is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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where should i be looking right now?
Madonna does have that thing, where whenever you�re looking somewhere and she�s in your field of vision, you can�t take your eyes away. Britney has that, too, and so does Justin Timberlake. I guess that�s what they call �star quality.� It sure is fun to see Madonna dancing with Justin in that Four Minutes video. But I hope that what follows for Justin isn�t similar to what followed for Britney after Madonna danced with her in the Me Against the Music video.
Lately I�ve been thinking about Britney far too often. And feeling bad. I feel bad about how her childhood was stolen from her by her parents and by the adoring fans who love to watch her. And I feel bad about how when she inevitably lost balance, everyone kept watching. And I feel slightly mystified that I also seem to CARE. But, really, how am I supposed to feel about a culture and a whole sordid industry (in which we are all implicated) that will not look away? The definition of shameless must include the failure to cast one�s eyes downward, to give a person some peace, or the barest respect owed to a human being caught in the act of stumbling.
There is a kind of looking away that is irresponsible, like when you know a friend is in trouble but you don�t want to deal with it. And there is the kind of looking away that is respectful, like when your good friend has just been humiliated, there�s nothing you can do, and you save her from the added pain of you bearing witness to it.
I�m not sure why I keep thinking about Britney right now. Perhaps it�s some sort of underthought distraction to keep me from dwelling on how sad I am about the Olympics. I�m sad not only because the Olympics are in China, and China has some terrible human rights problems it won�t fix. I�m also sad because the protests and news reports are mostly about Tibet. I guess that�s fine if �Tibet� is code for human rights in general. But why are the China-related reports not also about Darfur and, more to the point, the 1.5 million poverty-ridden residents of Beijing who have been cast out of homes they�ve lived in for decades or generations, to make room for the Olympic games, without being offered compensation for their losses or help finding a place to live.
I guess the two stories are related in some bizarre way. We want to look at Britney, and we want to watch the Olympics. And as long as it�s on the television, that�s just what we�ll do.
12:46 a.m. - April 11, 2008
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