New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | February 20, 2006

Celebrity road rage, endangered children, bad law, and railroaded photographers. Which side are you on in the war between the stars and the shutterbugs? [L.A. Times free registration required]

Reason needs your support. Please donate today!

Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.

← When Meth Freaks Turn to Urban… | Main | Three Years For David Irving, or,… →

See all 38 comments | Leave a comment

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment or disable your ability to comment for any reason at any time.

|2.20.06 @ 3:01PM|#

So the scare quotes surrounding stalkerazzi are meant to indicate that it's all a fabrication, that celeb photogs don't actually stalk their prey? Come on. By the way, the guilty party is neither the celebs nor the stalkers, but all the shallow pinheads who have created a demand for their services.

|2.20.06 @ 3:16PM|#

Di's Ghost beat me to it. It's easy to blame the media for every ill while forgetting that the media, like every business, serve their market.

|2.20.06 @ 3:17PM|#

Ghost,

Perhaps the quote marks around "stalkerazzi" are there because someone actually said it (thus making it a quote).

And I'm sorry if they scared you.

|2.20.06 @ 3:21PM|#

Quote marks are used when the quote is directly attributed to someone. Of course someone said it-someone has said every word in the language at one time or another.

|2.20.06 @ 3:22PM|#

I doubt it, ws.

Having a great time up here. The caviar is to die for.

Larry A|2.20.06 @ 3:53PM|#

Perhaps the quote marks around "stalkerazzi" are there because someone actually said it (thus making it a quote).

But the usual reason for quoting is to attribute it, thus telling readers who said it. As in the article's first sentence quoting Spears.

The point is that the relationship here is symbiotic, not parasitic. If the paparazzi all quit the celebs would hire replacements.

And I hope someone is seriously looking at Spears for endangering her child.

|2.20.06 @ 4:01PM|#

Spears said "paparazzi", not "stalkerazzi."

|2.20.06 @ 4:18PM|#

So why are "scare quotes" called "scare" quotes?

Seriously. I get the general idea, but why aren't they called "pseudo-quotes" or "mocking quotes" or something like that?

|2.20.06 @ 4:25PM|#

Don't know, Stevo, but I still scare myself when I look in the mirror. That was one bad fender-bender.

Yogi|2.20.06 @ 4:27PM|#

3 blog posts so far today? Man, you'd think this was some kind of big holiday or something. The Post Office and Reason both take this holiday pretty seriously, does anyone else?

|2.20.06 @ 5:03PM|#

This won't be much of an issue for long, since the Film Actors Guild will lobby for laws only allowing photography *from behind.* Heh.

Larry A|2.20.06 @ 5:12PM|#

So why are "scare quotes" called "scare" quotes?

Once upon a time there was a newspaper publisher who was convinced that quotes should be used in headlines to emphasize words. His crusty old publisher disagreed, saying that quotes added illegitimacy, not emphasis. But the publisher insisted, and reminded the editor that it was the publisher's newspaper.

So the editor printed an article and titled it with the following headline:

Publisher attends event with his "wife"

The publisher was so scared that he thereafter let the editor do his job.

Tim Cavanaugh|2.20.06 @ 5:19PM|#

Here's the definitive history of scare quotes.

The new law referenced in the article was widely referred to as the "stalkerazzi law." Here's an example from CBS, complete with scare quotes. I suppose I could have attributed the term to some individual, but I don't know who invented the term and so an attribution would have been misleading. I'm not sure what the controversy is over the quotation marks in my article, but for what it's worth, I put the term in quotes the first time to indicate that it's a neologism not of my invention, and did not use quotes in subsequent examples because the term had already been introduced.

"Viking" "Moose"|2.20.06 @ 5:35PM|#

"Tim":

the controversy probably arose from too much free time on behalf of your readership :)

considering the number of arguments in this forum that are nothing other than splitting hairs, i guess it'd be consistent.

cheers :)

|2.20.06 @ 5:35PM|#

All this talk reminds me of the best ever use of scare quotes: Chris Farley as Matt Lauer.

