clamored to paint them, vaulted themselves into the aristocracy. Without implants!

Elizabeth married a duke, and when he died, married a man who later inherited a dukedom. Maria, who also snabbled a peer, paid a price for physical perfection. A regular user of lead-based cosmetics (and arsenic as a beauty enhancer), she died in her middle twenties. But in the Gunnings’ heyday, huge crowds would show up at any place where they were likely to appear. One winter night, seven hundred fans huddled outside a Yorkshire Inn just to catch a glimpse of the beauties when they entered their carriages in the morning.

Human nature never fails to amaze me. But I’m still puzzling why females in distress or melt-down receive so much more attention than men in similar circumstances. Any ideas about that?

I’m also celebrating good news, which indicates that slowly, women are achieving what was virtually impossible only a few decades ago. This weekend, 371-year-old Harvard will name its first woman president, meaning that four of the eight prestigious Ivy League colleges will now be headed by women.

Like most women of her generation, Drew Gilpin Faust faced major obstacles on her road to success. The Boston Globe writes:
"The only girl of four children, she quarreled with her mother, who dressed her in ‘scratchy organdy dresses’ and warned her that, ‘This is a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you'll be.’ She rebelled instead."

Good for you, Dr. Gilpin!