Jim Dwyer in the NYT has a thought-provoking piece on the down side of privilege:

This week, when the actor Heath Ledger could not be awakened in his apartment, a masseuse made calls to an actress friend of Mr. Ledger’s in California before calling for emergency help. The actress dispatched several private security guards, who happened to be in the neighborhood. They arrived at the same moment as emergency medical workers.

Dwyer is too polite to say it, but the actress friend, according to other reports, was Mary-Kate Olsen; those same reports say the two were an item, but then, they also say Ledger and model Sophie Ward were involved. (I don’t like to spread rumors or anything, but they also hint Ledger and model Helena Christensen hadn’t ever pulled the plug on their relationship.)

In any case, from the perspective of some Ledger had a lot to live for. Dwyer’s article is about how folks like him—and he cites Nelson Rockefeller as another example—live inside a floating bubble that, while it makes day-to-day life more bearable, carries with it a mindset that can seem a bit … insular when trouble strikes. In Rockefeller’s case, the 25-year-old woman he was with called an ambulance only after an hour of activity that might have been highly amusing in a ’40s screwball comedy. In Ledger’s, the masseuse who came by for a scheduled appointment touched his cold body and called … one of the Olsen Twins.

Dwyer:

“You have children 6 years old who know to call 911 when someone is sick,” said Lou Palumbo, who owns an agency that provides private security to celebrities and heads of state. “What you find is that people in entertainment, sports, politics, people with a lot of money who might not be famous, they’re operating with their own set of rules. They’re under the impression that concessions are made for them every day. They want us to do damage control.”