Winton/LATimes 06.12.05The suit does not say where the home is
A suit filed by actress Jennifer Aniston accuses a paparazzo of invading her privacy last month by using a powerful telephoto lens to take photos of her topless or partially undressed in her home.
The suit filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court is the latest counterattack by Hollywood's top stars against paparazzi, who are accused of becoming increasingly aggressive as competition for images and the number of celebrity magazines has increased.
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Two years ago, Francois Navarre, owner of the largest Los Angeles paparazzi agency, X-17, admitted no wrongdoing but paid the actress $550,000 to settle an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit over photos of her sunbathing topless in her backyard.
Those photos were taken by a photographer with a telephoto lens who scaled a neighbor's 8-foot wall, according to court records. The photos ran in several publications known for racy celebrity images.
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At the heart of the argument is the taboo area of demand. The demand for images of Aniston naked. That just exists all by itself, a force of nature.
Talking about the creation of demand infringes on the right to conduct business which is the most sacred right enjoyed by free people, more central and sacrosanct than the rights to vote or speak freely or travel unimpeded.
It's the same sniveling rationalization that's been used by the television's puppetmasters all along. There is no responsibility for shaping the public's will, that exists on its own, out in the real world somewhere. This is what's allowed the election of Bush and the invasion of Iraq to continue as unchallenged, almost naturally arising phenomena.
Because the tools and techniques of that shaping are so subtle and have been consistently unexamined in the public sphere, the pretence is allowed to continue, even as the public's been shifted and turned and rolled around in its great bed like a patient in the back ward of a bottom-rung convalescent home.
Television responds to the desires and appetites of the public, politicians respond to the desires and will of the public, and only the public itself can be held accountable for the debased quality of its desires, and for the damage and ramifying harm of its gratification.
Especially in addition I would like to point an accusing finger at those who would scornfully say that because Aniston's risen to the top of a dogpile of ambitious self-interest she owes her privileged lifestyle to the public whose demands for her substance (because that's what it is, the nakedness is virtual only because the logistics make it impossible for people to purchase her actual naked body on their proletarian budgets), and therefore she has no complaint when that demand gets out of hand and cruelly invasive.
The public's blindness was intentionally created, and its desires are intentionally cultivated, and the symptoms of that pathology are everywhere, only more obvious here.
Cheap karmic laughter to the contrary, this is a bad thing all around.
