{"id":490,"date":"2012-04-02T11:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T23:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=490"},"modified":"2012-04-02T12:23:08","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T00:23:08","slug":"celebrated-for-being-a-celebrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"Celebrated for being a celebrity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By some stroke of fortune, a group of us \u2013 some not known for their time keeping \u2013 managed to arrive at the restaurant at pretty much the same time.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ah, yes.\u00a0 Table for ten,\u2019 the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 said and, after gathering up a small stack of menus, led us to our table.<\/p>\n

Purely by chance, I was leading the pack.\u00a0 And, as we made our way across the restaurant, the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 nodded \u2013 very discreetly \u2013 in the direction of a table in one corner of the room and whispered: \u2018Amanda Nash\u2019.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid I had absolutely no idea who Amanda Nash was.\u00a0 But she was clearly someone important.\u00a0 Or famous.\u00a0 Or possibly both.<\/p>\n

As we perused the menus, I mentioned \u2013 again, very discreetly \u2013 to the woman on my left that Amanda Nash was at the corner table.<\/p>\n

\u2018And who\u2019s Amanda Nash?\u2019 my companion asked.<\/p>\n

I told her that I had no idea, but I assumed that she must be someone important or famous or possibly both.<\/p>\n

A series of enquiries went around the table and the enquiry chain was almost back to me when one of my fellow diners said: \u2018Isn\u2019t she the presenter of one of those house hunting programmes on TV?\u2019\u00a0 But, as someone else pointed out, that was Amanda Lamb<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And so it seemed that none of us had any<\/em> idea who Amanda Nash was. \u00a0And this led to a general discussion about all of the other \u2018celebrities\u2019 of whom we had vaguely heard or read about and yet knew nothing about the reason for their celebrity status.\u00a0 \u2018Just celebrated for being a celebrity, I suppose,\u2019 the woman on my right said resignedly.<\/p>\n

Going on for 100 years ago, G K Chesterton suggested that \u2018journalism largely consists of saying \u201cLord Jones is Dead\u201d to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive\u2019.\u00a0 We might expect things to have changed in the course of 80 or 90 years.\u00a0 But have they?\u00a0 It seems to me that a good deal of modern journalism consists of telling us \u2013 in all the gory detail that can be dug up (or made up?) \u2013 all about the goings on of people of whom most of us have never heard, people who are, in my dining companion\u2019s words, celebrated for being a celebrity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By some stroke of fortune, a group of us \u2013 some not known for their time keeping \u2013 managed to arrive at the restaurant at pretty much the same time. \u2018Ah, yes.\u00a0 Table for ten,\u2019 the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 said and, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}