Your first cynical reaction, I bet, on learning that the ‘celebrity’ Kim Kardashian had been robbed in a Paris hotel (or some say her own apartment) by masked men posing as policemen was that it must be a publicity stunt. I for one plead guilty to the charge.
Poor Kim, who was locked in her bathroom while the robbers went about their business, apparently lost $11 million worth of jewellery in the raid. Eleven million! Did she not think to put the stuff in the hotel safe? And as my wife was moved to ask, who in their right mind travels with goods worth that sort of moolah anyway?
And where was her bodyguard, one Pascal Duvier, recently lauded by Kim herself as “the best in town”? Out on the town, it seems, or at least somewhere other than in the vicinity of the hotel. Some bodyguard!
Might he have been complicit in the robbery? I am not for a moment suggesting any such thing, but for the next few days the media will doubtless be filled with theories about how such a terrible event occurred, and who allowed it to happen. The public interest it will generate could well be worth as much as the stolen jewellery.
Were the valuables even hers to lose? Kim was in Paris for the fashion season and it has become customary for celebrities to borrow valuables to wear on such occasions, which the paparazzi and gossip-peddlers call ‘red carpet events’. News reports insist that the rocks were indeed hers. If so, I am truly sorry for her loss, even as I quietly chortle with satisfaction.
It may well be that Kim really has lost a fortune, and her fans are no doubt in a state of shock over the incident. As for the rest of us, even as we express heart-felt relief that she suffered no physical harm, perhaps we might be forgiven for harbouring – whatever the evidence to the contrary – a suspicion of a headline-grabbing ruse, or at least pondering with satisfaction that those who live by the PR machine are doomed to become victims of it.
The Kardashians, as witless, untalented and grubby a family as ever graced our television screens or the printed gossip columns, will regret Kim’s moment of carelessness and rally round to comfort her. Their critics, rightly or wrongly, may be secretly admiring the robbers as folk heroes who brought down to earth with such alacrity, and in a blaze of publicity worthy of the Kardashians themselves, a headline-obsessed ‘celebrity’ who has done nothing to merit that or any other elevated status.
The judgement would be harsh, I admit, but the Kardashians have been afflicting us for years with their mindless hedonism and their intellectually demeaning antics, so, sadly, Kim’s come-uppance provides a kind of consoling compensation.
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