What happened
A Massachusetts man who once admitted to writing anonymous letters to Jodie Foster was arrested Tuesday for mailing a bomb threat to Van Nuys Airport. The note also mentioned the Oscar-winning actress. If convicted, the man, Michael Smegal, could face 10 years in prison. (E! Online)
What the commentators said
“What’s with the fascination with Jodie Foster?” said a Boston Herald blog. Remember him? First John Hinckley Jr. tries to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981 to impress her, and now this. Foster’s role in that “masterpiece about loneliness and dysfunction”—Taxi Driver—sure made an impression. “She became a cult hero for the unstable among us and it has stuck.” No wonder Foster says that, for her, “staying private is a necessity.”
Foster certainly seems to be a magnet for crazy men, or “allegedly crazy men," said the Boston-area’s Unversal Hub. About 100 nearly identical letters—some also mentioning Foster, and all allegedly sent by Smegal—were sent to the addresses of celebrities, businesses, airports and other institutions in the area last year. This has to make Foster the world’s “most stalked celebrity.”
Foster isn’t the one who needs to worry about her “creepy” followers, said Stuart Heritage in Hecklerspray. Hinckley shot Reagan to prove his love for her, and, according to an alleged confession, Smegal threatened to blow up the airport “because he thought that the Screen Actors Guild had offices there, and he wanted to punish it for disparaging remarks it had apparently made about Jodie Foster.” So, if there’s a third Foster stalker out there, “we liked Jodie Foster in Silence Of The Lambs. And Panic Room. And Inside Man.” Please, then, “don’t bomb us.”
