The NYT’s Caryn James sees a trend in some recent celebrity media eruptions, and she thinks it has implications for all of us:

[T]he media spectacle surrounding the Hasselhoff video and Alec Baldwin’s leaked phone rant to his 11-year-old daughter have obscured some profound social issues. With their intensely personal moments made public, the celebrities represent oversize versions of the threats to privacy we all face at a time when the use of e-mail, camera-phones and other technologies has grown faster than common sense about them. If such betrayals can happen to stars, they can happen to us (with humiliation on a smaller scale).

I suppose this is true—any of us could be betrayed via the newfangled technology, but is this really something we should worry about? Also, James seems excessively concerned about the privacy of celebrities. Stars who pimp themselves shamelesslessly when they’ve got something to sell shouldn’t be surprised at the revenge of the tabloid culture when they’ve got something to hide. Live by publicity, die by publicity and all that. It’s just that they happen to be particularly easy targets as we find ourselves in the middle of a culture of meanness that is fueled by technology.

David Blum wrote a much more interesting analysis of the phenomenon a few weeks ago:

This is, without any doubt, the worst time in history to be famous — and it’s hard not to imagine Mr. Baldwin’s anguish in hearing his private words played, out of context, for millions to hear. As of this moment, all of the mistakes celebrities make, public or private, can find their way onto Web sites devoted to their humiliation. The technology now exists for millions to hear and see the embarrassing moments of public figures. …
These new technologies have provided a weapon to the enemies of a celebrity, and Mr. Baldwin seems to have many. … Audiences can’t be expected to compartmentalize their disgust …: We all now consider Mr. Baldwin a thoughtless brute.

The defense of such disclosures is that celebrities are protected by wealth from the downside of embarrassing revelations. [only from the economic downside, not from the social and personal downside of being exposed as a very angry guy --ed.] And it does seem unlikely that Mr. Baldwin’s career will substantially suffer from this episode. He remains a gifted actor with a successful network sitcom. The long-term price of his behavior will be minimal, even if the stigma stays. …

Blum is considerably less sympathetic than James toward celebrities, who are insulated from the worst thing that can happen (financial ruin). Digging a little deeper, Blum nails the real threat to everyday folks:

The problem lies with those who lack the power to protect themselves against the ravages of a 21st-century media onslaught, with its instantaneous, far-reaching effects. Eventually, someone’s career will be ruined, needlessly and unfairly, by a reckless Web site. Who arbitrates the limits of Internet exposure, or the level of celebrity required to justify it? As it gets easier for Web sites and reporters to pick apart the private behavior of our public figures, what greater public good is being served by these floggings? Meanwhile, we could all probably benefit from ratcheting up our fear of exposure, too — even the best behaved among us. The Internet is out there, and it’s an equal-opportunity destroyer.

Everything about daily public life is crude, vulgar, in your face, nasty, mean, taunting, and provocative. The Scent of Salem in the air is unmistakable. Conduct yourselves accordingly.

Even in our supersaturated plugged-in-24/7 media universe, where most stories whiz by at Feiler Faster speed, sometimes a very simple narrative can grab hold of the masses and transfix them.

Case in point: In Portugal, a little girl is abducted from her bed in the villa where her Scottish family is vacationing. She vanishes without a trace. Two weeks later, with still no word of the four-year-old’s fate, all of Britain is in thrall to this suspense story,

The FA Cup crowd fell silent as haunting images of missing Madeleine McCann were broadcast on a big screen.

Dozens of pictures of the little blonde girl, who turned four a week ago, were shown to 90,000 football fans. …

Her pretty face filled the screens at either end of the pitch - each one the size of 600 domestic TV sets - and dominated the ground.

The short two-minute video, set to the soundtrack of the Simple Minds hit Don’t You Forget About Me, was shown at both half time and before the game.

It received a round of applause from fans of the two teams which both have close ties with Portugal, where the toddler was abducted while on holiday in the seaside village of Praia da Luz.

Chelsea captain John Terry and team-mate Paulo Ferreira have recorded appeals as has Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo. [whoa! --ed.]

Um, can we talk? Don’t worry. This is not going to be a “whatever happened to that British stiff upper lip?” tirade.

For 15 days, the wide eyes and waiflike features of a child of 4 have stared out at Britons from television screens and newspaper front pages, T-shirts and posters with a simple message: find me.

That message has been relayed across Britain — on television and in cyberspace — by sports stars, celebrities and politicians, including the prime minister-designate, Gordon Brown. The outpouring has been likened, hyperbolically, to the national grief that erupted over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. [e.a.] …

In Britain, the upwelling of grief has stirred debate about the country’s recourse to cloying sentimentality in the face of loss that has melted the characteristic stiff upper lip.

