If I see another picture of Brittany Spears and her semi-bald head I think I’ll puke. Is this really newsworthy considering all that is happening in Mid-East and Sudan and other places in the world where people are experiencing unimaginable suffering and other people are dodging the dangers to try to help?
The other day on the Today Show – I really need to find something else to watch while I’m exercising – there were two segments devoted to Brittany and her latest escapade. One psychologist explained that by shaving her head, Brittany was saying, “Here, I want to be real. This is who I am.”
Give me a break.
Another psychologist said that Brittany simply didn’t know what to do because Anna Nicole Smith had dominated the news for over a week. “Celebrities simply can’t handle it when they are not the hottest thing in the news.”
Give me another break. And it almost did when I whapped my leg with the hand weight.
First of all, people like that are only celebrities because the media has made them celebrities. Would the world have come to a screeching halt had the story of Brittany and the clippers been relegated to a brief footnote in the Entertainment section of newspapers and only reported on Entertainment Tonight?
Sometimes I’m ashamed to admit I’m a journalist.
Secondly, they are troubled women – oops, was for Ms. Smith – who are surrounded by people who enable their addictions and dysfunction because it’s fun living in the fast lane with lots of money and party-time all the time. Nobody wants to risk losing all that by really caring about them and maybe doing something to help.
I can feel sorry for them on that level. Nobody deserves to be used and abused by people who profess to be friends. But I don’t feel sorry for them for all the bad choices they have made and their inability to admit they have a problem.
We can all make excuses and rationalize our behaviors, but the bottom line is that we know when we are screwing up. We can lie to our family, our friends, the media, the general public, but we cannot lie to ourselves. I mean, we can try. We can say the words, but they don’t ring true when we are looking at our reflection in the mirror.
