What price fame? Ask a billionaire or ask a boxer. Peter Lewis was not famous in this country and might never have become so had he received normal treatment in the courts. David Tua is famous here, and discovered this week that fairly normal behaviour is not advisable.
A woman who accidentally knocked the numberplate of Tua's new purple Lotus in the carpark of an Auckland gym told the world he "had a baby about it." Which evidently means he was angry, not aggressive. When she wouldn't show him her driving licence, having given her business card and insurance details, the next challenger for the heavyweight championship of the world threatened to call the police. "He got pretty upset that I wasn't that worked up about it," she said.
An ordinary altercation over a common occurrence. Yet the boxer's minders could not leave it there. Half-way through her gym session the woman was told Tua's manager wanted to see her. One of his personal security guards pointed to a scratch on the car and suggested Tua was worried about a $5000 insurance excess. Manager Kevin Barry called it "a storm in a teacup." So it was.
The rich and famous can easily create storms in teacups. Often it is the very normality of their behaviour in awkward situations that interests people. It is reassuring to know they are much like the rest of us. Mr Barry says his fighter would never face this sort of attention in the United States. Perhaps not; there are big ponds and small. But, after all these years in a professional boxing stable, it is good to know Tua can be infuriated by a bump on the car, is still human.
And it is always surprising how much the great resent that revelation. Most of us imagine that occasional minor embarrassment would be a small price to pay for fame. Give us all that recognition and we would gladly be careful. If by chance we slip we would not expect privacy. But we have not been there. Something happens to almost all of those who make it. From their vantage point perhaps, fame really is ephemeral and easily undermined.
It certainly will suffer if they come before the courts of this country in future. The judgments the Herald has obtained in the billionaire case mean that New Zealand courts should cease the practice of suppressing names of well-known defendants simply on grounds that their names would attract attention. It has surprised visiting jurists that our criminal courts have followed such a practice but they have, and it will be hard for some to change. The idea that fame and fortune carries some social responsibility has been out of fashion for far too long.
Perhaps a gesture this week from another famous Aucklander, Lucy Lawless, might help to revive the idea. The actress, and mother now, was moved by the Herald's account of death of another toddler at the hands of parents. She phoned the Children's Commissioner, offering to help in any way she could. She was, she said, "humbled in the face of the enormity of this problem" and felt it was, "vulgar to have a public face and not try to put it to some good use."
Social responsibility may not be a shield against public interest in the private lives of the famous, but it probably helps. At least their human foibles will be greeted with more sympathy than delight. But public figures, whatever their character, have to resign themselves to the fact that they are public property. They have traded privacy for the benefits - personal, professional and financial - of public acclaim. The attention is not a commodity that can be summoned when it suits and turned off at other times. The price of fame is exposure at any time. A character that cannot stand that should not apply. The price must be a constant worry. But think of the compensations.
<i>Editorial:</i> The trials of the rich and famous
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