This is why gossip makes Baby Jesus cry

[veronica_rich]

Celebrity gossip isn't my thing; I'm more interested in their movies and books. It's not any more real than those movies, anyway - celebrity gossip is a kill sport, like bullfighting. The closest I've ever gotten was when I lived in Tennessee and used to stop at the drugstore once a week for a hamburger and instead of my book, I'd read InStyle or OK! or People or one of those other magazines that had pictures of people dressed up, and there were usually 4-5 to occupy me while I ate, so I didn't have to read anything, I could just look at some of the same photos over and over again. *G* AND I never paid for a one - us regulars got to look at the magazine stand for free. I called it my dirty hour of the week, and I tell you this in the interest of disclosure.

But I digress.

I've been to two forums that have anything to do with Orlando Bloom since last Friday's wreck; one LJ community that's on my f-list and Elflady's site. Elflady's seems to be wank-free. But the other one - WOW! Troll Speculation Central! (Not the moderator - half the commenters there claiming to be fans.) Are all celebrity forums like this when something bad happens?

I've only read a few accounts of this wreck - three of them in legitimate press, and two on tabloid sites. I think a body should consider both sides of a story if they read widely conflicting accounts (I admit I didn't watch any videos, though maybe I should've; I have no interest. But my sister watched one, and three reliable acquaintances watched the other). If you believe the tabloid written accounts and "witnesses" (I have yet to see an identity pinned to a witness on there, I suppose because Orlando'll sic the Mob on anyone who speaks out against him), the man is a drunken, erratic, violent jerk who tried to leave the scene of the wreck.

But according to legitimate press, nothing happened - no drugs, no alcohol, no real speeding. No tickets, no arrests. Just possibly someone ran him off the road into a parked car, injuring the two female passengers with him.

According to the people I know who watched the videos, he didn't act drunk, didn't try to duck the cops, and only walked away a short distance, looking visibly confused and shocked. But I keep hearing he was acting "weird" and "erratic" and "odd" at the club he left beforehand. My sister called me this evening about something else and I mentioned it to her. "I saw the video," she said, clarifying she meant the tabloid-shot video outside the club before the drive-off and wreck.

"Was he drunk? High? Stumbling around, barfing on his shoes, hitting people, fucking goats - what?" I asked. (She knows these things, having been around her share of inebriated people outside bars at 2 in the morning. Alas, so do I.)

"Mmm .. no," she said, after a moment's thought. "It was pretty funny, though." Then she proceeds to relate it in her way, basically that Orlando got in a car with a guy who seemed pissed off at him, and talked and whispered with him for a while, and some girl kept trying to grab Orlando, calling his name and telling him to leave it alone (and he kept turning around and going "Leave me alone, I'm trying to talk!"), and when he got out of the car, he stuck his head back in with something like "I didn't know she had a boyfriend" and the guy basically told him it was OK, and then Orlando greeted the photographers and walked off to a car with his female friend. (She also said he got into what looked like the passenger side and the girl got in the driver's side. I *almost* wonder if she wasn't drunk and he either traded places with her down the road, or she had the wreck and he traded places quickly and took the rap so she wouldn't get in trouble. But now I'm speculating too - ARRRRR! It's an infection!)

I'm a reporter, and I don't even know ... who's right, I wonder?

Comments

[captsparrow4evr.livejournal.com]

Um, Orlando's British, right? If he was under some duress (like being a bit stressed that someone was upset with him), he might get into the passenger's side of an American car thinking he was getting into the driver's side (as it would be if he were in Britain.) Again, speculation but at least it gives the guy the benefit of the doubt.:)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's possible. I doubt it would stand up in court, but you'd make a good lawyer for trying it. *G*

[ballincollig.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I lived in Ireland for a year and by the end I was still occasionally trying to get into the wrong side of my friends' cars, usually when I wasn't paying attention. It's wicked hard to make the switch, completely.

[justawench.livejournal.com]

That girl was really annoying in that video; that's why I made the comment before that he was trying to get away from her in your other post. :)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Eh, the whole thing's annoying. Maybe he'll take a page from this and choose his companions (or their drinks) more wisely, eh? Suuuure.

