Cheap trick or Marketing gimmick?

Ok, this time I am expressing an opinion...not publishing another one of my original creations. I don't know how many of you have read in every newspaper/website or seen on television, that two of Bollywood's mega-celebrities have recently begun writing their own blogs. These two gentlemen, lets call them Mr Tall and Mr Short, are arguably two of the finest actors of their generation to be seen on the big screen - at least in Indian cinema. They are however, not the most media-savvy or adored people. Don't get me wrong, the people of the country absolutely LOVE them, but somehow they have never really endeared the media. I work with a News Channel and I can vouch for that - at least from what I have observed. There is however another gentleman, lets call him Mr. King, who is the media's darling (at least of the people who matter; everyone has detractors and some detract just to grab some attention) and rightly so, as he gives them what they want. He really knows how to play the publicity game and he manages to stay in the limelight, as much for his on-screen histrionics as for his off-screen business ventures and sports associations. He counts as his friends some of the most commercially successful directors, producers, actors, choreographers, designers, et al. He is smart, funny, witty, approachable, seems down to earth - a complete showman without appearing to be a publicity hound. Yet he keeps his personal life out of the spotlight. He gives the media just enough information as to keep them happy, but he is intelligent enough to not really reveal much either. He knows how to play the media well, and they certainly love him for it. He never makes pretenses of being the best actor around (he credits Mr Tall & Mr Short with that title), but he is definitely the bigger star - a superstar.
Everyone seemed happy with their own titles and life looked to be hunky-dory for all in Tinseltown. And it was. Until Mr Short, followed shortly by Mr Tall (I love that sentence somehow :P) started, believe-it-or-not BLOGGING! Now, there is nothing wrong with expressing yourself through a blog, especially if you are a much loved celebrity and people want to know more about you as an individual. But there is something definitely wrong if you start taking potshots at your colleagues, and extremely offensive one's at that. Mr Tall wrote some nasty stuff about one of his co-stars of yesteryears (you see Mr Tall is a sextegenerian who still romances nubile 18 year old nymphets and 60 year old golden dreamgirls with equal aplomb) followed by taking some potshots at the Minister of Health of all people! Now, the Minister definitely deserves to get his head checked, so I have nothing against people detracting him. But, Mr Tall was not satisfied with putting down another sextegenerian and a Union Minister. No Sirree. His ego had not got a sufficient enough boost. Or maybe his blog had not got enough visitors. Considering he was paid a pretty obscene amount of money (some put the figure at a whopping $27 million or Rs.115 crores), his sponsors want to see hits/comments or whatever it is that they will help them calculate the ROI. Hence, Mr Tall decides to turn his attentions to Mr King. He points out, in a LOT of detail mind you, how it is that when he was hosting a certain show on Television the show was garnering X number of Rating points, but now that Mr King is hosting another show on the same channel, the ratings seem to have slipped way beyond expectations. What he fails to mention in this analysis is that the ratings of EVERY show in the prime-time band have taken a hit following the launch of the IPL Cricket Carnival, the Baap of all Manoranjan. What he also goes on to mention is a little fact that absolutely no one in the industry was even aware of - he had been offered the same show which is currently being hosted by Mr King, but he had thought that it was not good enough for him and hence rejected it. Sour grapes anyone??
Now coming to Mr Short. He, on the other hand made some very strange remarks in his latest blog post. He talks in detail about a very smelly dog who is in desperate need of a bath, and who licks his feet, is fed biscuits by Mr Short, and generally does everything a lovable attention-seeking pooch does. Nothing wrong with this, except that the dog in question quite co-incidentally is named after......(big drum roll) Mr King! Mr Short goes on to clarify that the caretakers of his vacation home adopted and named the pooch after the superstar, and he had no idea till after he bought the house from the previous owners that the house comes free with caretakers and dog. Do I sense an insecurity complex (an Eiffel Tower sized one) here? The post in its entirety seems innocent enough, however the media nevertheless is making a huge fuss over it. Picking up only those points which highlight the derogatory comments and completely ignoring the explanations by Mr Short. Mr King however, is too busy to even have the time to reply as he has his fingers in too many pies at the moment - what with owning a team in the aforementioned IPL to hosting his own show to creating animated movies in his SFX company to producing movies to actually acting in them.
What no one seems to see however, is that in all the resulting fracas, the blogs of both Mr Tall and Mr Short are getting way more publicity/hits/comments/page views than normal and in fact, most people (yours truly included) are realizing for the first time that such blogs even exist in the blogosphere. So while, they got a lot of negative publicity for writing what they did, the negative publicity is bringing in the eyeballs which is what the sponsors wanted. So the sponsors laugh all the way to the bank, the gentlemen get their 15 minutes of fame and a chance to get back at a rival who has consistenly outshone them in popularity and commercial viability, and the consumers get some sleaze, which is what most attracts them anyway.
But what the more enlightened people like you and I need to do is to sift through all the pfaff and see the real picture. And coming back to the title of this post, I leave to all of us to decide whether this is a cheap trick to get back at someone or whether it really is a well-thought out marketing gimmick that the "Intelligentia" in the media and consumer world are falling for.