Moralia

I had never heard of Liskula Cohen until the other day, when she won a lawsuit forcing Google to reveal the name of the anonymous blogger who had called her a skank and an old hag on a blog almost nobody except Liskula Cohen read.  Ms. Cohen was actually pretty lucky to be  called a skank and a hag, since I (and presumably a lot of other people) never heard of her before this.

It’s very much like what happened to Carrie Prejean, whom I never would have heard of if she had won the Miss America (or was it Miss USA?) pageant.  But instead of smiling and saying everyone has a right to get married, she said what she really thought about same sex marriage, so Perez Hilton said all sorts of awful things about her and now everybody knows her name.

It may turn out to be a good thing for the formerly anonymous blogger, Rosemary Port, too, since now she’s got her 15 minutes of fame as well.  Since she’s very attractive (or at least she looks attractive in the only picture I’ve seen of her) she may well be able to parlay that into something less ephemeral if she’s smart.

Fame, that double-edged sword, more often than not entails being mocked and belittled, and just as Rosemary Port mocked Liskula Cohen, now bloggers like Robert Stacy McCain are mocking Rosemary Port.

I’ve written about my ambivalence toward fame – and old hagdom — before.   Frankly, I don’t think I’m ready for fame (or for hagdom), though by choosing to write a blog and a column under my own name I’ve left complete anonymity behind.