Coincidentally, right after I read the news that Anna Nicole Smith had died, I came across this story about Indiana courting Hollywood:
The Indiana House voted 82-15 Thursday to pass a bill providing financial incentives for movies, TV shows and other entertainment productions to be made in Indiana.[. . .]
The bill would give up to a 25 percent rebate on expenditures a film or TV production crew makes in Indiana if the company met certain benchmarks on hiring and spending in Indiana.
We not only want the glitz and glamour, we are willing to pay for it. And make no mistake, it isn't about economic development. Poor, little, unnoticed Indiana hungers for its 15 minutes of fame. Hey, we have plenty of budding Anna Nicholes here just waiting to be discovered.
But we always have had. What today are called "Living" or "Features" sections in newspapers used to be the "women's pages," devoted in large part to society news. "Society" comprised the local people who got written about just because of who they were, not because of anything they had done in particular. Being famous for being famous might seem like a modern social pathology, but it really isn't.
