Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Read a book instead!

I like food and I like buying food and so I go to the supermarket a couple of times per week.  I always get a laugh out of the Enquirer and the other trashy tabloids that sit by the checkout counter like ants at a picnic.  

The headlines on these fishwraps tend to be of three sorts:



  • Some actor or actress is caught in either a "dope den" or a "love nest" with a person who is not their spouse
  • Some star you haven't seen since Carter was president is now in his or her "brave final days," and there is a picture of that person in which they bear a great resemblance to The Crypt Keeper, or Don Imus
  • "Jennifer Aniston: Pregnant at last!"
The fascination that America has with Jennifer Aniston is hard to figure out.  She played Rachel Green on "Friends," which I watched about 4 times before I couldn't take David Schwimmer anymore. But plenty of people watched that show the whole time it was on, and continue to watch it in reruns when they could just as easily be watching something funny.

And people were thrilled when she married Brad Pitt, and broken-hearted when they broke up.  Why the marriage of two actors matters to some people is something I can't explain.  

I have seen Jennifer in a few movies..."We're The Millers" and "Horrible Bosses" (and "Horrible Bosses II") and she is a good actor in light comedies like that, and let's face it, I'm not looking for her to play Desdemona in "Othello," or to play the board game Othello with someone named Desdemona.  Light comedy suits me fine.  I can enjoy her as a crazed dentist and move along, never once stopping to think about whether or not she is having a baby, wants to have a baby, can't have a baby, whatever.  Why would I care about that?

She has not had too much to say about all this, but Ms Aniston did write a piece for the Huffington Post the other day in which she says, "For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up. I'm fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of 'journalism,' the 'First Amendment' and 'celebrity news.'

It's worth your time to read, even if doesn't make you think twice about spending your hard-earned money (or your hard-earned time) on these dumb papers.  Read these words instead, and think about what she is trying to get us all to understand:

"We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies...We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."

I'd be happy ever after if there were less public interest in matters like the private lives of actors.  But that's just me...


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