One of the things you've got to love about celebrities is how they complain about the media.
The latest whiner is Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore's boy toy.
He has recently taken to the internet to claim that the media needs to work harder to confirm their stories and to be more honest in their reporting.
This comes after reports that he and Demi are on the outs, and further allegations that he slept with a girl on his 6-year wedding anniversary that not only wasn't his 48 year old wife, but also wasn't even half his wife's age.
Any time a Hollywood celebrity complains about how he or she is treated by the media, I can't help but crack up.
Before they are famous, so many of these untalented wannabes hump the leg of every photog in Southern California in hopes that their face will show up in one of the celeb-rags. They will do just about anything to gain a little bit of press, including marrying someone who happens to be just a few years younger than their own mom.
You'll find these fame whores having animated conversations with restaurant doors just because they see the word "press" next to the handle. (They never have anything to say to the side of the door that says "pull.")
On the rise, their reps set up interviews and meetings with anyone who even remotely resembles a reporter, which is how so many up and coming stars wind up visiting homeless shelters on a regular basis. (In Hollywood, as in most places, there isn't a big difference in appearance between a freelance paparazzi and a street beggar. For that matter, there isn't a big difference in conduct, either.)
Once these scumbags (the rising stars, not the reporters) achieve a certain level of fame, made possible only because those paps snapped plenty of pictures and gave plenty of exposure, they suddenly begin treating the photogs like rabid lepers. They save their choicest insults, and occasionally their best umbrella beatings for the reporters that helped them get where they are.
Then when these Hollywood slugs (still talking about the rising stars) break through to legitimate stardom, they all become Marcel Marceau when on the streets, offering silence and occasional pantomimed finger gestures to the flash-photography flock.
Finally, the anointed ones do what all Hollywood trash heaps do - they eventually mess up in a big way, like sleeping with a Highland Park transvestite hooker, or showing up to a gala function sans their Victoria Secrets.
Or sleeping with a 22-year-old bimbette on their anniversary.
When that happens, the celeb hogs who just weeks before were bragging about how many hundreds of thousands of followers they have on Twitter pull a Dick Cheney, going so far underground that steam shovel-equipped prairie dogs couldn't reach them. All of a sudden they're not giving interviews, not taking calls from legitimate media trying to find the truth, not addressing allegations in press releases, and avoiding getting their pictures taken as if their latest gig was on "To Catch A Predator."
With that news blackout from the fame whore, the paparazzi and press are left with no alternative but to talk to other people, like the bimbette, the bimbette's dry cleaners, the fame whore's former stylist, and anybody else willing to do what the former glory hound will no longer do - talk.
Obviously, a reasonable person who has anything resembling a real life would ask "who cares about who so-and-so shtupped?"
Except, the answer is "almost everybody!"
People are so fed up with the lies and spin printed in "legitimate" media about the latest Congressional inaction, and the deeply slanted partisan rhetoric that now passes for "news," that they don't even bother to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news anymore. If they're going to hear untruths and fabrications anyway, I guess readers figure it might as well be salacious and feature names they recognize and can pronounce involving places they can actually find on a map.
In the case of Kutcher and his ilk, the paparazzi and credible reporters have done such a good job over the years of building up the celeb to demigod status that they've created a national appetite to know everything about that person. Including their fallacies and weaknesses.
So the celeb goes silent when trouble hits, then wants to complain when the press prints stories that the celeb didn't sanction or spin. They spout snarky little snippets on their Facebook accounts, then bitch when their cryptic messages gets turned into something they didn't want and can't control.
I guess one of the reasons I love these melodramas so much is that this tabloid fare is, sadly, the last bastion of pure journalism. No matter how rich, how famous, how powerful a celebrity might be, it won't stop the minimum-wage Canon jockey from spilling the beans on the front page of the National Enquirer. Unlike "legitimate" media whose silence can be purchased with a full-page ad by a wealthy oil company, the tabloids have no fear in pursuing and printing the story. They can't be bought off, and they aren't intimidated by someone's status or their lineup of high-powered attorneys.
So the celebrity goes down in flames while insisting their privacy has been violated. A celebrity that was created and vaunted by the same people that eventually brought balance back to the world by telling the smelly truth about just how scummy these demigods are.
In Hollywood, it's simply the circle of life.
No matter what Ashton Kutcher may Tweet.
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