Tinseltown Tarts Menace Macadam: Blameless shutterbugs can't get arrested in this town... "Anti-Diva" bites Teenage Drama Queen on ankle

Tim Cavanaugh | October 5, 2005

Two more Hollywood starlets have caused potentially lethal automobile accidents and are attempting to blame the paparazzi for their own screwups. As explained here months ago, these claims are baseless and are part of a celebrity power grab. But this time eyewitnesses were there to verify the ingenues' reckless behavior and exonerate the photographers.

Herbie: Fully Loaded star Lindsay Lohan yesterday smashed into a van trying to make a turn in front of her, in an incident suspiciously similar to the May 31 accident for which a celebrity photographer has been criminally charged. As in that incident, Lohan's handlers lost no time trying to depict this one as a paparazzi-related crash. Unfortunately for that plan, ace reporter Victoria Recaño, the "Anti-Diva," was present on the scene, telling a local TV news crew, "I was just walking down the street when her Mercedes-Benz sped north... and I guess... hit a red van head-on."

Observe how the BBC, like all the mainstream media in thrall to the celebrities' campaign against "stalkerazzi," selectively quotes Recaño to support that campaign. The Beeb quotes Recaño at the top of the story noting that Lohan had avoided a pap-press at a restaurant earlier in the day, then provides a few paragraphs of back story on Lohan's previous run-in with paparazzo Galo Cesar Ramirez, returning to Recaño at the end for the following: "I don't believe they were fleeing the scene, I think they were hiding from paparazzi who hang out in this area." The UK's state-run news network conveniently omits the rest of Recaño's quote, wherein she expresses bafflement at the actress' speeding and states, "There was no one following her. She was going pretty fast on Robertson."

This follows Scarlett Johansson's August collision in the Disneyland parking lot, which the comely Ghost World star also tried to pin on the paparazzi—until a witness surfaced to report:

When she was driving in to the parking lot, she was going very, very slow - maybe about 15 miles per hour - and she started veering to the left. It was almost like when you drop something on the car floor and you try to pick it up. Or she could've been busy talking with the two friends she had in her car. I couldn't see what was going on inside of the car, but from the outside I could see that she wasn't at all being chased when she hit the other lady's car. The parking lot is confusing because it's very busy, so maybe she was unsure of whether she wanted to turn left or right. I'm guessing that because she veered to the left, she was unable to see the other car - the only other vehicle at the parking lot entrance at that time - from her blindside. That's when she slowly slammed into the other car. The nearest cars to them at the time of the accident were at least 40 yards away, and none of them contained paparazzi. It was just regular oncoming traffic. I know, because there was another set of photographers that with the traffic at the stoplights. I'm sure Disneyland has video cameras at its entrance to prove that this is what happened.

Am I suspicous that these witnesses appear to be paparazzi themselves? M-m-maybe...a little. But the larger story here is clear: Celebrities are an out-of-control menace on our highways. Before we give any more credence to these fleeing-the-cameras excuses, consider the most important question in the ongoing paparazzi war: cui bono?

Meanwhile: "Two Publicists, Stylist, Personal Assistant Injured As Nicole Kidman Turns On Handlers"

Comments

|10.5.05 @ 8:39PM|#

Yeah, but does she still have blond hair and a visibly protruding xyphoid process? I'd bet my Ultimate Fitness Program equipment that among this bunch, Ms Lohan's adventures behind the wheel will take a backseat to her womanly attributes, or what's left of them.

On a mostly unrelated note, does anyone else here consider Herbie Rides Again to be the #1 anti-eminent-domain movie of all time?

|10.5.05 @ 9:05PM|#

Next time we have a "Tinseltown Tart" thread, could it be in the form of a graphic novel? Hubba hubba!

And we think the H&R server crashes too often now!

|10.5.05 @ 9:21PM|#

You can't wield Supreme Executive Power just because some Tinseltown tart crashed her car into you...

