Trivializing Tragedy

[Amelia]

Trivializing Tragedy

Paris Hilton has emerged from jail saying she wants to ‘bring light’ to her pet causes. As she shops around for something worthy, she should look to the standard set years ago by Audrey Hepburn.

Web-Exclusive Commentary

By Christopher Dickey

Newsweek

June 27, 2007

June 27, 2007 - Some 15 years ago, before “celebrity” and “news” became so synonymous, I interviewed Audrey Hepburn. She was one of the most elegant actresses of all time and had just been to Somalia, one of the most dangerous and devastated places on the planet. Hepburn was 63 and extraordinarily beautiful. The star of “Roman Holiday,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “My Fair Lady” and “Charade” still had, in person, the charisma she had always brought to the screen. But what I hadn’t expected was the depth of her personal experience and the power of the language she used.

“It still is so hard to talk about because it’s so unspeakable,” she said as she described her visits to Mogadishu, Baidoa and Kismayu. “Seen from the air it’s obviously very dry. The earth is an extraordinary sight, a deep terra cotta red. You see the villages, displacement camps, compounds. And the earth is rippled around these places like an ocean bed; I was told that these were the graves. There are graves everywhere. Wherever there is a road, around the paths that you take, along the riverbeds, near every camp, there are graves.” I’ve never been able to forget those words, that image, that reality that she helped bring to light.

What a contrast with, oh, say, Paris Hilton telling E!Online over the phone before she got sprung from jail on Tuesday morning, “I don't know--I just want to start using what I've been given by God to bring light to causes that I believe in.” What would those be? Apparently she’s shopping around. But let’s not be too cynical. Even if Hilton is just turning over a new fig leaf, like other celebrats before her, she might be able to help someone somewhere. The risk is mainly that such flippant commitments undermine the good that celebrities more serious about their causes have done and continue to do. The Angelina Jolies, George Clooneys, Mia Farrows, Bianca Jaggers and Bonos of this world, who take such care to maintain their credibility, must cringe when they read Hilton’s words.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19467263/site/newsweek/page/0/