On rare occasions, celebrities will veer from their carefully bland, publicist-approved sound bites and make a blundering comment that exposes them as vapid or foolish. If this happens, do not examine your conscience. Print their transgression, and while you’re at it, blow up that particular remark and use it as the pull quote in your story.
Would that I could follow my own advice. I just never had that killer instinct. I see the way that one horrible quote can live on in infamy, dogging a person until they are onto their third face-lift. So I cave. Consider this forehead-slapping self-obsessed quote from a young blond actress who is the object of obsession for millions of preteen girls.
“I was in a movie theater the other day. And this little boy was choking on, like, a candy in the middle of the movie theater. And, like, I don’t know CPR. It’s just, like, it happened in a movie theater, where it’s just like—you can’t like enjoy the rest of the movie.”
I couldn’t print it. I should have.
How about this horrifyingly dopey gem from a handsome, drug-friendly alternative rocker?
“I lived right down the street from Ground Zero. It was definitely a shame that people died and shit.”
Dude, it was definitely fully a shame! I didn’t have the heart to use it. It was just too embarrassing, and he wasn’t an evil person, just dense. I have always been uncomfortable with that kind of power to manipulate, because the truth is that you could interview someone from the Brookings Institution in possession of five degrees and still make him or her look like a stooge. All you do is throw in all the “ums” and “uhs” and include the preinterview banal chitchat from the getting-to-know-you period before the tape recorder is turned on, time which is still perfectly fair to use.
That’s my sad rationale for not “going for it.” I just can’t. But if you find yourself in a similar position, you should.