Jeff P.|10.5.05 @ 9:32PM|#

I've tried the paparazzi excuse for several traffic incidents to no avail.

|10.5.05 @ 9:40PM|#

but mr cavanaugh, what do you expect from our youth-obsessed culture? teen celebrities like miss lohan are coddled through their formative years, their youthful indiscretions swept under the rug and enabled to avoid bad pr. not too long ago in our civilization, even a beautiful girl who damaged a neighbor's oxcart would have been tied up and whipped till she learnt her lesson.

but in the modern video age, where image is everything, children like miss lohan are a commodity, rather than human beings in development. her handlers have less concern for her maturing into an adult woman than they have for keeping her image intact until her bodily features start drooping and sagging...at which time her opportunistic hangers-on will switch to the next up-and-coming stroke object.

miss lohan, meanwhile, will transmute into a loathsome parody of her former self, her beauty rapidly fading as her red roots displace her bleached hair. raised in the lap of luxury, she would hardly know how to cope with being just another fatass redhead bad driver. is this not how so many of our teen celebrities wind up overdosing, or at least wallowing in self-pity before an uninterested world?

|10.5.05 @ 10:06PM|#

Why do these "celebrities" fail to understand that people not paying attention to you and not taking your picture all the time -- the two things they claim to desire -- is, in fact, the polar opposite of being famous? If they really don't want to be famous, they can stop anytime.

jimmy|10.5.05 @ 11:33PM|#

you're kidding, right? this is a joke, right?

|10.6.05 @ 5:14AM|#

Hard to call the BBC "state-run". Funded by legislated extortion, sure, but "state run" implies it being managed by toadies servile to the political power structure. Tony Blair would argue rather strenuously with that characterization.

Besides, I'm pretty sure a majority of Brits would vote to continue BBC funding if it were put to referendum.

Massively deluded that private broadcasters with crass profit motives wouldn't provide enough gardening and antique shows, methinks.

|10.6.05 @ 8:46AM|#

I thought Chinese people were'nt permitted to use the internet..

|10.6.05 @ 9:34AM|#

I hate myself for saying this, but I think it might be true. It might not.

There is a correlation between the presence of papparazzi and automobile accidents where the cars are driven not by professional drivers.

The papparazzi should be able to take pictures of the 'stars', and the drivers are responsible for their own behavior. However, to say that the papparazzi have nothing to do with the accidents strikes me as a bit hollow.

|10.6.05 @ 9:39AM|#

"But the larger story here is clear: Celebrities are an out-of-control menace on our highways."

Actually, celebrities are an out-of-control menace in our society. Why are so many people obsessed with these largely talentless hacks?

I'd be mortally ashamed of myself if I had raised my daughter into a Lohan, Hilton, Mariah, et al.-type tart.

Timothy|10.6.05 @ 10:06AM|#

Lohan now: Scary

Lohan 20 lbs heavier: delicious.

|10.6.05 @ 10:09AM|#

Barry P (apologies if you're kidding)

"Massively deluded that private broadcasters with crass profit motives wouldn't provide enough gardening and antique shows, methinks."

Home and Garden Television

PBS still has the market for antiques, though.

|10.6.05 @ 10:44AM|#

PBS still has the market for antiques, though.

There used to be an antiques show on FX, back when they were still incredibly low budget and it was that and reruns from the 60's and 70's. Don't know if it's still around, but I suspect not.

|10.6.05 @ 10:59AM|#

Yes, Ironchef, I was kidding.

Here in the UAE, BBC provides two of the 6 or so English-speaking channels I get. There must be at leat half a dozen different antiques shows, and an equal number of gardening/DIY/home-buying shows. You put those together with daily doses of "The Weakest Link", and the schedule is already half full.

I don't understand the British delusion that the BBC is somehow "special" and gives them necessary, important stuff that the market woudn't. "Manchild" is mildly amusing, but no better than half a dozen HBO offerings.

|10.6.05 @ 11:38AM|#

Papparazzi are human scum, as are the mental midgets who give them life by consuming their products. It's symbiosis at its most depraved, but inevitable, given our paper-thin culture.

|10.6.05 @ 1:06PM|#

There used to be an antiques show on FX, back when they were still incredibly low budget and it was that and reruns from the 60's and 70's. Don't know if it's still around, but I suspect not.

I vaguely recall such a show as well. It was kind of like Antique Road Show, but didn't they have seperate segments? One where they would do appraisals on-set, and another where they would go out in a big RV and profile people who had weird collections of all sorts of esoteric stuff?

R C Dean|10.6.05 @ 1:25PM|#

I see gaius marius return (hi, gaius!) has brought biggus dickus out of the, erm, woodwork.