Kim who?

Am I impressed with the French media or what? Other than Le Parisien, not one local newspaper bothered to fawn over Kim Kardashian being robbed at gunpoint at her luxury apartment in Paris.

The reality television ‘star’, whose sole claim to fame is a sleazy home-made adult video, is clearly not a celebrity of consequence for the French journos. For that matter, she didn’t make it even in the first ten pages of any significant Belgian, Spanish, German and Dutch newspaper. It’s only a section of the flimsy, sensation-bitten British and American tabloid press speculating endlessly about the incident, which could well have been a smoothly orchestrated publicity stunt. Let’s not forget that the next season of her TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, is preparing to air and the ratings of the previous season were dismal. They need fodder for the next edition.

For those of you who find the reaction to the robbery somewhat insensitive and unkind, be rest assured that the reaction is not unfounded. Every move of hers is calculated. Who knows this might be an insurance scam. After all, husband Kanye West is in huge debt.

Coming back to the ‘B’ grade film plot, I read that the gunmen threatened the concierge and apparently tied him up before making their way to her room. How they got past the armoured door of her flat is a mystery. There was no sign of forced entry, and no reason why anybody would have allowed unidentified men entry in the middle of the night.

Anyhow, Kim allegedly begged for her life screaming that she had two children as the men dressed in clothes with police markings, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties and duct tape. The robbers were magnanimous enough not to inflict any physical hurt and simply dumped her in a marble bath before escaping with jewellery worth £8.5 million.

Surprisingly, her personal bodyguard, who is with her at all times, was at a nightclub with the sisters. So she was all by herself in an apartment laden with millions of dollars worth of jewels, in a foreign city. And then she suddenly left Paris in a private jet, without speaking to the authorities or letting them question her. It all seems a bit odd to me.

Anyway, for a minute, let’s assume that this was all real. Then the discussion around Kim needing to strengthen her security is a pointless one. When you have no real talent to back you, this is the price you pay for living your life on social media, constantly filming yourself to show off your expensive assets and promote your various interests. When you have 84 million followers on Instagram, 29 million on Facebook and 48 million on Twitter, you’re willingly depriving yourself of a tranquil existence. There is a crime waiting to happen.

So if this crime was indeed real, the vulgarian finally got a taste of the big, bad world outside her make-believe tower. And if it wasn’t, then this was just another day in the life of Kim Kardashian.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2016.

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