The Survivor Celebrity Sausage Machine Exposed–“Brand Bethany”: We’re all familiar with Bethany Hamilton. Sweet 13-year old surfer. Arm gets bitten of by a tiger shark. Overcomes crippling injury with grace and courage. Makes news around the world. Well, it won’t surprise you to learn that Sweet Bethany now has an agent, a book deal, and a pack of handlers that manage every interview and public appearance the kid makes. The aim: max revenue, and her family is entirely complicit. The LA Times gets into it all, with a fascinating–and frequently cringe-inducing–expose on what happens when an unknown teenager is transformed into a “survivor,” a media obsession…and, inevitably, a slick and carefully milked cash cow. Reporter Ashley Powers doesn’t try to make Bethany and her family seem greedy, just caught up in the seemingly inevitable American cycle of fame and exploitation. After all, the kid lost her arm, and physical therapy and a good prosthetic costs a lot of money. But it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow. Here’s Powers, trying to snag an interview with Sweet Bethany:

It’s May now, and Cheri Hamilton is on the line, explaining why her daughter could not be (and, indeed wasn’t) interviewed for this story. Cheri’s speech is slack, like an overheated beachgoer’s. She is patient, and firm: If the family agreed to an interview now, it might jeopardize their deal with Simon & Schuster for a book, still untitled. “They want people hungry,” she says, cheerily. To talk to anyone now “would be giving away what they’re trying to sell. Call us at the end of October and we’ll do all the media you want.”

Umm, Cheri? What they–and you, it seems–are selling…is your daughter. The only one just living his life normally in all this is the tiger shark…



“Oh sh*t, better cut back the other way to avoid running over that pack of TV cameras…”

Photo: Noah (Bethany’s Brother) Hamilton (You can bill me later, dude…)