End of ADS-L Digest - 28 Aug 1997 to 29 Aug 1997 ************************************************ Subject: ADS-L Digest - 29 Aug 1997 to 31 Aug 1997 There are 4 messages totalling 209 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Videorazzi 2. Hoagies; Gyp Joint 3. Kenyon Book 4. ...razzi/Buck House ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 00:58:35 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Videorazzi Princess Diana is dead. I can't believe it. David Shulman told me about his research into "paparazzi" (and "paparazzo"). The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology is correct: PAPARAZZO n., pl. PAPARAZZI, aggressive photographer who pursues celebrities. 1961, American English, borrowing of Italian _paparazzo_, in allusion to the surname of a free-lance photographer in the Italian motion picture _La Dolce Vita_ (1959). Last summer, when I was in the British Isles, I came across "videorazzi" in the London Times and waited for it to cross the pond. I don't have Nexis now to check if "stalkerazzi" came first and to compare it with other "-azzi" citations. "-azzi" is becoming to the media what "-gate" is to political scandals. This is from the Sunday Times (London), Style, Section 9, 18 August 1996, pg. 1 (photo of Princess Diana with her hand approaching a camera lens): FIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION If Diana hates the paparazzi, wait until she meets the videorazzi (Continued on pages 10-11) Video nasties The royals are fighting back against the ever-intrusive paparazzi. But there's a new, even greater threat that's just arrived from Hollywood--the videorazzi, right (photo--ed.) CHRISTOPHER GODWIN reports The paparazzi have gone too far and are being firmly put in their place. Last week, the Princess of Wales obtained an injunction banning Martin Stenning from coming within 300m of her. It was Stenning whose motorbike beys Diana removed last month in order to stop him from following her. And the Queen, too, has made her feelings known by taking legal action against five freelance paparazzi in Scotland to stop them bothering the family while they holiday at Balmoral. As if they didn't already have enough of a fight on their hands, there is a new threat on its way. In fact, it's already arrived, fresh from America--the videorazzi, already the scourge of Hollywood. These new attack dogs of the celebrity press corps are so aggressive and ruthless that even some old-time paparazzi disown them. The videorazzi earn their pieces of silver by flogging unflattering videotape footage of stars caught cheating, in flagrante, drunk, drugged, even dead, to the tabloid American television shows such as Hard Copy, Inside Edition and American Journal--the wallpaper of the early-evening airwaves. Their sworn enemies: the very stars from whom they earn their lucre. To most celebrities, who enjoy the enormous benefits that their fame and wealth bring them, the occasional intrusions of the videorazzi--who, after all, are only pandering to a voracious appetite for celebrity material that the stars, the studios and their publicists are already feeding--are a necessary evil. Others, however, feel threatened and overwhelmed by the depredations of the videorazzi (or the "stalkerazzi" or "scumerazzi" as some stars prefer to call them), who are becoming increasingly aggressive and ruthless to get the shots they want. (...)