...so they can get back to watching commentators who don't "frighten children," and don't "eat their own dandruff," and don't "pop their white-heads with a compass they used in highschool."

Ah, it's fresh every time.

|2.20.06 @ 5:38PM|#

Sorry, it was Chris Farley as "Bennet Brauer," not Matt Lauer. The difference is small but statistically significant.

|2.20.06 @ 5:45PM|#

Doesn't anyone want to take a picture of me?

|2.20.06 @ 6:04PM|#

People only want to take pictures of when when I am doing something disgusting, like eating oysters, or being too drunk to keep both eyebrows in alignment, or looking pudgy.

|2.20.06 @ 6:07PM|#

considering the number of arguments in this forum that are nothing other than splitting hairs

Actually, while the common usage is spelled "hairs", the actual derivation is from the division of assets after a funeral, or the "splitting" of goods amoung "heirs" :)

Oh, and words have no meaning but what we give them - discuss.

|2.20.06 @ 6:38PM|#

Why is everyone ignoring the REAL issue here:

When the picture of Brittany was published, people were calling her a child-abuser and calling for her to be arrested for not having her child in a car seat.

Britanny said that she was escaping the paperatzi, and didn't have time to strap the child in before escaping.

But the real Libertarian stance should be that IT IS NO-ONE ELSES DAMN BUISNESS IF BRITTANY DIDN'T PUT HER KID IN A CAR SEAT, YOU FACIST PRICKS! :)

|2.20.06 @ 6:39PM|#

or being too drunk to keep both eyebrows in alignment

Ok, Stevo, I'm figuring one must be chaotic-neutral, but the other...?

Back on topic - Tim, I can't believe you'd write such things - now Lindsay Lohan will never sleep with you.

|2.20.06 @ 6:43PM|#

RexRhino, you are correct, or as Bill Maher put it, "Survival of the fittest relies on hillbillies being able to act like hillbillies" (I'm paraphrasing)

|2.20.06 @ 9:24PM|#

Oh, and words have no meaning but what we give them - discuss.

Moldy! Extremophilia wither wren minted pen. Quarter pour antiquate bilk - pour? "Ecumenic number index requisite infarcting resoluble"? Reptantedly (lonely whistle) diplolinguisticated mercy herl pavior.

|2.20.06 @ 9:44PM|#

By the way, the guilty party is neither the celebs nor the stalkers, but all the shallow pinheads who have created a demand for their services.

Nonsense. I blame terrorism, homosexuality, McDonalds, and free trade.

Moldy! Extremophilia wither wren minted pen. Quarter pour antiquate bilk - pour? "Ecumenic number index requisite infarcting resoluble"? Reptantedly (lonely whistle) diplolinguisticated mercy herl pavior.

I blame meth (and Noam Chomsky) for this one.

|2.20.06 @ 10:06PM|#

I'd be more sympathetic to Ms. Spears if she didn't depend on grabbing attention for her livelihood. There are plenty of artists with actual talent working in near-anonymity because the record companies spit out stuff by Ms. Spears and the rest of her sorority sisters. (And plenty of piles of crap by talent-free boy rappers, too.) If she didn't attract attention for behaving badly, her fans would forget she existed and her records won't sell.

I feel for the kid, though. Her parents contributed both there inferior genes and add to it by providing a bad environment. One can only hope Britney has a good investment manager so that the kid can use cash to make up for its background.

|2.20.06 @ 10:07PM|#

Piss on everyone who spends a lifetime of energy longing for fame, then gets "SCARE QUOTES' pissy 'SCARE QUOTES" when they have their photo taken.

|2.20.06 @ 10:09PM|#

...A few puns intended.

|2.21.06 @ 12:30AM|#

or being too drunk to keep both eyebrows in alignment

Ok, Stevo, I'm figuring one must be chaotic-neutral, but the other...?

It's been a while since I've read those rulebooks, but maybe a combination of chaotic-good and lawful-good, I'd like to think.

(By the way, I just took the Alignment test at www.okcupid.com and I came out as "Neutral-Good:
80% Good, 52% Chaotic.")