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the world of trashing celebrities.

This is so mild I'm laughing my ass off.

Speculation about celebrities is a national passtime now, didn't you know? That's why there were all those rags at that drugstore you could occupy yourself with. People actually BUY those unfortunately.

I'm even glad I let my Entertainment weekly subscription expire. If I read about one more celebrity who's pregnant or in an altercation with a paparazi, I'm gonna hurl. In true Wayne & Garth fashion.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

HAHA, I thought of you when I posted this. It seems my Orlando is into low-key, polite whoring as much as your Keanu is. (At least that's the term we've come up for it in our little fannish circle. We love the guy, but we know he REALLY loves the women. *G*) Why this seems to piss off the parazzi is beyond me - maybe because it makes it harder for them to get photos and stories, and when they have to work harder, it chaps their asses?

I haven't paid for EW in over a year. I got it free for a couple of months this year, but I was paging through looking for industry stories and I kept getting non-industry stuff. I want to know about what movies are coming out, not who's having a feud with who. (Although, I have to say that EW is better than some rags. It, at least, makes pretension to some industry business news, and show/movie plots.)

If he's in the right, I hope he sues whomever ran him off the road, as do the car's owner and the two injured women. *headshake* Killsport, I tell you.

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

It pisses them off because they can't tie him to any one female for an protracted length of time, the way they tried to do with him and Aniston. Celeb ships make for tabloid fodder, I guess. And I've not seen the video, but if one tidbit I heard is true, Orlando was being responsbile and calling the accident in. Has anyone else heard that?

[venusinchains.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the videos (still no DSL >:( ) but I've seen some of the gory pictures and I've read most of the contradictory stories.

I was really worried that this might have turned out to be a DUI for OB - but the authorities have deemed his part in it a non-issue (to the point of possibly trying to track down the driver - possibly a pap - who cut him off) and the non-TMZ type gossip mongers (meaning, the gossip types with slightly less direct ties to the paps) aren't making anything of it. That tells me that the paps and their cohorts are basically defending their own (and their own interests - the "rights" of paps to expose "scandal," in their oh-so-ethical way).

And even if OB had been drinking and acting up, that doesn't mean that he was over the legal limit or that he was the cause of the crash.

But the only folks who'll ever really know are the ones who experienced it. And I'm betting they'll never tell. (So I'm not gonna worry about it anymore. :-p)

[whosoldherout.livejournal.com]

I've been to two forums that have anything to do with Orlando Bloom since last Friday's wreck; one LJ community that's on my f-list and Elflady's site. Elflady's seems to be wank-free. But the other one - WOW! Troll Speculation Central! (Not the moderator - half the commenters there claiming to be fans.) Are all celebrity forums like this when something bad happens?

I'm glad to hear you say that. I feel like i've been hitting my head against a brick wall with that place over the last few days. Orlando's fandom has always been pretty wanky and this one is pretty mild compared to some of the ones that happened a few years ago (you don't want to know about those) but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. The ironic thing is that i seemed to set everyone off by thanking everyone for remaining calm and sane...

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

The wank online for me in my life has been of the fandom, fictional variety, which I can handle. But man, when it comes to real people, there's no joy or fun to it! My stomach is not built for RL wank.

[ainsoph15.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I was thinking about this whole 'special treatment' and 'police cover-up' wank on my way to work. The thing is, from what I remember, when a celebrity gets into a situation like this, there almost always IS a mention that they had drugs in the car, or had been drinking - and that info has come from the police. Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Keifer Sutherland etc etc have all been arrested for DUI. There's not much equivocation on the cops' side there. But OH WAIT! They'll make an exception for Orlando. Why would they do that...?

Because he wasn't driving while drunk. End of.

