4 posts tagged “celebrity”

it was only today - Day #4 of the San Diego fires - did my friends on the East Coast start calling me to make sure I was not on fire and that my house was not burning down.   This map demonstrates how truly catastrophic this 1 fire  (of  8 other large fires) is- not because it shows how big this 1 fire is is, but because it shows how it compares to the city of Manhattan.  Oh my NYC-Centric friends - the world doesn't make sense unless it is put into the context of your world? (I am not being 100% sarcastic, I am one of those NYC-centric people)

The stupid media has only been focusing on LA's celebrities up until today - and then they realized - wow the Malibu fire is sooo miniscule compared to the fact that the ENTIRE COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO IS BURNING DOWN!

Even my friend Roger in Sweden knew about San Diego's fires before my friends on the East Coast. That's horrible!  He said the video he watched of the SD fires on  Day #2, Monday - reported that the SD fires were worse than the LA fires.  This is SWEDEN!!!!!!  Can you believe that?

What's worse - I and many other bloggers in SD have been posting about what we are going through - so it's not like we've been silent.  This clearly shows a need for more sophisticated and different levels of information reporting - if I and many others have been flickring and voxing about this for days and the large media conglomerates failed to pick up on the seriousness of this - it is clear something is wrong with how certain news is highlighted while some are ignored - and this also shows that we need a different outlet that focuses on first-hand accounts from bloggers and etc.   
This happens all the time around the world - bloggers were posting about the recent Myamar/Burma killings of civilians - but it took a while for "official" news outlets to pick on it.  This happens all the time in Africa and China.   Just because people are writing about it online does not mean their information will get picked up. We need a new kind of media outlet that will be good at doing just that - specializing in first-hand online accounts.  There is nothing democratic about the internet. hmm this sounds like just the kind of service Kenyatta has been talking about creating!

You can read my other thoughts about the distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.

this was photo overlay was created by tim

now I know why no one from the east coast or even in Northern California called me to make sure I wasn't burning up in the fires - because the National and local news outside of SD are really only focusing on the Malibu fires of Los Angeles!  Even my friend in Los Angeles says they are barely mentioning what's going on in San Diego!  Well world, although Kelsey Grammar has been evacuated and this is serious national news - I also want to let my faithful friends know that I am FINE and I am not burning up or in the line of fire at all.  I am at least 15 miles away from the fires and there are also a few canyons in between me and the fires.  See the map below - I am in where all the yellow freeways come together  - so in San Diego proper.  It's very hard to breath - we are all coughing and sneezing - burning nasal passages - the air is dusty.

It's not just the luxury homes of celebrities that are burning up - it's also luxury homes of the non-famous in San Diego.  And in San Diego- Chula Vista and towns near the Mexican-US border are being evacuated also - so even more proof this is just affecting more than the super rich and famous.  But even so, I feel so sorry for the rich non-celebrities of SD, they can only go to Four Seaons and book massages - but how sad they don't have papparazzi on them all the time.

You can read my other thoughts about the racial class politics of San Diego fires here, National news coverage of SD fires here,  distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.    this was photo overlay was created by tim

Good writing is a like a drug  - it just makes you keep reading - paragraphs are not opportunities for breaks, but present a moment to soak in the words and immerse yourself in more amazing insights that are hinged on a beatiful bagel like cloud.

Adriana's post on Singy Kids, "From Karachi to Cannes: A Review of "A Mighty Heart",  truly shows off her ability to be a perceptive social commentator.  She has the capabiliy to weave together multiple strands of social issues into a one cohesive and penetrative essay.   The best social commentators have to be seamlessly multi-disiplinary in their knowledge, and I personally believe Adriana is one of the best I have read.   

For example, her review is the first and only piece of writing on Mighty Heart that successfully addresses the  uncomfortable yet difficult to articulate fact that Angelina Jolie is a white woman portraying a mixed woman, Marianne Pearl.   Adriana addresses this topic in logically and convincingly.   Here is an excerpt below on this issues, but by no way this is an excuse to read her essay in full,   

Both Jolie and Mariane Pearl wish for us to believe that the casting of Jolie as a biracial woman is not problematic.  "Aren't we past this?" Mariane retorted when asked to discuss the issue.  "I am Cuban, but I'm also Dutch. Should a Dutch person play me? It's not about skin color, it's about how a person behaves that matters."  If this was indeed the position of Pearl, Jolie and the filmmakers, then I wonder why they bothered with the considerable make up job they performed on Jolie.  Why not simply cast her as she is, without alteration, if indeed, only the person "within" matters?  In fact, why not cast the entire film without regard to ethnicity, race, culture and religion?

So you see, what I love most about her writing is that she writes about so many heavy topics so clearly!   She never loses her audeince -  her review grapples with race and ethnicity relations, literary interpretation, translation authenticity, film analysis, popular culture, and celebrity culture - but never does she belittle her audience with heavy academic jargon.  She gives one of the best summaries of the film,  it "had the opportunity to offer an inquiry and/or critique on this tension, present in Mariane's narration. Instead, it just reproduces it. "

Please write more stuff like this Adriana!!!!