As sad and shallow as it may be, there are actually people out there who give a shit that some celebrities had their vacations screwed up by the tsunami. Reading about the trials and tribulations of celebrities has always been a big seller, for reasons I can’t quite grasp, and as a result they have whole departments of journalists and editors dedicated to that topic alone in just about any major news organization. I can’t fault the editor for the headline all that much as it’s exactly the sort of headline I’d expect from the folks who do that kind of work and it’s what the people they’re catering to are looking for.

Ironically I just looked at SEB’s referrer logs and noticed we got referrer spam from someone trying to promote a blog devoted to pictures of Petra Nemcova which just happens to have an article about how she was caught in the tsunami.

Cue Twilight Zone theme.

Les- nee nö nee nü nee nö nee nü....

Even the Austrian news, normally pretty even-handed, has been dedicating the first ten minutes of their coverage every evening to the couple hundred Austrians missing and presumed dead, before briefly and sketchily reporting about the rest of the disaster.  Of course people here want to know about their friends and relatives, but there are official channels taking care of informing them anyway, and it seems a bit unbalanced to most of us, as though Austrians were more important than Asians. I haven’t seen Petra Nemcova on the news here, though.

Concern for a celebrity’s holiday is like worrying if your cat is getting enough sleep.

Talk about celebrities… From expatica.com:

“Kohl survives tsunami, stays to help Sri Lankans

After surviving Asia’s killer tsunami, Helmut Kohl, 74, the former German chancellor, has vowed to stay on in Sri Lanka to help organise relief for children and to demonstrate that the country needed tourist earnings.

Kohl told the German media how he watched from a hotel balcony as the water swept below him through the Sri Lankan town of Thalpe. He has now moved to a hotel closer to the Lankan capital Colombo.”

I think it’s that people want to personalize news by hearing about it from the perspective of someone familiar to them.  This would be either their countrymen or, failing that, someone they “know” (i.e. a celebrity).  Also, when disaster strikes a celeb, there may be a certain amount of Schadenfreude involved ...  (Oh!  Did the poor supermodel break a nail?)

Oh, and DOF?  That’s the best damn line of the year ... well done, mate.

I think it’s all an extension of a natural human reaction. If you hear of a large disaster, and you have friends or family there, your first thoughts are towards those friends or family, regardless of how many people may have been affected. To extend that, many people feel particularly close to their favorite celebrities. I think we’re all guilty of it to some extent. Personally, I’ve spent 30 plus years as a fan of comic books, so I was particularly distressed today when I learned of Will Eisner’s death, although I never met the man his work has had a deep impact on my life. To take that forward, if you told me that someone I’m fond of, say James Garner (my personal favorite actor) had been in the disaster area, I’d certainly want to know if he was okay as soon as possible. Not that he’s more important than the other people over there, just that he has more of an impact of my life.

I’d just like to point out that I think it’s super cool to get my first SEB Guest Post published on my birthday

Bo$$-
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