My must read of the day is "Amal Alamuddin is Mrs. Clooney. Barbara Walters finds that fascinating.," by Christie D’Zurilla, in the Los Angeles Times:
Amal Alamuddin -- strike that, Amal Clooney -- is Barbara Walters' most fascinating person for 2014.
Apparently because she landed George Clooney?
Also for some other stuff, sure, but really, it's the George Clooney thing.
In what we pray was a tongue-in-cheek segment capping Sunday's annual "Most Fascinating People" special, Walters declared the former Alamuddin's snaring of the movie star as "really one of the greatest achievements in human history."
In. Human. History.
This epic achievement happened after "a bevy of beautiful women threw themselves at the unattainable -- and failed," Walters said, likening those desperate Clooney exes to "climbers attempting Mt. Everest."
"What," she asked, "does it take to fascinate one of the most fascinating men in the world?"
Just sit with that for a minute. Let it wash all over you. Be strong. This is life-defining stuff.
It seems this woman is fascinating because she's just like her man.
"Like Clooney, she is passionately committed to human rights causes," Walters noted. "Like Clooney, who has a father who was a journalist, she has a mother who is a journalist. And like Clooney, she is a star in her own world."
The announcement of Amal Alamuddin, or as Barbara Walters prefers we call her: that lady who married George Clooney, as the most fascinating person of 2014 came a couple of days ago—but I’m still a little mad about it.
The pick suggests that Alamuddin, who is successful and intelligent in her own right, only warrants discussion or attention because she married Clooney. That, of course, is precisely why most of us know her name, but that doesn’t mean it makes her the most fascinating person … in the world ... of the ENTIRE YEAR. It simply means we’re going to see a picture of her leaving a grocery store in People magazine.
I wouldn’t have been as bothered by the pick as I am if she was further down the list and Walter’s had framed her story differently. It could've been that Alamuddin was fascinating (but not number 1) because she married Clooney and contradicts so many of the stereotypes most of us have about the people celebrities like Clooney choose to date—she is smart and successful, and she happens to have also married one of the biggest movie stars.
That is interesting, but why are we praising anyone, male or female, solely because of whom they marry.
It’s such an antiquated notion, and it’s disrespectful and demeaning to the person, because it implies that her worth is solely wrapped up in the glamorous image of her spouse.
I hate this pick, but at the same time it is kind of cool that Coventry Patmore came back from the dead and inhabited Barbara Walters’s body to make this selection and inspire young girls all over the world to one day marry well.