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Take, for example, the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow sex abuse saga, wherein she says he molested her daughter 20 years ago and he says of course he did not. This monstrous allegation coming right on the heels of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's overdosing on heroin must have made for quite a few late nights over at People magazine last week. The current issue has all of them on the cover, with Hoffman front and center ("His Tragic Final Days") and Woody over to the side ("New Details: A Family at War"). I'm not ashamed to admit that I bought it, mostly because I am a big fan of Hoffman and wanted to somehow register that fact, perhaps making his death an all-time bestseller in their history of dead celebrities. Also, there was a fairly long line at the supermarket checkout and reading it helped pass the time.
But once I got home, I reconsidered the wisdom of my purchase. (With a weekly readership of 46.6 million adults, People has the largest audience of any American magazine, so they don't need my business, that's for sure.) Besides the awful descriptions of Woody's mess and Hoffman's death, there were scads of photos of beautiful, smiling celebrities partying up a storm in fabulous clothes and glamorous surroundings, seemingly over-the-moon happy. There were no photos of them snorting cocaine, lying face down in a pool of vomit, drinking themselves into a stupor or crawling into rehab. Maybe if some of those moments were shown to an adoring public, fewer celebrities would end up in such dire straits.
well said Andrea,
ReplyDeleteJackie