His marriage is less threatened by the delivery man than by the newspaper boy.
Posted on 05/26/2005 11:53:21 PM PDT by T Lady
Webster's Dictionary defines famous as "widely known," but also "honored for achievement," while infamous is defined as "having a reputation of the worst kind," a synonym for "disgraceful." In the big business of celebrity journalism today, there is no discernible difference between fame and infamy.
Today's celebrity journalism is only interested in that which is interesting , no matter how vile the atrocity. It will make all kinds of excuses for the infamous if they can be milked for Nielsen ratings points. Worse yet, it will pay the infamous for the privilege of wallowing in their vomit-inducing lives.
Some of today's infamous are merely highlighted for making fools of themselves on TV. Take Paris Hilton. Try finding something she's accomplished where she deserved to be "honored for achievement." She's famous for being Barbie-doll pretty, stinking rich, dumb as a mud fence, and casually, completely amoral.
But she's not a criminal. There's a separate category for truly infamous convicts. Take Mary Kay LeTourneau, the grade-school art teacher who first collided with the TV news cycle in 1997 when, as a 35-year-old mother of four, she was convicted of seducing a 12-year-old boy into sex. How many people would consider honoring her "for achievement"? She was convicted of child rape and forced to register as a sex offender. She was released early, but then returned to prison when she was caught once again molesting the child. She was a repeat offender, a repeat child rapist, to be precise.
You can see where this train wreck would be fascinating, and appalling. Just imagine being the husband of this woman, or one of her four children. (They moved to Alaska to avoid the glare of reflected infamy.) Imagine being the parents of this boy, who had no idea the art teacher was stalking their grade-schooler, fantasizing about him, and finally violating him.
But today's media will rationalize anything to draw eyeballs to the tube, so when Mary Kay's conquest, a boy named Vili Fualaau, grew into a man, and she was eventually released from prison, the next stage of infamy could ensue: They would be married. Suddenly, the celebrity-making vampires were playing the strains of "Love Story," and pedophilia means never having to say you're sorry.
In the last week of April, Paramount's "Entertainment Tonight" and their spinoff show "The Insider" announced they had obtained the "exclusive rights" to wallow in the pedophile wedding of the century. They also mysteriously claimed that they do not pay for interviews, which no one should believe. The first to point accusatory fingers was the competition at "Access Hollywood," where host Billy Bush insisted Paramount paid big money for the privilege, "close to $1 million -- a figure they deny," Bush said. "Go to prison, get on TV, get rich," he declared.
To fully profit from the "exclusive rights" they insisted they didn't buy, these Paramount "entertainment" shows treated (or better, mistreated) viewers to days of panting after the Lucky Couple. Inside the rehearsal dinner. Inside the wedding. Inside the reception. Then there was the most frightening part: Asking Mary Kay for romantic advice. What? "I think sexual intimacy should be in a marriage only -- or else a close-to-marriage situation," Mary Kay helpfully told the public, her own actions light years removed from those stated beliefs.
The show's amoral neutrality suffused the coverage even as it seeped into the mainstream news media. In a piece for ABC's "Good Morning America," ET reporter Jann Carl hyped the wedding as "the icing on the cake of a notorious soap opera that still sparks admiration and outrage around the world." Wait a minute. Just who "admires" the rape of a 12-year-old boy, other than the folks at Paramount? She then hyped her exclusive first interview with the couple. She cooed: "Was it everything you dreamed?" Without giggling, Carl explained the new Mary Kay Fualaau hoped to teach again in the future, failing to add: If some school administrator can just compassionately look past that registered-pedophile record.
Mary Kay was delighted that Paramount took their time and money to promote her side of the adultery/pedophilia argument against the troublesome opinions of the public. In her first interview, she exclaimed: "I feel like I'm happy for the public that they get to see us finally and that they aren't given misinformation or someone's opinion as information."
A vast majority of Americans may see her as infamous, or disgraceful, but our "entertainment" media is not above devoting their time and millions to promoting the glamorous and romantic side of pedophilia. Paramount has defined itself, as well, as infamous and disgraceful.
Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
If she had lived in AZ she would have gotten at least 20 years. And she would have done almost all of it, at least.
Liberal WA thinks sex betweens grown, psycho, women teachers and pre-teens is a good thing.
They don't call it 'The Left Coast' for nothing!
...This woman is an absolute disgrace to her profession.
-Regards, T.
A reporter I know covered the wedding, though he had to figuratively hold his nose to be in the same room with these lice. He told me that the happy couple has been paid $3 million for their story -- so far. They get around the laws against felons profiting from their felonies by having the money paid to Vili, the victim/husband.
Wouldn't it be a hoot if he turned around and divorced her next week and took the money and his kids out of state......she is a registered sex offender and can't leave Washington.
His marriage is less threatened by the delivery man than by the newspaper boy.
Well, she's half right. She was married when she raped the 12-year-old.
She is insane.
Three...million...dollars...FOR THIS?!!!!
The Media has sunk to an all-time low.
-Regards, T.
I second your diagnosis, Doc.
-Regards, T.
True. But some would say that if there wasn't the demand, there wouldn't be the supply.
Not only is it that, but it's of the cheapest and most facile variety, appealing to the lowest of intellects. People in the U.S. have the entire cosmos of human knowledge and achievement at their fingertips, and for all that their only interest appears to reside in tits.
If he has a lick of sense, he has booked a flight already.
And, now she's a star.
Words fail me.
Hey, I'm a well-educated professional with access to Free Republic, and I haven't lost my interest!
Am I the only one who finds this couple disturbingly unattractive? They take ugly to a new low.
I drop-dead-seriously want to know who it was that was demanding the wall-to-wall coverage of the wedding as if Letourneau was Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts, and there were millions hanging on her every move. After all, books written about this tragedy (and yes, it is a tragedy) have not hit the best-seller lists like those regarding, say, Scott Peterson; Letourneau hadn't given an interview in years; while serving her time after violating parole, she only turned up in the news when she was disciplined for sending threatening notes to Vili; Vili's bizarre money-grab suit against the school district for failing to protect him from his future wife was laughed out of court.
I haven't watched Entertainment Tonight since it stopped being about show business and started being about celebrities, Mary Hart's legs notwithstanding. I am not interested in seeing the wedding footage of some bad actor or rock star as if I would have given a second thought to wanting to be there. But Letourneau and Fualaau are by no means entertainers nor celebrities; they are simply public figures by way of the police blotter.
I think the idiots at ET figured they could spin the circumstances of their marriage into some cheesy love-conquers-all story, asking their viewers to forget the pedophilic, mental illness, adultery, unwed teenage father, jailbird mother, divorce, and abandoned family aspects that are all too real. ET also wants to pretend it isn't taking sides against cheatee Steve Letourneau, whose family name has been dragged down by his wicked witch of a wife -- what fun it must be to be him nowadays. The camera loves the omnipresent smile on Mary Kay's face, as if her happiness is all that matters, when the fact is that real people have suffered and will continue to suffer as a result of Letourneau's foolishness. To the amoral and the twisted, that's "entertainment."
Just because ET pulled this doesn't mean there was a demand for it. There wasn't a demand for Baby Geniuses 2 either, and someone made the decision to make that. I just hope that the sweeps month risk they took backfired on them, because if it didn't, expect more of this excrement in the future -- and perhaps next time, it won't be the marriage of a boy and his female teacher.
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