There are a lot of scummy jobs in the world, but there’s one that seems to me to have no redeeming qualities.
Paparazzo.
Or its plural, paparazzi.
Let me start by clarifying one thing. When I saw paparazzo, I am not talking about legitimate news photographers. Photographs enhance news stories and often give people insight into what happened in a way words by themselves can’t. I’m not sure I agree 100 percent, but the expression that a picture is worth a thousand words makes sense.
That’s not what paparazzi do, though.
Their sole purpose is taking pictures of celebrities just because they’re celebrities, if possible catching them in embarrassing moments. To that end, they often become another scummy sort of people.
Stalkers.
In fact, a fairly recent term that has been coined — accurately, I believe — is stalkerazzi.
Stalkerazzi pretty well killed Princess Diana in 1997 in Paris.
Too harsh? People’s right to know?
The people’s “right to know” is perhaps the most overstated non-right we have in this country. If you saw the first couple of “Die Hard” movies, the one consistently unsympathetic character is the television reporter, who gets punched in the mouth in the first movie and tased in the airplane bathroom in the second.
Several developments in the last 50 years or so have created this thirst for non-news news. The 24-hour news cycle is one, leaving channels with impossible amounts of time to fill. The explosion of celebrity news and magazines is another, and the relaxation of what makes someone a celebrity is a third.
Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton became stars of a sort because of their sex tapes, and so-called reality television made other people famous. And these people and others are constantly followed around by photographers trying to take pictures of them.
Of course, the people who have the biggest gripe with the stalkerazzi at present appear to be the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife Meagan Markle. They said they were chased for two hours in a life-threatening situation Tuesday evening after attending an awards ceremony in New York City.
Some sources say it wasn’t that serious, but one thing ought to be obvious. Wankers with cameras were pursuing them for two hours when they weren’t making any news at all.
This is NOT freedom of the press.
This is NOT the people’s right to know.
It isn’t just the wankers with cameras who are to blame. If the people who buy their photos stop buying them, they would stop taking them.
It isn’t just the buyers who are to blame either. If the potential audience doesn’t watch the shows, buy the magazines or visit the Internet sights, the outlets that show the photos will go away too.
So in the end, it might not be my fault or your fault, but it’s tougher to be innocent when we just shrug our shoulders and look the other way.