For a short time, I was running a bit where I would re-answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade™, one of the most odiously irrelevant and self-congratulatory bits of cultural fluff in the lint screen we call popular culture. While I was inspired to write it out of true anger at its existence, the column and my parody were mostly harmless wastes of time.
Then, one week, I decided to do an entire Q & A defending and exalting Britney Spears. Just because. Keep in mind, this was when Britney was a young mother of two, married to a sleazeball wannabe. (It’s hard to remember that once upon a time, a few months ago, we thought she was the stable one.) The piece was fairly toothless, but moderately funny, as I hoped most of those columns were.
But before I could post it, Britney went absolutely bonkers. And what I’d written suddenly felt like kicking a (recently-shaved-bald) puppy. So I junked it, along with the feature.
I’m reminded about this because of a story in today’s Variety: “Parade of confusion after Lohan arrest”. As you’re no doubt sick of hearing, Lindsay Lohan was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of drunken driving, but this coming Sunday’s issue of Parade tells a different story…
After extending her stay at luxury rehab facility Promises, Lindsay Lohan “seems committed to finally getting clean.”
So reports Parade magazine in this week’s edition of Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, the purveyor of feel-good celebrity news that, regrettably in this case, has a four-week lead time from when an item is written until it is published.
Excuse me if I mis-read — it takes four weeks to come up with the bullshit you call Personality Parade? If Walter Scott were a real person, he’d be the laziest hack on the planet. Says a Parade spokesman:
“We’ll address this on the Parade.com website so we’ll have something that’s much more current,” the spokesman said. “This is an example of how difficult substance abuse can be, and we wish her the very best on her road to recovery.”
I wish nothing but plague and pestilence upon you, anonymous spokesman.
Lohan’s problems are her own. She’s seriously fucked up her career. But don’t blame her for messing up your faux-news column.
You work for a sham newspaper inserted inside actual newspapers. I can already predict your editorial memo going out on Monday: “From now on, we need to make sure anything the publicists feed us will still feel somewhat true four weeks from now. Concentrate on Disney stars and country singers.”
I’m urging the Los Angeles Times to drop Parade this week. You can, too. Here’s the link.
Better yet, if your local paper includes Parade, let them know.
Is it too late to pull it out of the Sunday issue? They’ll say so. But it’s not too late to respond editorially, answering the question of why a newspaper would run a story they already know is inaccurate, and continue to support the inane ramblings of a publicist mouthpiece. I gave up on Parade. So should they.
And if you’re feeling so inclined, feel free to Digg this.