Syl Jones: Accidentally, on purpose

Let's dispose of the pretense: There is no way a multimillion-dollar starlet like Miley Cyrus of "Hannah Montana" fame can pose for Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair magazine without someone at Disney green-lighting it. The outrage expressed by Disney executives after the fact is further proof that Disney is a first-class corporate manipulator, looking to lead its young demographic to the next level of consumerist excess.

But why are the media so obsessed with manufactured conflicts involving movie stars and singers and celebrities on the A-thru-D list? What's really happening behind a trend that sandwiches the Cyrus episode between reports of deaths in Iraq and the rising price of gasoline on most major news networks in the United States?

What's happening is this: The politics of distraction meets the careerist strategies of a young female gold mine. When "greed meets the lead," it's yet another example of how pandering kills the news. Those who don't work in communications can't possibly imagine how deeply planned events like the Cyrus photo shoot are, and how constructed these seemingly coincidental controversies can be.

Here's how it works. Sometime during the second week of May, Miley Cyrus will have a court hearing in Los Angeles to change her name from Destiny Hope Cyrus -- which fairly rings with the jingle of cash money -- to Miley Ray Cyrus. Because she's nearly 16 and will soon surpass her initial audience of 5- to 14-year-olds, Cyrus is headed in a different direction. Her new album will appear in June. The photo shoot is one of a series of planned events that will lead to her emergence as a future country singer à la her achy-breaky-heart daddy, Billy Ray Cyrus, a one-hit wonder basking in the glow of his daughter's success.

Country music is also desperate to reel in the younger demographic that worships Miley Cyrus. According to a Billboard magazine report last January, "When Los Angeles country music station KZLA changed format last August, alarms sounded in the country music radio and record communities. The nation's No. 2 market joined New York, which has lacked a country station since 2002 ... as the third among the top five markets with no FM country outlet ... Among the reasons for the KZLA switch: It's increasingly difficult to succeed with country radio in a market where Caucasians carry less and less sway."

Interesting, but that's just the beginning of the Cyrus subterfuge.

Annie Leibovitz has also manufactured controversy on many occasions, twice in the span of a few months, by taking provocative photographs designed to spur news coverage for herself and Vanity Fair. The cover shot of LeBron James holding supermodel Gisele Bundchen was (trust me) an intentional echo of King Kong holding Naomi Watts/Fay Wray, as well as certain World War I recruiting posters. People have debated the meta-meaning of the cover for weeks, but all commercial images are designed to appeal to the visceral cultural archetypes we carry in our heads. Its intent may not have been racist, as some have said -- the intent was sensationalist -- but in order to create such sensation, taboos must be breached.

Now Leibovitz has done the same thing with the Miley Cyrus photo showing the 15-year-old demurely covering her breasts with a sheet. It's the kind of kiddie-porn tease shot that the editors knew would cause controversy and, therefore, boost sales and ad revenues. Her daddy surely knew the implications -- he even got in on the act in yet another inappropriate photograph.

But ultimately, the question is why we allow the networks to get away with positioning Miley Cyrus' career moves as news, and why we're so interested in celebrity titillation, especially involving young girls. Our society all but devours distressed girls, preying on their emerging sexuality. Too bad we can't see that each time we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the myriad publicists who help manufacture these controversies, we're not just molesting these girls, we're also killing the idea of the news.

I harbor few fantasies of enlightening anyone about their culpability in dumbing down an increasingly voracious, low-brow society. But it would be nice if cultural commentators did more than reside over the dismantling of the Enlightenment principles from which the Fourth Estate emerged. Then, at least, we might have an informed debate over the ultimate impact of eating our young in public.

Syl Jones, of Minnetonka, is a journalist, playwright and communications consultant.