August 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Colombia: Journalism: Columbia Journalism Review: Maureen Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Colombia: Special Report: Journalist and Colombia RPCV Maureen Orth: August 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Colombia: Journalism: Columbia Journalism Review: Maureen Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism

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Maureen Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism

Maureen Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism

Maureen Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism

The Rise and Rise of Celebrity Journalism

BY NEAL GABLER

[Excerpt]
Maureen Orth, a longtime special correspondent for Vanity Fair, works the other side of the celebrity tracks. Though both she and Calder trade in voyeurism, where he promotes resentment, she elicits envy, which is basically the difference between the Enquirer and Vanity Fair. Unlike Calder, Orth wrings her hands over what papers like the Enquirer have wrought and issues the typical string of indictments against the state of contemporary journalism. In today’s media we get a “lot less meaning and a lot less real product. Politics is often served up as scandal. News is more and more centered on the latest sensational drama. Stars edge out coverage of world events with breathless reports about their latest deals and endorsements.” Blah, blah, blah. The Importance of Being Famous, containing Orth profiles of everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Madonna, from Vladimir Putin to Michael Jackson, purports to deconstruct the whole celebrity-industrial complex, and there are short introductions to the various sections that attempt to generalize about what celebrity means and how it operates, but in Orth’s hands the deconstruction looks exactly like the construction. Orth, who is married to Meet the Press’s Tim Russert, isn’t an antagonist to celebrity. She is a facilitator. And celebrity journalism, even the sordid sort practiced by Iain Calder, isn’t always adversarial. (Calder brags about letting Donald Trump vet pieces on him and tells how celebrities often rat on themselves just to get publicity.) It is usually collaborative. In any case, no one who profiles celebrities for Vanity Fair is going to pierce the celebrity veil. He or she would be fired. For Orth to think she’s doing anything but weaving that veil makes her as delusional as Calder thinking Gene Pope is another Sulzberger or Chandler.

Where Orth is on firmer ground is in recognizing that celebrity, like gossip, is more than mere entertainment or diversion — that it has a social/psychological function. Others, myself included, have discussed celebrity as a kind of art, providing narratives that reify themes and ideas in the culture much the way myths do. Her profile of Madonna speaks to the rage for personal reinvention. Her profile of Margaret Thatcher to the tragedy of losing celebrity and the bubble in which it envelops one. Her profile of Woody Allen to the self-deception of the famous and revered and the different moral rules to which they are held.

Certainly the best and longest celebrity narratives do have a mythic resonance. But the effect of Orth’s book is almost precisely the opposite of what she intended. Reading these pieces one after another, one is struck less by what they say about culture generally or even about celebrity specifically than by how little they say and how superficial it is. In fairness, this may not be so much the fault of Orth, who is observant and occasionally keen, as it is the fault of celebrity itself. One celebrity narrative sounds pretty much like another, one cautionary tale like another, one conclusion like another. Madonna, Margaret Thatcher, Woody Allen — it’s all the same. There is none of the heft and amplitude of real literature, none of the complexity. Celebrities exist to be accessible and easily digestible. As one of Orth’s own subjects, the designer Karl Lagerfeld, says of fashion, “Only the minute and the future are interesting in fashion — it exists to be destroyed.” Celebrity is a lot like that. It is ephemeral. Its interest is entirely in the here and now. Some of the people in Orth’s book are already forgotten if they were ever known in the first place. Most of the others soon will be.

Yogi Berra once opined that you can’t think and hit at the same time. What Calder and Orth suggest is that you can’t think and write celebrity gossip or profiles at the same time and for the same reason. Thinking would inhibit the process, maybe destroy it altogether. The celebrity-industrial complex exists because there is a large public that finds tales of the beautiful, the powerful, and the wealthy entertaining and sometimes instructive in a home truth sort of way; because there are voracious media who need to satisfy the public taste in order to earn profits; because there is an ever-expanding universe of people who want and need to be in the public consciousness; and because there are journalists like Orth and Calder who can justify what it is they do as socially redeeming. It is a perfectly synergistic system. But it is not, as Iain Calder and Maureen Orth demonstrate in their own ways, a serious one. The real tragedy of celebrity is that most of the time it amounts to so little and, at least on the basis of these two books, leaves so little behind save cheap thrills.





When this story was prepared, this was the front page of PCOL magazine:

This Month's Issue: August 2004 This Month's Issue: August 2004
Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and who can come up with the funniest caption for our Current Events Funny?

Exclusive: Director Vasquez speaks out in an op-ed published exclusively on the web by Peace Corps Online saying the Dayton Daily News' portrayal of Peace Corps "doesn't jibe with facts."

In other news, the NPCA makes the case for improving governance and explains the challenges facing the organization, RPCV Bob Shaconis says Peace Corps has been a "sacred cow", RPCV Shaun McNally picks up support for his Aug 10 primary and has a plan to win in Connecticut, and the movie "Open Water" based on the negligent deaths of two RPCVs in Australia opens August 6. Op-ed's by RPCVs: Cops of the World is not a good goal and Peace Corps must emphasize community development.





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Story Source: Columbia Journalism Review

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Colombia; Journalism

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