And I’m not going to lecture you about how trivial this one abducted child is compared to the other abducted people in the news that we could be concerned about—such as BBC correspondent Alan Johnston,

who turned forty-five in captivity in Gaza this past week;

or the three American soldiers seized by al Qaeda in Iraq:

Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.

Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.

Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich.

or Ingrid Betancourt,

a former Colombian presidential candidate who is being held hostage by FARC rebels and is, according to a report from a fellow hostage who escaped, chained by the neck to other prisoners, sometimes up to 24 hours a day, to prevent her attempting to escape, which apparently she is given to trying again and again.

or the seizure and jailing by Iranian authorities of the American scholar Haleh Esfandiari in the notorious Evin prison.
Nope, this is not a guilt trip about the geopolitical messages we should be listening to (although we should be listening to them, of course).

This is just a reminder of the extraordinary, magical, mystical power of stories to capture our imagination in a way that nothing else can—that is, to capture our imagination and attention in a way that influences us. That makes us stop and think. That stays with us ( or “sticks,” in Malcolm Gladwell’s parlance). That makes us change our mind, or our behavior.

I mention five abduction stories above. All of them cry out for our attention. All of them are heartbreaking and tragic. All of the victims cry out for our sympathy or our pity. One of them is different, however. Only that one cries out immediately for our empathy.

Most of us will never run for office in ultra-violent Colombia. Most of us will never serve in Iraq. Most of us will never report from war-torn Gaza. Most of us will never have to toe a precarious line between being a free American scholar and a devoted Persian daughter who goes home to totalitarian Iran twice a year to visit her 93-year-old mother.
But which of us cannot put himself or herself in the shoes of Madeleine McCann’s parents and which of us does not remember being a helpless child?

Surely there’s a lesson here for all marketers (of anything, whether product or idea). The lesson is this: nothing beats a great story (in which category I include heartbreaking, sad, horrifying, etc.). We will give you our momentary attention pretty readily if you make enough noise (for example: if you say something totally outrageous, like what Jimmy Carter said about Tony Blair the other day, we’ll notice). But if you want to get through to us, give us a story we can relate to at gut level.

Give us a story that no amount of cynicism or jadedness or ironic detachment can protect us from and we are your slaves.

Regular readers know that I recently took a little detour away from my usual subject matter to post some pictures of Lower Manhattan. (I’ve got a lot more, by the way, but I have to clean up my startup disk to make room for them on iPhoto. Nightmare.)

Meanwhile, you can read all about the transformation of Lower Manhattan here, in the New York Sun:

Luxury Seems To Be Set For the Lower East Side

Ultra-luxury five-star hotels, the largest supermarket in the Northeast, apartments renting for $80 a square foot, condominiums selling for $1,500 a square foot, top-flight restaurants, a hip nightlife scene, and high-end boutiques: It’s not TriBeCa, the meatpacking district, or the High Line area I’m talking about — it’s the Bowery and the Lower East Side.

“Once a few new projects that were initially viewed as trailblazing succeed and take hold, it makes it easier for other projects to prosper and the gap between the lower end and the high end of the market and condo prices diminishes. That’s precisely what is happening to the Lower East Side,” Mr. Ivanhoe continued. “Once the area is viewed as acceptable for people to live in safely and some entertainment, shopping, and services fill in, the foundation is in place for a strong, stable area for years to come.”

“Its not just condo mania, it’s a confluence of everything coming together in the Lower East Side,” a principal of Columbia Street Developers, Marshall Sohne, said. “From working in the neighborhood, I got to see some of the forces at work. The Bowery was the commercial kitchen district. Now just look at Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery where people want a location that they are paying real numbers for lofts without any services. These are ‘hip’ artistic types with big dollars, willing to pay the type of prices that were paid by the tycoons living in the Time Warner Center, but these people prefer to be on Bond Street.”

Read the whole thing if you dare. Here’s a sampling of what a neighborhood in transition looks like.

the old Bond Street, up close

Bond Street, looking east from Broadway

Bond Street, looking west toward Broadway, where it ends in a T

Bond Street construction, seen from a Bleecker Street rooftop

the new 23-story hotel going up on the Bowery

The 23-story hotel is being built around the building where Hettie Jones, ex-wife of Amiri Baraka (ne LeRoi Jones), lives. You can read all about it here. (I snuck onto the building site and took a lot of up-close-and-personal shots like this before getting chased away by a guard. Exciting!)

In the backyard of the new Bowery Hotel

Across the street from the new Bowery Hotel. Just what you want to see after you’ve paid $600 a night for your room, right?