Leave Her Alone--She's FAMOUS!

This past Friday evening I found myself watching Access Hollywood, only because the far more intellectual and high minded program that I would normally watch at that time, Wheel of Fortune, had been pre-empted for the NCAA tournament. Anyway, one of the first stories featured an interview with Marie Osmond, who shared with us the pain of the recent fire which destroyed her house.

Describing how the blaze got started, Osmond related how her eight year old son had been playing with a lighter and managed to catch a broom on fire. According to Marie, the boy ran off to fetch some water with which to quell the flames, but on the way back was distracted by cartoons showing on television, causing him to forget his mission and sit rapt in front of the idiot box while flames engulfed his house.

Osmond laughingly made a snide remark about the "power of television", perhaps in a half-assed attempt to lay the blame for the conflagration at the feet of the entertainment industry while failing to acknowledge her own blinding obvious culpability.

C'mon! An eight year old playing with a lighter!?! "My God, Woman!" I howled at my TV set. "Where the bloody hell were the ADULTS?" Seriously, why wasn't anyone watching this kid and, furthermore, what idiot left a lighter lying around where he could get it?

Marie seemed blissfully unaware that what she had just freely admitted to on national television would, were she almost anyone else, be enough grounds for the state to swoop in and take the little firebug and the rest of her kids away from her for their own good. Believe it; if she weren't a "celebrity," rather than appearing on Access Hollywood, she'd be appearing in front of an unsympathetic judge in family court tearfully begging to be given her family back.

However, such is the power of fame in this country, even for an untalented, washed up, has-been whose career peaked some three decades ago and who'd have been nothing if she didn't have her brother Donny's coattails to ride, that she could starve and beat the obnoxious little brats and lock them in cages in the backyard and be free to chuckle about it on Access Hollywood.