Re this story I got to thinking about all the various stars that indulge in seemingly epic non-ending sex & drug fueled romps that they spill about after the fact in their tell all books or post rehab magazine glurges once they are over the hill or otherwise no longer employable.
Some of these people are in the public spot light and are often doing this recreationally for years before the drug/physical abuse simply catches up with them. All the revelations we’ve seen about Britney Spears, Lohan, etc often were well after the fact, and even then it was denied by the publicists until they were practically in cuffs.
Given that there are so many mags and paparazzi williing to pay big (in some cases huge) dollars for these scoops it amazes me that almost no one from the inner circle of the celebrity entourages to the service people dealing with them while all this was happening, were dishing on them. What keeps this omerta like level of silence in place for celebrities? Why do low paid service people protect them when they could be getting paid for embarrassing revelations.
Really? It seems pretty easy when you consider the following things:
The press won’t print everything some random person says about a famous person. Even the tabloids have lose journalistic standards even if only to avoid liability. For example, there are plenty of gay celebrities that have not been “outed” by the media. Furthermore, the really juicy stuff would most likely be brought forth by someone involved in the “wrong doing”. Do you think a magazine really wants to pay or trust a coke dealer who claims a washed up celeb let him bone her for drugs? HE’S A COKE DEALER!
Most famous people life pretty normal lives. There’s not too many secrets to keep. They are not trading drugs for sex, doing crack in bathroom stalls, or going to clubs without underwear. There is a reason why you mostly hear about celebrity breakups, hookups, and babies. It’s because that’s the majority of the stuff that printable.
Really famous people have several people working for them who have a vested interest in making sure they still have a career. Don’t you think the cook who sees the new nanny acting suspicious will be sure to tell her to knock it off, or to report her to the boss? The cook needs a job, and s/he won’t have one if the boss’s career is ruined. Nobody wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Most people aren’t that enterprising, duplicitous, and immoral. The ones that are are generally not that good at it (the good ones become lawyers or bankers ;)). A person like that would have to be good enough to be gain a celebrity’s trust at the height of their fame, AND be lucky enough to find one with some weird proclivities that are worth selling for enough to live off for a while since they will never find gainful employment in the industry again. There will always be “crimes of opportunity”, but they will be few and far between.
The selling of secrets is like any type of blackmail, coercion, etc. There is a lot of risk with little reward in most circumstances. You can’t just go to the Enquirer and tell them to give you a bag full of money because you know Tom Cruise is gay. You have to prove you know, or are in a position to know which means you put yourself out in the open. It’s kinda like robbing a bank without a mask. It might be worth it to some people if you could steal a billion dollars, but probably not if you only get forty thousand.
But what about, say, a former nanny who was mistreated by her celeb boss? I can’t come up with an example or cite off the top of my head now, but I’m pretty sure there have been stories like that.
You mean like Rob Lowe’s recent nanny trouble? Even if it’s true, Lowe’s wife and his other employee’s have all come forward and condemned the nanny for being a total fruitcake.
I’m sure someone could jump up and say Lowe is paying all those people off, but it’s unlikely. Much more likely is that the nanny is making it up looking for a big payday.
As for Marcia, if you’re a newspaper publisher in 1979 and someone came up to with “proof” (imagine that proof as whatever you’d like) that Marcia Brady traded every teenage boy’s fantasy for a pile of blow, would you even believe it? The idea sounds so absurd that a few people in the Cafe Society thread on Marcia’s book think she’s exaggerating just to sell a few more books.