Pot calls kettle hot
: Tina Brown — who made her career on the foibles of celebrity — now laments that everybody can find foibles; it is no longer the exclusive calling of the tony-cocktail-party-throwing editorial elite:
We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there’s a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out — and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks.
Finks, formerly known as reporters; busybodies, formerly known as sources.
We’re always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with transcripts available.
And without the paparazzi, where would magazines be?
No matter who you are, someone is ready and willing to rat you out. Even the rats themselves have to look over their shoulders, because some smaller rat is always waiting in the wings. Bloggers are the new Stasi. All the timidity this engenders, all this watching your mouth has started to feel positively un-American.
If bloggers are Stasi, then magazine editors are, what, the politburo? I write this off to petty jealousy. But Dana Blankenhorn has a fit fit for Buzzmachine.
