Could be writing about the results of various elections around the country--Republicans won some key races but lost the one they tried most desperately to win, and a gay marriage initiative was soundly defeated by the placidly homophobic residents of Maine--but the story that I kept rereading this morning was a brief item from Reuters detailing the sentencing of a man accused of stalking Ryan Seacrest.
I kept rereading it because it seems frankly impossible. Why the hell would anybody stalk Ryan Seacrest?
Sure, most stalkers are victims of extreme mental illness, and are driven by their demons to do things that seem incomprehensible. But their targets, at least, usually make sense: They want to bask in the aura of icons like John Lennon or Barbra Streisand, or they see TV actresses like Stephanie Zimbalist or Rebecca Schaeffer, who are pretty in blandly unthreatening ways, and they think they can get close to them, make them their own.
But Ryan Seacrest? Seriously? I mean, sure, the guy's ubiquitous, and has an annoyingly gladhanding manner, and...Actually, I'm having a hard time saying anything about him. He's as substantial as heavily-moussed cotton candy, and it's hard to imagine him inspiring any sort of passionate feelings in anyone one way or another. Maybe the alleged stalker, an Army Reservist named Chidi Uzomah, is a hardcore Casey Kasem partisan who is pissed about Seacrest hijacking that sweet, sweet America's Top Forty gig.
Otherwise, the question isn't so much Why? as Why Bother?
