"Women see celebrities as mirrors of their own lives, so when they're looking at celebrities, in many cases, not all, they are evaluating the situation and relating it to something in their own lives or comparing it. It enhances your life," Fuller told The Globe and Mail.

Let's check in with how Fuller (who used to work for philanthropic organizations such as Cosmo, Glamour and Us Weekly) is helping women lately. Earlier today, leading the Style & Beauty section of her site, Hollywood Life:

Or this:

Life: enhanced.

The author of the piece does sound a slightly critical note:

Ms. Fuller rarely questions what the female audience wants. Nor is she inclined to judge the nature of its obsessions. The webzine, aimed at women aged 18 to 35, speaks to its readers in the voice of a spoiled, 13-year-old, gum-snapping brat. In one of her editor's notes, which she writes along with her own frenzied Twitter updates, Ms. Fuller exclaimed that Carrie Underwood was a "Big Biatch" for an exchange with Ms. Swift.

And yet she somehow managed to ignore some sterling exemplars of Fuller's batty, breathless, at times faintly moralizing Twitter feed. Such as:

I guess that's what the Internet is for.

Bonnie Fuller: Click To The Tabloid Queen's New Domain [Globe & Mail]

By now, you know the drill: almost immediately, commenters on news sites and around the web started pointing fingers at the mother, Shellie Ross, a prolific Twitter user with more than five thousand followers, after it was discovered that she'd posted a message about the weather a mere minute before her son was discovered in the pool - one of 70 tweets she'd already written that day. They also blamed her for tweeting a request for prayers minutes before learning the toddler had died - and, of course, for alerting readers to his death.

Any indignation over this - because that's the appropriate, immediate response to the tragedy - has been overtaken by collective shock at said vitriol, and the lack of humanity it seems to suggest. Wrote Conor Friedersdorf on the Atlantic's Daily Dish, "the callousness strangers direct via Internet at a grieving mother is a far more dire harbinger of where we're headed" than any dangerous dependence on technology. Madison McGraw, one of the most strident critics of Ross's parenting, spoke for critics when she tweeted, "Perhaps if Mrs. Ross had spent less time tweeting and more time playing with her son, this would not have happened." (If you check McGraw's Twitter, she recently added, "On my way to MSNBC to discuss if Bryson Ross would still be alive if mother wasn't tweeting.")

Let's say, for the purposes of argument, that McGraw, a woman who's never met this mother, is absolutely right: Ross had an internet addiction that made her neglect her family and led indisputably to her child's death. Are we pointing fingers at the bereaved mother, or at the technology that lured her away from her place at her children's side? Is she suggesting that this was an unstable, easily-influenced woman unfit to care for children (in which case surely she would have fallen prey to other distractions, right?) or that it was demon technology that led her astray? And let's say, which we cannot and should not, that all or some of that was true. It's just as true that this was a case where we saw the good of these same networking sites: thousands of strangers reaching out in prayer and comfort and solidarity, providing a community that one can only assume Ross - who has two other children and whose husband is deployed - valued. You couldn't have that good without the evil the critics claim. And if that comfort means nothing, well then, the criticism of strangers should mean even less.

Mom's Tweet As Son Was Dying Stirs Debate [USA Today]
Mom Shellie Ross' Tweet About Son's Death Sparks Debate Over Use of Twitter During Tragedy [ABC]
So She Tweeted It [Daily Dish]

The risk any celebrity runs while Twittering is that they provide a direct connection between themselves and the rest of the world, without any publicists or managers standing in between. Of course, some celebrities surely tweet under a publicist's eye (or have a publicist just tweet for them), but Lohan's Twitter account is often filled with rants aimed at her on again/off again girlfriend, Samantha Ronson, quips regarding her father's behavior, and, as of last week, notes on her involvement in the rescue of 40 trafficked children in India while in the country filming a BBC documentary.

"Over *40 children saved* so far," Lohan tweeted, "Within one day's work...... This is what life is about..... Doing THIS is a life worth living!!!" The trouble is, Lohan didn't actually do anything, at least not according to Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the group that organized the raids on 15 New Delhi "workshops" where children were being forced into labor. Bhuwan, a lawyer who spoke on behalf of the organization, told the Telegraph that Lohan "was not even in the country when this raid happened."

Marina Hyde of the Guardian had a few less-than-pleasant words for Lohan over the scandal, bringing up everything from Lohan's reported drug addiction to her spray-tan line to her past public declarations of do-gooding to point out that the starlet has turned a very serious situation into a pathetic celebrity spectacle. Hyde's article, though fairly harsh, has a point: what the hell does the BBC want to shoot a documentary about human trafficking with Lindsay Lohan for? It seems to come from the same place that possessed Ungaro to hire Lohan as an artistic director: her name, and what's left of her fame, seem to be fueling projects that would probably benefit from her absence.

It is hard to fault Lohan for wanting to get involved in the documentary if she believes it will truly help other women and children (and perhaps, in turn, help her get her own life back on track). And perhaps her notes on Twitter were the result of her seeming lack of ability to filter her thoughts before sharing them with the world. But in the end, it seems that the rescue of 40 children has turned into the Lindsay Lohan show, a statement on our inability to separate celebrities from the causes they support, and perhaps a statement on celebrities' inability to do good without expecting to become the star of their own humanitarianism. If Lindsay Lohan wants to help, fine. But it's time to start asking why we need a starlet attached in order to start paying attention to the stories of those who are seeking so much more than fame and fortune.

Lindsay Lohan Attacked Over Claims She Helped Rescue Over 40 Indian Children [Telegraph]
What Has India Done To Deserve Lindsay Lohan? [Guardian]

At My Wedding Twitterring And Facebooking At The Altar [YouTube]