Hollywood Reporters, Gatsby Envy and total denial of one's true self

One of the best things about having a blog is that I can just ramble endlessly, with great and fervent opinion, about just about any subject I darn well please. And I can do it without having to directly offend the person I believe has offended me. In fact, I can just passive-aggressively pop off right here on my own site.

Now, if I were a blogger worth my salt, I would have written about the State of the Union address even while it was going on. But since I was drinking wine and chatting with my mother throughout the entire speech, I really have no idea what that guy said except that he told us again he would be pushing for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage and that social security would be bankrupt by 2047 or something like that and that we don't have an exit strategy for Iraq. Wait, didn't we know all that already? I guess I listened a little bit. And I think that hug between the Iraqi woman and the military wife was staged. (Washington's picked up a few tips from Hollywood since Clinton was in office.)

Anyhoo, let's talk about something more interesting to me. (Because it's MY blog and this is all about ME and MY thoughts, right?)

LA Weekly's Nikki Finke, a talented and gutsy writer, has written the most self-serving response to Bernie Weinraub's revealing NY Times piece (see previous posting) that perhaps I have ever read. Link to it here, read the piece so you know what I am talking about and then come back: LA Weekly: Columns: Deadline Hollywood: Hollywood Reporters and Gatsby Envy

Finke shares with us that even though she's from old money, Hollywood money doesn't affect her. Unlike Weinraub, she is above all that Hollywood glam; she is perfectly happy in her shabby West Hollywood digs. She wouldn't mind driving a rented Chevy among the Jags and Beemers. No, she is in it for the integrity.

Give me a friggin' break. It's one thing to be above it all when you really are poor and have nothing to fall back on. It's another thing to slum when one plane flight back to the East Coast will win you a grant from Mummy and Daddy.

Actually, I don't know that Finke has access to the family money she boasts about, but even the fact that she mentions it renders her whole insufferable article even more ridiculous. Finke uses Weinraub's revelations to further herself. And if that's not vintage Hollywood, I don't know what is.