Never anthropomophize the Olsens

Completely bizzare headline: Eating Disorder Scandal May Humanize Mary-Kate for Young Fans. The story is about how "Instead of rejecting their fallen teen idol, many of Mary-Kate's young fans have embraced her vulnerability, forging an even deeper bond with the star."

This put me in mind of a thing I read someplace recently, in which a New Yorker writer was kvetching about his relationship with then-editor Tina Brown, and a fellow staffer counselled, "You must always remember: never try to anthropomorphize Tina."

In the case of the Olsens, isn't the paradoxical relationship their fans have with them -- projecting all their dreams an anxieties on these perfect, yet supposedly "real" girls -- the whole point? The only way they could become even more "human," and thus even less normal, is if they murdered their parents in cold blood.

In other scandals, the Khouri tale continues to unravel. Not only has the woman's ostensibly non-fiction book been recalled by its publishers -- partly because she "appears to have been living on Chicago's South Side for the entire period of the early- to mid-1990s covered in the book," according to the Chicago Sun-Times -- but is also being sought by the FBI in a fraud case. But the most deflating quote came from a neighbor:

"She was a nice girl. She used to send articles to the Reader's Digest," said neighbor Mary Mehia.

Ouch.