Neither Demi Moore Nor Twitter Saved Anybody's LifeNeither Demi Moore Nor Twitter Saved Anybody's Life

I love Twitter, and I think Demi Moore is reasonably likable and talented, but it's ridiculous to give either the online service or the semi-retired movie star credit for saving the life of a San Jose, Calif., girl who was threatening suicide.E! Online's coverage of the event is typical: "Demi Moore, Twitter Save Lives":

The article then spells out exactly what Demi's involvement in the incident was: She replied to the girl's message.

That's it. She replied. Nothing more.

Demi actually did very little to save that girl's life. Other people deserve more credit: The people who read Demi's tweet and alerted San Jose police. The police who responded, and the dispatcher who sent out the cops. And let's not forget about the people who work at the mental institution where the girl was sent. And the girl herself, should she decide to do the hard work of exorcising the demons from her head and choose life.

I don't mean to pick on Demi Moore here. In fact, she did a good deed that day, and deserves to be proud of herself.

Likewise, Twitter is a wonderful invention.

But it's a sign of misplaced priorities that we credit the celebrity, and the technology, with saving the life, rather than the hard-working ordinary cops and civil servants who really did the work, as well as the decent citizens who decided to contact the authorities to save the life of a stranger.

This kind of thing has happened before. For example, when blogger James Karl Buck got free of an Egyptian jail after tweeting the word "ARRESTED," TechCrunch blogged: "Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice."

Blogger Prokofy Neva fired back that Twitter had little to do with that incident -- Buck was freed because he is a citizen of America, a global superpower on which Egypt depends for foreign aid. She wrote, angrily, that the Buck incident was typical of something that happens all too often in the developing world -- American journalists rely on local translators and fixers, then the Americans get in trouble, but they get off lightly because of American clout. However, the local contacts are left behind to languish in prison hellholes. Likewise: Buck was freed, but his native translator was not so lucky.

The headline on TechCrunch's article, she said, should have been: "$29 Billion in US Foreign Aid to Egypt in 30 Years Saves Twittering College Kid." Putting the focus on Twitter is wrong; it takes focus away from real, international suffering.

Likewise, in the current recession, the police and public-health services that actually saved that San Jose girl's life are facing budget challenges all over America, and focusing the story on sexy technology and a movie star is wrong.

P.S. I know this story is a couple of weeks old -- I was barely aware of it when it happened, but I stumbled across it recently while researching something else and the coverage bugged me.