ACTRESS' STRANGE FEARS PASS AS 'NEWS'

British news service Ananova sullied its image and joined the ranks of supermarket tabloids yesterday when it reported that American actress Christina Ricci has an irrational fear of houseplants. If an ordinary person made such phobias public, he or she would be involuntarily committed to an asylum, where he or she would be given a daily assortment of antipsychotic drugs. But when an actress says the very same thing, a highly-trained reporter hops the first plane to Los Angeles, abandons his dignity and writes a story about it. Never mind, the reporter was British. He didn't have any dignity to abandon in the first place.