Tuesday 14 September 2010

Even the police are in on it

I realise that everyone notices different things in the same images. Not the big stuff, the main story, as it were, I'm sure that's pretty much the same for everybody in the main, but the smaller details. Watching the images from George Michael's sentencing today, an odd thing occured as he was driven off to begin his few weeks in prison. I'm not going to comment on his imprisonment itself, largely because I just don't care, I don't proffer comment on anybody else who's committed to jail for a few weeks so I don't see why he should be any different.

However, as you'd expect, large numbers of people had turned up to see him. As the prison van moved away from the court after he'd been sentenced, there was the usual scrum of photographers, police, public etc. The photographers persist in trying to take photos through those darkened windows even though I've yet to see the results of their efforts ever published, and suspect they're wasting their time.

Anyway, as at least a dozen photographers raced along the road alongside the van, trying to get shots through said windows on all sides, a couple of fans ran down alongside it aswell. The police chased them down and stopped the fans. Just the fans - two or three of them. They made no attempt whatsoever to stop the photographers, who ran on much further, in the road, at a higher speed, at presumably greater risk than the public as they were also trying to get close to the van and take their photos.

Does a camera somehow grant the paperazzi immunity from the same attention of the police that the rest of us get? If one of the fans had armed themselves with a camera, a posh one, mind you, with the sticky-up flash thingy and the big fuck-off lens, would they have been able to sprint by the police and get near to their hero? Are even the police involved in some great collusion with the fourth estate to get us all obsessed with celebrity culture? I think we should be told.

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