05.18.06
Pellicano: the Real News Story
There are political consequences of the Los Angeles Time’s failure to report on the “why” of the Anthony Pellicano disaster. The LAT continually asserts that nobody out there thinks the problems are with the major players at the studios but rather with a handful of corrupt local law enforcement.
Nobody out there thinks that? Why would that be? Could it have anything to do with the LAT’s pusillanimous reporting on Hollywood they’ve been absorbing for a decade plus, even from the “committed” investigative journalists over at the City Desk and in Entertainment, that continues to leave out the context of the disaster and the suffering–i.e., the massive negligence by our ever-more powerful fourth estate to keep watch on the entertainment industry.
The LAT doesn’t seem to be deflecting off attention from individual A-list Tinseltown types so much as circumventing a potential investigation into the overall studio industry’s involvement. How often have the studio heads and major producers been sued by their lowly urchins for violating the terms of contracts and sexual harassment yet been awarded more and more in revenues by the public? What we’re reading in the LAT about the Pellicano debacle is akin to a laundry cycle: spin, spin, spin, repeat… Follow the $$$$ and ignore the talking head words please.
It is important to remember that Anthony Pellicano’s enterprise was in fact a series of “grassy knolls” where some have claimed “rivulets of corruption” may have emerged from, though details are scarce and occluded. Also, no one in a position of power investigated thoroughly the phenomenon known as “Wiretapper’s Remorse” a scenario which suggests that if everyone in Los Angeles were simply talking on their phones simultaneously it could have in fact caused the flooding of Pellicano’s computers, a flooding curiously timed to coincide with Anita Busch finding that dead fish and the rose thing that she made such a damn fuss about. Lastly, the incremental abuse of cell phones by the overall community had been a major source of concern for years with Mr. Pellicano and was causing him undo hardship just trying to keep abreast of the latest technological advances.
On second thought, maybe it was only one or two bad cops and disgruntled SBC employees who were involved in any real way with the whole Pellicano scandal-of-the century. Ummn…perhaps you believe in the awesome power of invisible pink unicorns too?
What the media reports, or fails to, has consequences. Do we now presume that the LAT will report on the alleged consequences of their own lack of reporting? No, they are flesh and blood versions of the Cowardly Lion of Oz, driven by the fear of saying the wrong thing about the studios, of offending someone important at the studios and going out on a limb against the studios. If I wasn’t verging on apoplexy, I’d be getting real nauseous right about now from the scent of “Eau de Media Poltroon.”
