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I ran across this couple-day-old "Past Deadline by Ray Richmond" post while googling a while ago. This picture caught my trained eye...remarkably poignant, not the 'Hannah Montana' vapid-hyped look I'm used to seeing at all. There's something else here, something Anne Leibovitz captured, the 'innocence wronged' look. Just...wrong.

I'll admit not having paid much attention to the 'Hannah Montana' craze (my teenage daughter is past that stage, having moved on the more nuanced college age-craze bracket) but I have noticed (who could miss it?) the massive marketing hype for this Disney product; the vapid images that show up just about everywhere, on towels and toys at Targets, Wal-Marts, and anywhere else kids spend their parent's cash.

A great photo, Annie's, but nearing evil. Something furtive, Annie, you've done. Something wicked this way comes.

Even that jaded Hollywood Reporter dot com blogger picks up on it, some, in his alligator-predator sort of way...

"It pained me to hear that Miley Cyrus, tween superstar and hero of Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana," had apologized for the photo she posed for in the June issue of Vanity Fair. I wanted to reach out, put my arms around her (in a consoling way, of course) and say, "Miley, it wasn't your fault. You have nothing to be sorry for."

That 'pained' feeling doesn't stop him from posting this additional "internet photo" of an even more revealing 'Hannah'...

"In the end, though, Miley is the one who suffers. After working so hard to cultivate a puritanical, impossibly wholesome, implausibly religious image -- and overcoming Internet photos to the contrary (right) -- she now has to beg forgiveness from all those people who are offended by the site of a bare back.

"I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen," she said."I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about."

I can just hear your sorrow there, Barry. Cry some more tears for Miley's lost "Hannahness".

Maybe a sports celebrity will make a move on 'Hannah' now, in the Roger Clemens-Mindy McCready fashion. Mindy, too, was 15 when Roger met her...in a bar.

So what's my point, here? Am I bashing Annie Leibovitz for taking that million-dollar Vanity Fair photo, or deriding Barry Garron for the faux-tears he's shedding while faux-bashing Anne Leibovitz for taking that million-dollar Vanity Fair photo?

Hmmmph. Neither, really.

I really need to get back to searching for whatever Google image I was searching for when I was interrupted by this faux desire to post.

Sorry to have interrupted your search. Carry on.

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