Actress Assaults the Elderly

Apparently, this is news these days.

Some actress named Denise Richards, who ennobled the world by acting in Starship Troopers as well as Scary Movie 3 (both quality movies and worthy of being written and directed by Shakespeare, no doubt), scuffled with a paparazzi and, in the ensuing fracas, hurled the paparazzi's laptop over a balcony, whereupon the laptop succumbed to gravity and fell upon two elderly women two stories below with great force as if they were mere wheat beneath its sickle.

To make matters worse, one of the elderly women was wheelchair-bound and was thus unable to dive nimbly out of the way when she saw the laptop advancing upon her. Though, to be honest, I doubt whether she saw the laptop advancing upon her as most elderly these days don't spend a lot of time looking to the heavens (unless they're Pentecostals); rather, they spend a great deal of time admiring the flowers around them (if they happen to be strolling or rolling through a garden), or putting on their shoes (which strictly involves looking down), or looking around for their yapping poodle Fritzi (if they own such an abomination).

Now, my first question out of all of this, aside from the rather frightening topic of why this sort of story is news these days, why do we persist in calling such gatherers of non-news "paparazzi?" The word dehumanizes, not unlike the term "tissue blob" dehumanizes the unborn child. When one refers to the poor, defenseless (laptop-less) photographer merely out to make an honest living as "paparazzi," I suppose the next step is to pack them into cattle-cars and truck them off to Poland.

My second and last question prompted by this sordid tale is whether or not beautiful actresses (I'm assuming that Ms. Richards is beautiful as Hollywood tends to ignore those who are not - hence, the flourishing plastic surgery trade in southern California) have a great fear of the elderly. I suppose they see their steadily encroaching doom in the face of every elderly person they meet. Those wrinkles, that grey hair, the colostomy bag all await them, and no amount of time spent sweating in the gym and no amount of money spent on Botox can ever ultimately stem such a fate.

I wonder if Ms. Richards' attack on the poor little paparazzi (perhaps paparazzi aren't even human but are merely a species of small, shy Italian woodland creature?) was merely a pretext to allow her to work her violence on the octogenarians below?