April 7, 2007: Star Jones and the "CEO of What's Good" News

Today's celebri-spiral special is beef and snow peas, with wonton soup and a heaping, steaming portion of Spinning Star Blowfish.

Ms. Jones-Reynolds has been everywhere this week, with a hot new look and endless copy on her upcoming Court TV gig (planned for fall 2007), which I wrote about earlier this year. Radar Magazine covers the strange coincidence numerous media outlets touting Star Jones Reynolds Exclusives! this week, hearkening back to the crazed, celebri-spiralish media stunts she performed back in her bridezilla days.

TMZ's way of coping with Star influx this week was to offer Star Jones paper dolls. Well, if you can't get an "exclusive," I guess you might as well cut her.

But what really made me cast my eye toward future celebri-spirals caused by Star were her quotes in OK Magazine (in Ital):

OK: And who is the real Star Jones?
SJR: Someone who really cares and is passionate about law and how it impacts real people every day. I'm so excited that at this time in our culture, law, politics, pop culture, and entertainment are converging on each other.

OK, does anyone besides me flag this response for its irony? She loves how law impacts real people, but her real thrill is that law and celebrity pop-culture are converging? The two have just about ZERO correlation. More likely, Star will get some hopped-up producers who'll beg, borrow, and steal to land the next Anna Nicole Smith media event. And we know how much that case impacted real people.

OK: Have you been following the latest pop-culture legal battles?
SJR: Absolutely, I am a news junkie.

Pop-culture legal battles and news. News and pop-culture legal battles. Hmmm. And the connection would be...? And her point is? And she defines "news" as...?

OK: How do you get your news?
SJR: I'm a big Internet watcher and I love cable news. I'm a big Court TV watcher. I watch CNN, Fox, NBC, CNBC. It moves quickly. You want to keep up with what people are talking about because the consumer is CEO of what's good.

When it comes to news and media coverage, the consumer is not the CEO of what's good. That's a terrifying thought. The fact that the Internet moves quickly has a pro and con. Sure, we all want tomorrow's news today. But speed sometimes means that information escapes completely or slips too easily past vetted news filters, which is what we need more of right now. We don't need more of Star Jones Reynolds spinning a new show that might as well be called US Goes To Court.

It's not that a new celebrity court show is coming. It's that she's contributing to what some of us immersed in celebrity culture have flagged as questionable. Is it helpful for her to blur the line between journalism and celebrity gossip by making celebrity stories seem more important than they really are? Call the show what it is; celebrity court cases that have absolutely no relevance for most of us, but they sure are fun to watch. Stop pretending.

Anticipating her new show, and her rationalizing spin about celebrity court cases impacting the lives of real people, makes me want to change the channel before jumping headfirst into this Coming Soon! fiery, celebri-spiral hell.