Now, once arrested, police leniency for celebrities is a different matter. Sure, they might let them off with a warning instead of a fine/jail sentence, and Paris Fruitloop probably only ended up with her puny time in the clink because she'd been picked up so many times before for DUI and was still doing it. BUT, that's all after an arrest. There's no way they wouldn't arrest someone if there was reason to do so. What the cops do with them afterwards, and what special treatment they give them - that's a different matter.

'The paps are only doing their job.' Well, cops have jobs to do too. Arresting people who have broken the law is a fairly fundamental part of their duties, NOT people who haven't done anything. It's really quite simple.

*does not have icon which sufficiently expresses level of teeth-gnashing*

(I think my Jack brain-leak, logic-breakdown one will suffice, though ;D)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Check out my latest post.

Apparently, the overriding opinion is he WAS doing something wrong ... though nobody's exactly sure what it was, just yet. You find out interesting things when you play devil's advocate for the smaller-opinion side (which is all I ever wanted to do; it seemed there were a big legion of people wanting to condemn without sufficient evidence, and the only arguments against were "NOOO OMG HE'S SO NICE!" Which, as you know, is no deterrent to idiocy, and given none of us really *know* the guy, a specious argument at best. I simply wanted to interject some logic into the "what if not?" side).

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

The problem with this crack-up for the media is simply that there is no story here - it's a fender bender with slight injuries (I take it from comments, haven't read a single thing about it other than here). The celebrity media don't know what to do when there are NO drugs, NO alcohol, NO illicit sex involved!!

Frankly I don't blame the media, I blame the celebrities like Britney, Lindsay, Mel, etal. People EXPECT celebrities to fuck up because so many of them do. The media circus which follows them is their own fault. Unfortunately they make it harder for other celebrities.

This is different than the paparazzi following celebs hoping to get an exclusive photo. THAT behavior is becoming criminal and may well have been in this case too. And I DO blame the celebrity media for those incidents because they feed the paparazzi. As well as fan sites which publish "candid" photos. I've been on plenty of those sites and many of the photos are undoubtedly from paparazzi. Money had to be exchanged at some point. While I used to think it was cool I could see pictures less than 24 hours old, I now realize it's feeding the beast.

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

You know, I took a brain break from the internet this week and came back to find out that people were still all hysterical. I went back and watched the video from outside the club. I had watched it with the sound off before. It's funny -- from what people were saying, I expected it to be mass hysteria, or something. But really, it's quite mild. What struck me was that Orlando was the calmest person there. Everyone else was pissed off, and the girls were all wringing their hands like they expected something awful to happen at any minute (I think they were more worried about the other guy than what he was going to do, O diesn't seem the fighting type), but he was fine. Secondly, his friend seemed really rattled when she was trying to get the car going, but you know what? If I had 8 people taking my picture, I would be too. I've tried to start the car when it was already running myself when I was stressed. Their comments when they were getting going seemed to be more about the fact that maybe she wasn't used to driving on that side of the road (since she was clearly British). That may be why they switched. The thing is, we can never, ever know, can we? Most of the time, explanations are quite simple or eccentric, and conspiracies are pretty rare.

The one thing that seems probable was that Orlando made a pass at the chick and it pissed off her boyfriend or whoever it was. She didn't seem to be that pissed off. O clearly felt that he had made a faux pas and wanted to make amends. That's about it. The thing is, with all the comments that TMZ has made, no one will ever be able to view those videos without looking for dodgy behavior. Humans are totally suggestible, eyewitness testimony has been proved to be very flawed under normal circumstances, and this sort of thing is much worse. It's sort of like an uncontrolled experiment -- with a different set of comments setting it up people would be seeing different things in the video. The funny thing is that nobody seems to consider the fact that you can certainly make an ass of yourself when you are not drunk -- I've done it many times (I don't drink, heh.). That may well be the case here. How many of us would do well with people following us and taping/photographing out every move? It's funny how so many people suddenly expect perfection when it's someone else. In general, not just with celebrities.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Pretty much everything you said - agreement. I've simply said all along that people ought to make their own decisions based on all the information and not what one place - with a vested interest in him coming out looking bad, possibly to protect themselves from a traffic lawsuit - has to say in its interpretation.