The Atlantic's new blog The Current gave one of its three "Best Opinion" slots on Friday to Mark Lacter's recent post at LA Biz Observed wondering why most Americans feel the economy has run off the track, while simultaneously believing their own financial situation was fine.
April in The Atlantic: On the streets of Los Angeles with the Britney swarm of paparazzi. Sample:
Between 30 and 45 paparazzi work Britney on any given night. The expensive cars they drive reflect the fact that Britney Spears—her marriages, custody battles, fights with her mom, new boyfriends, Starbucks runs, trips to the hospital—is a bigger and more lucrative story than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or John Lennon and Yoko Ono. History’s best-publicized celebrity meltdown has helped fuel dozens of television shows, magazines, and Internet sites, the combined value of whose Britney-related product easily exceeds $100 million a year, and helped make Britney Spears the most popular search term on Yahoo once again in 2007, as it has been for six of the past seven years.
A web-only slide show disguised as an interview with Brandy and François-Regis Navarre of X17 is included.
Previously:
My lunch with Katherine Heigl
He's the next mayor
I left LA for Chicago why?