Jul

25

The naked truth

July 25, 2009 | by Ray Frager | Categories Television | Comments Off

I suppose I’m somehow duty-bound to write something about the unfortunate Erin Andrews situation, though so many people have written so much since the story broke that I could take up a lengthy entry just by linking to them. Meanwhile, we’ll wait for real news on the matter when an investigation uncovers the individual or individuals who so grossly violated her privacy with the peeping video.

Now, if you want to blame the Internet for what happened to Andrews, blame it only in regard to the delivery system. The technology enabled the video to appear all over instantly. In pre-Internet days, photos might have shown up in some magazine, limiting their distribution and their impact.

Some want to argue bloggers, commenters and others who have drooled over Andrews on the Web made her more of a target, but women with a degree of celebrity are susceptible, regardless of how many times they are mentioned in blogs. And if you hold to the idea of society “objectifying” women, it has been going on long before there were blogs or before anyone had even heard that word.

Go back to Marilyn Monroe’s nude photo in Playboy in the 1950s — from pictures taken before she was a star but not distributed until someone could take greater advantage of them. The same for the photos that cost Vanessa Williams her Miss America crown. More recently — with the Internet up and running — a former lover’s naked photos of talk host Dr. Laura Schlessinger surfaced embarrassingly.

If you want to blame anyone working a keyboard, then blame those who passed along the Andrews video. That’s far beyond the pale from most bloggers, never mind the frat-boy outlook they present.


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