life, liberty, and fame

" …one of the rights of being an American is the right to be famous."

-From a Today Show clip about people paying for “Paparazzi Parties.” Basically you pay $250-$2,500 for paparazzi to follow you around while you’re out on the town. You can even hire a bodyguard to “protect” you from the fake paps and be on the cover of a fake gossip rag.

Is fame part of the pursuit of happiness?

Is Baby Jessica responsible for the Britney Spears crotch shots and the death of Princess Diana?

According to a report by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press in 1997:

"In an era in which virtually all Americans share very few things, the story of Princess Diana's death captivated the nation. . . Modern communications have spawned an ever increasing diversity of tastes and interests and decidedly smaller audiences for everything from news stories to sit-coms. Add to this growing public cynicism and distrust, and the consequence is that there are very few things to which everyone pays attention. . . Jessica McClure is the only other individual to have ranked with Diana in news interest."

One of the most interesting conversations I had with D. Lance Lunsford in Midland was about how the Jessica McClure rescue was the first story that all the networks covered at the same time. I don't have all the research to back this up, but apparently it was when CNN's 24-hour coverage was still new (CNN started in 1980 but wasn't profitable until 1985.), and the other networks discovered that when they didn't continuously cover the rescue, their ratings went down and CNN's went up, so the other networks had to cover the story incessantly in order to compete. As Lunsford put it to me, the Jessica McClure rescue was the "proving ground for the 24-hours news medium as a conduit to the masses."

I know that nothing exists in a vacuum and no one person could be a single contributing factor to the insanity surrounding us today. BUT, I also wonder if, in a very broad sense, the Jessica McClure rescue was a catalyst (perhaps even a partial genesis) of our modern Us Weekly mentality? Did the coverage of the rescue help to feed the frenzy that led to things like the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, and even more tragically, to the paparazzi chase that ended Diana's life? It's a rolling stone that only gathers more moss when you think that coverage of Diana's death further fueled our culture's demand for incessant media coverage, the kind of coverage that leads publishers to introduce to the world the "gift" of the Britney Spears crotch shot?

If Baby Jessica and Britney Spears are both All-American Girls, America's-sweetheart types, how did we get from rescuing a baby to publishing pictures of a pop idol's snatch?

Did Baby Jessica, in a metaphorical sense, grow up to be Britney Spears?*

*more on this later. I've got a billion Baby Jessica=Britney Spears theories.

Where were you when Jessica fell down the well?

". . .I remember very clearly when the whole Baby Jessica thing went down (no pun intended). I was seven years old and it freaked the bejeezus outta me. I didn't understand how the grown-ups in her life could have allowed her to fall down the well. It scared me to think that something like that could HAPPEN in this world....wasn't it the job of grown-ups everywhere to keep children--especially babies--safe?? If something like this could happen to a cute little baby, what could happen to ME???"

- The Milkman's Daughter.

Brooke covers in her post a lot of the initial thoughts and questions I had when I first started my Baby Jessica research.

If anyone else remembers where they were or what they were thinking when Baby Jessica fell down the well, please email me. I'd love to hear it.

"Lightness isn’t stupidity. It’s actually a philosophical and aesthetic viewpoint, deeply serious, and has a kind of wisdom—stepping back to be able to laugh at horrible things even as you’re experiencing them."

- Playwright Sarah Ruhl in an interview with John Lahr in The New Yorker.

abyss

A well is also an abyss.

If your whole being is dedicated to an abyss, what does that leave you with at the end of the day?

And if you stare into the abyss, what does it reflect back?

Halo Over The City

Baby Jessica's Dad, Chip McClure, co-wrote a book about the Jessica McClure rescue, and now I get to read it!


So far my favorite part is a letter from a little girl to Baby Jessica that says, "I've been watching the news when you were on and I saw you at your parade even my stiuped [sic] brother did."

Wells in Folklore & Fairytales

3. Fountain: In some versions of the story, the fountain is a well. Traditionally, good spirits live in wells, and from thence came the tradition of throwing coins into wells in hopes of having a wish come true (Philip 1997).

-SurLaLune
Notes on The Frog King