Public Space

Jennifer Aniston is suing a photographer who snapped some photos of her topless in her backyard. I'm not going to parse the legalities of this whole thing and debate privacy rights except to say that I would probably pay some money to see Rachel, I mean Jen, with her shirt off. But a couple funny things struck me about this story.

Aniston, who has been the subject of a tabloid frenzy since her split with husband Brad Pitt earlier this year, settled a lawsuit with two men's magazines over topless photos in 2002.

In that lawsuit, the actress contended that paparazzi scaled a neighbor's wall to snap photos of her reclining in her backyard, wearing only her panties.

Okay, so you narrowly avoided public embarassment once before, and you now know that paparazzi are staking out your backyard. And yet you still go around with your knockers hanging out, and then act surprised when someone takes pictures? You must be shocked, shocked.

Then there's the paparazzi:

The photographer, Peter Brandt, told Reuters that he had not yet been served with the lawsuit but believed he obtained the pictures legally from a public sidewalk -- not on Aniston's property -- and had not yet sold any of them.

"I've been in this business for 25 years and I don't do anything illegal," he said. "I was 300 yards away and anybody on that hillside could have seen her."

That's right, she was obviously totally flaunting it. I mean, anyone who had happened to walk by just that spot -- with a $10,000 telephoto camera lens -- could have seen it, too. Sheesh.