June 14, 2013--Miley and Ashton

I was reading a piece in the New York Times about how various celebrities are getting paid by companies to sneak advertisements into their TV shows, movies, and Twitter pages.

The 20-year-old pop star, Miley Cyrus, for example, tweeted the following after flying to northern California to promote her new album--

Thanks @blackjet for the flight to Silicone Valley

This seems innocuous enough except that Black Jet is a company that arranges for private jets for rich folks; and, though Miley refused to comment when asked if she was paid for this mention to her 12 million Twitter followers, the company's CEO said, "She was given some consideration for her tweet."

"Some consideration," I assume, means money or free private jet travel.

When Demi's ex, actor and star of Two and a Half Men, Ashton Kutcher, served as guest editor for the on-line version of Details magazine and wrote favorably about a dozen companies in which he is a major investor, Details' executives didn't seem to have a problem.

Nor did the producers of Two and a Half when he pasted a bunch of labels for other companies he invests in on the back of his character's laptop. Kutcher presumably benefitted by doing this but the producers of the show got nothing.

And like Miley Cyrus, he has not been shy about plugging companies in which he has a financial interest on his Twitter page as a subliminal way of advertising them to his 14 million followers.

When I told Rona about this she just shrugged, as if to say, "What else is new," but she did ask how someone like Miley Cyrus could attract 12 million Twitter followers and Ashton Kutcher 14 million.

"You got me," I said, "I occasionally look at our niece's open-source Twitter postings and admire her enigmatic, often poetic tweets; but about everyone else, the whole tweeting thing seems to me to be superficial and usually downright silly."

"Before you're too condemning," Rona pressed me, "You should do a little more research."

She was right, and so I looked at some of Ashton's and Miley's recent posts.

Here are a few of Kutcher's--

I don't like to b*tch on here but does anyone else feel like all they do all day is charge sh*t?

Wonder what wooly mammoth meat would taste like? RT @pritheworld: Russian scientists discover a wooly mammoth

But, to be as fair as Rona would want me to be, he also has a serious side--

In recent news there's new news about the news

Miley, on the other hand, sent out the following to her 12 million faithful--

When I was a little girl I used to run around saying "I ain't scurred of nuffin"

Booty Tweet. Oopsie Doopsie

I did NOT get a tattoo of wings on my as hahaha

When I reported this to Rona, she sighed and said, "I can't imagine who these 12 or 14 million are who read this stuff. It just feels sad."