Shilpa

[dianeduane]

The TV news often runs in the background while I'm working, and today it seems there's a ruckus kicking up about the  treatment of the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty in the (British) "Celebrity Big Brother" house. (Also surprising is the amount of  airplay Sky News is giving this: I suppose it's a diagnostic of sorts. It'll be even more diagnostic if Fidel Castro discorporates suddenly and the news mix remains the same. [That said, the story of his "grave condition" is being denied from various directions, so it's entirely possible that Fidel isn't going anywhere just yet.])

...At first glance the BB situation looks to me like a class issue. Take a crowd of C-list meta-celebs such as they've got in there at the moment and put a millionairess in with them, and it's likely to produce a fair bit of friction. This is the only chance some of those people will ever have to spend a prolonged period with someone so much more powerful and wealthy than they are; as a result, they're making the most of it (for some rather ugly values of "most").

(sigh) Meanwhile, I don't know about everybody else, but I can't wait for "unscripted drama" to run its course. Electrons are dying for this?