Celebrity

Smartmom blogged a news item today: Caroline Kennedy is moving to her neighbourhood. Why is this news?

I don't ask why Smartmom is blogging about CK (gotta love those initials), that's obvious to anyone who reads her stuff. She loves her neighbourhood, lives and blogs it intensely (know anyone else who volunteers in a food co-op?), and she is apprehensive about what foul dust may float in the wake of this new arrival. My question is why CK moving to the South Slope of Brooklyn is news, or rather how it came to be news.

News is, that which gets reported in the media, meaning: that which journalists know to write about. How did the journalists know that CK is moving? Simple: somebody told them. Did anyone call the press when you last moved? Me neither. So, who did this and why? Let's work it out.

Maybe the realtor did, but I'd bet against it. In this age of celebrity stalkers and anthrax-via-FedEx, there is surely no more sensitive information than where someone lives; a realtor who trifles with this is risking starvation. It can't be the moving company, since the news item (as Smartmom reports it) is prospective: CK hasn't yet moved. Maybe the vendor did, but I'd bet against that too: revealing this information is surely grounds for annulling the purchase (wouldn't you have such a clause in the contract, if you were CK?). The purchasers of CK's previous house would have the same muzzling clause in their contract.

So the source (the leak) probably isn't related to the house, or to the act of moving. What's left?

CK herself.

Either Caroline Kennedy or somebody acting on her behalf told the journalists that she is moving to Brooklyn. It's clear that whoever did so, must have had CK's tacit approval if not explicit instructions: otherwise, she would surely have sacked them on the spot. Who would risk that?

CK is (at least) conniving in her own loss of privacy. Just the price you pay for fame: gotta keep your name in front of the public. The late and sadly missed Bill Hicks called this sucking the Devil's cock, Joni Mitchell called it stoking the star-maker machinery, I think of it as sacrificing to the bitch goddess Fame (also a quote, but I can't remember from whom. If you know, drop me a comment.) The sad irony is that one sacrifices not a goat but oneself: your privacy, your dignity. Now, CK is losing here only the former, but you can watch the latter vanishing in the so-called Society Pages of most glossy magazines.

The ultimate example is the famous photo of Paris Hilton getting out of her car, which you won't find in the Society Pages of most glossy magazines. Don't tell me that wasn't posed, she knew exactly where her legs were - just look at the smirk on her face.