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The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Ah, celebrity

6 comments on Ah, celebrity

Ah, celebrity
: This, from Au Currant, is too funny:

I love Naomi Campbell. She’s so beautiful, so bitchy and so trainwrecky. You can imagine how much this has cheered me:

Naomi Campbell says she confides in Nelson Mandela about her personal problems and love life…

“He always wants to know how I’m doing. My personal life, my love life, my problems, I just tell him.”

I can just imagine Nelson freaking Mandela getting woken up at 2 AM by a telephone call from a raging Naomi Campbell, in floods of tears because she caught her 65 year old boyfriend in bed with Heidi Klum and suspects her personal assistant has been cutting her coke with coffee creamer.

The obvious straightline is that this is the guy who has been slamming America and taking Saddam Hussein’s side in humanitarian wars; shows what’s on his mind.

But the more serious observation is that this is what happens when a smart and heroic man leaves the media-isolation of prison and gets bitten by the celebrity bug. It’s just so much damned fun to be famous, eh, Nelson?

6 responses to “Ah, celebrity”

  1. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Hey, give the man a break. When he first went to prison, the hot supermodel was Verouschka or Jean Shrimpton or somebody. Now some top-shelf bimbo wants to chat an 80-year-old man up, he’d have to be even more superhuman now than he was then to resist. If Saturday Night Live had real balls, they’d find a killer sketch in the story of Mack Daddy Mandela and his fine, fine girlfriends.

  2. John Avatar
    John

    I remember Mandela a couple of years ago spending an entire Dallas Cowboys football game in Jerry Jones’ luxury box at Texas Stadium. If you were a Cowboys’ fan this was actually good — Mandela was a big enough celebrity that it kept Jones from going down to the field and bothering his coaches and players as was his (pre-Parcells) want.
    Naturally, the Cowboys won that game, and my thoughs since then have been that Dallas fans could have seen their team improve rebuilt a lot faster and a lot cheaper than going out and paying Parcells the big bucks if they had all banded together and just paid Nelson to hang out with Jerry on Sundays between September and December each year (heck, since Dallas is the biggest TV draw, maybe Fox could have even chipped in for the bump it would have given their ratings, and Mandela could get his face on TV every week…)

  3. Abiola Lapite Avatar
    Abiola Lapite

    Jeff,
    I think you’re letting your anger at his anti-war stance get in the way of your objectivity here.
    Though I am entirely in agreement with you as far as the war goes, and found Mandela’s strident opposition rather irritating myself, I don’t think that this is evidence of any sort of “celebrity bug” on his part, but rather an indicator of his politeness. What could be more polite than to humor a young lady by acting as if her every waking thought and deed were of the utmost importance to oneself? That certainly doesn’t mean it’s true – I believe they call this sort of thing “old world charm.”
    When all is said and done, let’s face it, the man deserves to enjoy the years that are left to him in any manner he pleases. I’d prefer it if he kept out of international affairs a bit more, but what this guy has accomplished, and the price he paid in doing it, is far beyond anything you or I are ever likely to claim recognition for in our own lives. To cast aspersions at Mandela simply because he didn’t agree with one’s own position on the Iraq war strikes me as somewhat unbecoming.

  4. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Abiola,
    If Mandela didn’t want to flirt with supermodels, he’d have a secretary handle it. This is hilarious and it’s too bad you can’t see how funny it is.

  5. Dark Avenger Avatar
    Dark Avenger

    I can imagine Jeff checking out Elle Macpherson’s opinion about the war before talking to her about her personal life.
    (Not)!

  6. Pele Avatar
    Pele

    Abiola is right. Jarvis is mocking Mandela to discredit him becuase he opposes American actions. Jarvis mocks himself by doing this.