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November 02, 2003Poor, poor Minnie Driver...
I had a really nice conversation with two of my former students at the Notre Dame Football Mexican Dinner yesterday evening. We must have chatted for about an hour. I know that being liked wasn't strictly essential to my job performance, but it's still gratifying to know that I was able to perform my duties as best I could and still not have these particular alumni loathe me.
* * * * *
While getting my daily internet news fix yesterday, I came across the following headline:
"Minnie Driver Said to Work in Sweatshop"
My heart immediately went out to her. I used to carry a celebrity torch for Ms. Driver, and it saddened me to think of her star having fallen so far to where she'd have to toil in a sweatshop just to make ends meet. Granted, after the likes of "High Heels and Low Lives" and "Beautiful," one could make the argument that earning cents on the dollar for stitching wallets together in Cambodia is entirely within the realm of what she now deserves.
I clicked on the link and read the article, only to discover that Minnie's going to work in the sweatshops to raise awareness of their plight, and not in response to her own.
"I will be working alongside other young women for as long as it takes for me to raise awareness of the fair trade issue," Driver is quoted as having said at the London premiere of "Seabiscuit".
The danger in making such a statement, of course, is in assuming that her presence will raise said awareness. The open-endedness of it doesn't help any. If she's not leaving the sweatshops until the world has sat up and taken notice, she might be in there for a long time.
But wait...Minnie Driver's life gets worse. When I just checked IMDB.com just now to look at her filmography, I read something among the celebrity news blurbs on the main page--a blurb that filled me with horror and brought the bile up thick in my throat. Apparently, the 37-year-old John Cusack is dating the 21-year-old Britney Spears.
That's right, Minnie. Not only have your recent movies bombed, not only have you decided to cloister yourself in a Cambodian sweatshop, but now one of your former flames is dating someone almost half his age whose disintegrating career is even more public than your own.
I didn't intend to drink so deeply from the font of celebrity schadenfreude just now, but they make it so damn easy. Now I have to find a German term that encapsulates my feelings on Nicole Kidman's reported engagement to bobble-headed musical hack Lenny Kravitz...
Posted by patrick at November 2, 2003 11:52 AM
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