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Wednesday, December 26, 2007 12:00 AM

The year in celebrity scandal

From attention-seeking celebrities to roving nut jobs with automatic weapons to the self-deluded editors of mean-spirited gossip rags, this is the year that media-savvy lunatics took over the asylum.

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  • Thursday, December 27, 2007 02:15 AM

    Oh brother!

    First of all, I think it's a little specious to lump Gawker in with Perez and company. The big difference with Gawker and Gawker-adjacent sites is that they don't take this stuff seriously. Part of the annoyance of other gossip hounds is not merely the fact that, say, "Britney without panties" is reported on at all. It's that it's reported on with the breathless ardor and urgency of a nuclear war declaration (up to and inlcuding ACTUAL media.) Gawker treats these stories (and even themselves) with the ridicule and absurd whimsey they deserve. Even the much-maligned "Gawker Stalker" is used ironically. (Indeed, part of the point of the "Jimmy Kimmel incident" is that the system isn't even all that reliable anyway.) The whole point is that unlike the Perez/In Touch Weekly/TMZ brigade Gawker media DOESN'T worship celebrity. In fact their calvacade of sites is

    Also, someone dared to drag poor John Lennon into this mix, ignoring that Lennon was famous as an ARTIST. The Britney/Lindsay/Paris squad are "celebrities." They're famous PRECISELY because they engage in eccentric behavior.

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