Photographers at Lennox Hill Hospital This Week

"Whatever happened to class?"

It was deposited into their bank accounts along with respect, compassion, and decency.

I'm pretty sure the papers would survive with a text article without pictures of a grieving family leaving the hospital.

The sad fact is, the public in great numbers would turn out for public floggings or human flailings. Doesn't mean we should have them. The usual basis for this type of obsessive and intrusive photography is an assault on women. Try to photograph their nipples, go for the crotch shots. It's rape by a different name. Is it any wonder that the Los Angeles street gangs have infiltrated the paparazzi? A recent study indicated that many of the photographers who specialize in this field have a criminal history, often for spousal abuse. It takes a certain kind of lost soul to stick a camera lens in Liam Neeson's face right after his wife just died.

The same skill set worked really well for prison guards at Auschwitz.

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Updated On: 3/20/09 at 11:36 AM

Brilliant paragraph?

Um... did you really just compare the paparazzi to the Nazis? Taking pictures of celebrities to killing 6 million innocent Jews and millions of others?

Wow.

"Brilliant paragraph?

Um... did you really just compare the paparazzi to the Nazis? Taking pictures of celebrities to killing 6 million innocent Jews and millions of others?"

Thank You! I thought the same thing.

The pathetic thing is that there is plenty of footage of Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson on the red carpet of events together. Rather than have camera people stalk the hospital and their residence to get ghoulish video, it would have been infinitely classier of any of these media outlets to run old B-roll of them.

Unfortunately horrors like tragic, untimely deaths provide appeal and feed a curiosity factor in humans- particularly when a celebrity is involved. Anyone who lives in NYC knows that you don't go to Lennox Hill if you are fighting for your life. You go to Lennox Hill for the stomach flu. It was clearly a lost cause and they were out for blood. For the story. If it bleeds it leads.

I live right by the hospital and was absolutely disgusted by the paps, but admittedly I was also concerned and fascinated. I looked. And I think it's ok to question, to wonder. Which is why people took pictures, why we look at pictures of Holocaust victims and autopsies.. it is our of curiosity for various states of the human condition as horrific as they might be.

And we are in a down economy.. the thirst for financial gain is as powerful as it ever may be. This is the driving factor behind the paparazzi. Many are desperate. Trust me, we will probably see abuses worse than this as more homes are foreclosed, tent cities grow and children starve. And who makes you sicker-- a paparazzi photographer or Bernie Madoff?

I keep thinking of a line from Steel Magnolias that relates to untimely death..

She will always be young, she will always be beautiful.

Fear not, soon the paps will lose interest and we'll be writing about the next tragic story.

actually, PRFRMR20, Ogrish has a better place in society than TMZ. They revel and boast of their inappropriateness and challenge people to look. TMZ uses tabloid TV techniques to lure people in ("Guess which star is stepping out on her hubby.") With Ogrish, if you choose to go inside, you know it's a dark ride and often a horrific lesson in man's inhumanity to man. With the paparazi, it is buried in celebrity and style and beauty, but it's the same brutality.

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I'm sure Liam wasn't waving hello, it's most likely a gut reaction when you see the cameras and they are yelling "We're so sorry!" with mock sincerity.

Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. It can be twisted either way.

I saw it, that's why I commented on it. it wasn't a big wave hello, but I agree it may have been a gut reaction. I didn't see anyone jump in front of anyone.

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I, too, found the behavior of the photographers appalling; unfortunately, it's the norm and has been ever since the camera was invented -- it's nothing new at all (which doesn't mean it's right). Remember William Holden's line towards the end of Sunset Boulevard about the the press having a field day with the Norma Desmond story after she's shot him -- the "heartless so-and-sos." It's a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sad, sad, sad.

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Though I'm not a paparazzi, I AM a photojournalist, and at times, may be called upon to photograph people who might not really want their pictures taken at the time, usually notorious defendants in criminal cases. The comparisons with Nazis here are really over the top, and I agree with the posters who pointed out that it is OUR pop culture appetite that feeds this beast. Also, there's a big difference between covering Natasha's loved ones going in and out of the hospital and covering Neeson and others paying tribute on Broadway.

I would imagine the first to be be far more intrusive at a trying time; the second--unless I'm mistaken--is a public marking of the loss of a beloved and respected actress. As a member of a repected media organization, I would never be asked by my editors to stake out the hospital; however, the second, which was done in memoriam on a public sidewalk, would not be a strange thing to be covering at all, and I'm sure Neeson expected media to attend. I imagine--unless you all know something I don't which is entirely possible--that in this case the wave was just an acknowledgment.

I have covered untimely deaths in my own city in as sensitive a manner as possible, and more often than not, I am welcomed by the victim's loved ones for taking note of their loss. But honestly, this is all about our celebrity-hungry culture, not the working stiffs who feed into it, however obnoxious they may be!