PS: Thanks to all for your kind words here and on the Mommycrat thread.

|2.21.06 @ 2:20AM|#

My score: 70% Good, 50% Chaotic

Neutral Good

|2.21.06 @ 2:33AM|#

Seems to me this is another case of dramatic topical polarization and blatant black and white thinking that our wonderfully argumentative culture just can't get enough of.

What side am I on?

I find it hard to believe that aggressive photographers who adopt extreme and dangerous "stalkerazzi" tactics to capture a coveted celebrity photograph... don't really exist. I also find it hard to believe that the majority of them commonly employ these extremist techniques. Do celebrities get harassed by psychotic photographers? Probably. Do forgotten divas and over-emotional drama queens overstate the severity of their harassment? Probably.

Similar to other major issues, the reality is probably located further towards the "golden mean" between each extreme, as Aristotle would put it. Unfortunately for those of us who value truth and purity of vision, it's increasingly hard to find a syndication that seeks and publishes such.

Instead, original truth is perpetually injected with personal and political bias by the agent that encoded it, neatly compressed and stripped of information to feed our diminishing attention spans and apathy for complex thought, shrink-wrapped into a low fidelity thumbnail of no practical and intellectual worth, and finally expelled to the public as an infected and hollow shell containing little substance beyond rhetorical masturbation and a small selection of incomplete and distorted statistics.

I'm scared to think about how often policy is formed upon such incomplete premises resulting from the assembly line of misinformation described above.

|2.21.06 @ 9:30AM|#

Neutral-Good
74% Good, 56% Chaotic

Just like Luke Skywalker, Dumbledore, and Gandalf. Though without powers and stuff :(

|2.21.06 @ 10:15AM|#

Neutral (70%) Good (46%)

|2.21.06 @ 1:36PM|#

Ah, a trend is developing. Incidentally, this answers the question, "What alignment are libertarians?", addressed here before. Surely my geekiest moment :)

VM|2.21.06 @ 2:59PM|#

cool.

"True neutral" 48% G, 52% Ch.

Dr. Strangelove, Mr. Spock, Scott Evil, Batman, The Punisher, Batman, Switzerland, Canada, and moi. :)

|2.21.06 @ 3:37PM|#

VM, "Scott Evil"? No offense, but that's pathetic. Now, if you'd gotten his dad, well, that would be different.

Somehow I'm not getting the correlation between Spock and Scott Evil, either.

VM|2.21.06 @ 4:38PM|#

Pro:
"No offense, but that's pathetic"

no offense comprehended.

it is pretty pathetic. there were a coupla others i didn't know (Red XIII, for example). but "the Punisher" sounds good. however, Scott Evil and Canada really go well together.

to make up for this embarrassment, i beat and bludgeoned my self with Greene's "Econometric Analysis"
(although Scott Evil did manage to get the sharks with laser beams at the end)
cheerio!

|2.21.06 @ 10:40PM|#

Yes, well, sharks with laser beams are a noteworthy deed. The Punisher is cool, too, as is His Vulcanship. All in all, though, I think you should do a good deed or two and join the rest of us in Neutral Good land. I mean, Gandalf rocks :)

Interesting that Canada and other countries have been given "alignments". I didn't see what the U.S. got. Do I want to know?

|2.22.06 @ 3:33PM|#

Regarding: Comment by: Qbryzan

I read somewhere....

"Social fact
This understanding of speech treats it as a "social fact." The concept of a social fact was derived from the work of the great French social theorist Emil Durkheim. Language is a social fact because:
It pre-exists us. We learn language through our socialization experience. We use language as part of our daily life but we do not invent it.
It post-exists us. The language we speak will continue to be spoken in much the same ways after we are gone. Its existence does not depend on us as individuals.
It has more power over us that we have over it. The language system sets constraints on us. We can have little, if any, control over how language changes while we are living speakers of it.

This view of language says it is not the sum of individual speakers and their utterances. Rather, it is the rules and the layout and the tokens that we can use to produce a bounded but infinite set of utterances."