"[This book] embodies the Buddhist wisdom about change, life, and the
world more than anything written after the events of that day."
Robert Stone

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December 14, 2008

BLAG AND BLAGO

Blag and Blago. Too irresistible not to blog about.

It turns out that Jerry Blagrove, the purported friend who videotaped singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse using crack – and then sold the clip to a British tabloid – actually sold Winehouse the drugs in the first place - in order to videotape her and sell the the clip to the tabloids. Blagrove and his accomplice girlfriend reportedly had a list of celebrities they hoped to so videographically compromise. This was a case of Heisenberg meets Allen Funt: the observer not only shaped the outcome of the experiment, he was the instigator.

Concurrently came the secret tapes of Rod Blagojevich. Prosecutors allege that the Illinois governor, known as Blago, was shopping around president-elect Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat for personal gain – and the Feds, who were listening in, have the audio to prove it.

Blag was bagged by a lens; Blago by a mic. Both have been done in by tale of the tape.

As I write in Watching the World Change, apropos of the Internet, we live in a “Pandora-expulsive” age (page 292). Technology ensures that all recorded actions - “deeds and misdeeds alike – are potentially consigned to permanent public memory. Once an image or videoclip barnstorms across the Net, there’s no way to return old Flicker to the paddock and shut the door. Web pages persist. Even if they are deactivated, they can be retrieved if someone has retained a link or has electronically bookmarked that page. This propulsion into the public domain, irrevocable and universal and unfungible, is one of the positive and negative features of the medium.”

BY THE WAY… Last weekend’s New York Times Book Review raved about Vanity Fair: The Portraits. I urge all readers to scoot over the their favorite bookstore now. It’s the perfect holiday gift for the photographically inclined.

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