Amazing stories

Via Eat the Press, how amazing is it that the iconic shot of Paris Hilton crying in a police cruiser was taken by Nick Ut, who took the iconic shot of a Vietnamese girl running down a road, her clothes burned off by napalm.

Here's a story in The Miami Herald, by Christina Hoag, that is a classic rags-to-riches-to-rags Miami tale: Cruise line president's death reveals a life off course. The story of Windjammer Barefoot Cruises has been a wild one from the very beginning, through the loss of one ship and its entire crew in Hurricane Mitch, to, now, the death in a cheap motel of the founder's son and company president. There are some stories that can only happen in Miami. This is one of them.

And, finally, one more on the Sopranos, from Gary Kamiya in Salon: Our Favorite Murderer.

Somebody whacked some of our crew, and we were scared, so we whacked Iraq. Just like Tony ordered the hit on Adriana. Steps were taken, as Sil would say. Except it turned out there were some unexpected consequences. We basically killed an entire country, and a whole lot of Americans, and people are dying all the time. And what are we doing? Nothing. We're going to the Bada Bing. We're having dinner at Artie's. Same old same old. Everything's fine. It's just fine.

(Added later:) There will be a lot more said about the Sopranos ending and why some people hated it. Here's a very smart analysis of why we watched it at all, from Susie at Suburban Guerrilla: The Swan Song of Tony Soprano.

I think when people say they don’t want to look at this kind of violence and internal struggle, spiritual emptiness and despair, they’re saying they don’t want to acknowledge those things in themselves. (Dr. Jung would have something to say about that.)
That refusal to see leaves you vulnerable to those who would use it against you. (For instance, you might lack the capacity to understand that yes, a president could very well lie to lead us into war.)
But for those of us who were willing to watch, each week Tony Soprano died just a little bit more for his own sins. If that’s not moral, I don’t know what is.

And for those of you who didn't see it and want to know what happened: "The Sopranos" goes dark, at Salon.

For more on the Sopranos, see previous post.