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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (35983)	6/2/2003 11:05:47 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 59480

While not qualifying her for a Darwin Award, some hypocrisy from Babs: The fine line of celebrity stupidity Barbra Streisand, the latest star to make a very dumb move COMMENTARY By Michael Rogers SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM msnbc.com June 1 — Every time I start to believe that celebrities really are more talented, beautiful, and smarter than the rest of us, one of them comes along and does something downright stupid, making it clear that while they may have more talent and good looks than the average person, they’re just as dumb as anyone else. .org. THE CELEB WHO recently helped set me straight was Barbra Streisand. I’ve always thought that she was pretty smart. She sang when she felt like singing, acted in movies only when she believed that the project was right for her, and allowed herself to age more gracefully than her peers. But then along came Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman, two average multimillionaires who spend much of their time flying up and down the California coast in their helicopter, photographing the coastline to make sure that no one is doing anything naughty — such as chopping down a few trees on top of a cliff to improve the view — that might speed along the natural process of erosion. Since Barbra lives in a mansion on a bluff overlooking the Pacific in the celebrity-choked town of Malibu, the back of her house with its kidney-shaped pool turned up in one of the Adelman’s thousands of photos. Streisand, one suspects, must have been livid. Wasn’t this an invasion of her privacy? Isn’t this just like a stalker or a paparazzo getting his jollies or making a few bucks by peeking through her bushes and snapping some unflattering photos of her? Can’t we just leave her alone? So, she filed a lawsuit, reportedly seeking $10 million in damages and asking the Adelmans to remove the image of her estate from their collection. Now, here’s where the dumb part comes in. The Adelmans happen to have a Web site where each of their 12,000 photos can be viewed. So, anyone in the world with an Internet connection now knows that they can view Streisand’s home at www.californiacoastline.org. Did you get that, Barbra? If you really wanted to keep people from invading your privacy, why would you file a suit so that everyone would easily be able to see how great life is at the top? NOTHING TO SEE One look at the photo makes one wonder how anyone could think that there was a connection between the Adelmans and the paparazzi. The Adelmans take their photos with a standard lens — not like the paparazzi with a telephoto lens — from hundreds of feet away. The pictures are better than satellite images, but you can’t see anything that would get any fawning, celebrity hunter excited. What’s even more surprising about all this is that Streisand has given hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to help protect the environment. So, isn’t a suit like this just a bit hypocritical? The message of the lawsuit seems to be that protecting celebrities is a lot more important than protecting the environment. A lot of Hollywood stars would probably secretly agree to that, but in their image-conscious universe in which it’s important to appear both beautiful and virtuous, no one except maybe Charlton Heston or Arnold Schwarzenegger would let themselves be caught implying that their interests come before the public good. TIME TO HEAD EAST My wife, a native Californian, has always bragged to me, a native New Yorker, that L.A. is better than New York because the coast belongs to the public. In New York, you’ve got private clubs and beachfront homes whose owners won’t let you set foot on their bit of sand. Well, if this lawsuit flies, it may be time for our family to head back to New York where you can stroll along the boardwalk in Coney Island, not far from where Barbra grew up, and take as many pictures as you’d like. You won’t find any celebrities there, but at least you won’t get sued. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Rogers is an artist and writer based in southern California.