Oh for GOD'S sake, Britney, aren't your 15 minutes about UP??

The BBQ Pit
1

I am SO tired of having every little hijink of yours featured prominently on the news. :mad: It’s worse than Paris Hilton, really. And it’s been going on FAR longer, with even less content as time goes by. This morning it’s oh-nos because (gasp!) the Drama Queen has been taken by ambulance to the hospital for “mental evaluation” (and don’t get me started on the size of the police escort this evidently required).

And how many other troubled entertainment industry personalities were also confined for mental evaluation yesterday? We’ll never know because they don’t merit headlines.

And that’s the thing that grinds my guts the most: why DOES this…this…twerp merit the attention she receives? Anymore, she’s nothing but the quintessential Celebrity with a capital C, the person who is famous for being famous.

Go AWAYYYYYYYYY.

Gah.

Thank you for listening.

2

Sean Young went into rehab yesterday.

Just so you know.
I personally don’t get entertainment news at all. I don’t get celebrity watching. Marrriage, birth, divorce and death announcements are all I’m interested in, other than the actual product they are delivering to me like a movie or music.

3

I’m sad for Britney. Of course, sometimes we bring heartache upon ourselves, and she and her family and friends have certainly contributed to her breakdown. But the word on the street is that last night’s trip to the mental ward was planned ahead of time for a middle of the night transport so as NOT to be a big deal, which, she can’t avoid anymore.

For the sake of her two children, completely innocent, who probably still love their mommy because they don’t know what she’s done wrong, I hope she finds some kind of peace soon enough. I’m afraid, however, that peace may end up being ‘eternal’. When you look back at her rise and fall, to some it’s entertaining, to me, it’s heartbreaking.

I won’t go so far as to say the classic ‘leave britney alone’, but a touch of humanity in this whole story at some point, from some news/entertainment outlet would be refreshing for sure.

4

Why does she get the attention? Easy-it sells. People want to read about her, ergo, the press gives them what they want.

5

Um, actually she’s famous because she has seven international hit albums, two dozen international hit singles and several dozen awards of greater or lesser importance.

Plus, she’s Britney, bitch.

I suppose if I noted that you’re free to turn off the TV when it switches to Britney coverage someone would yell at me. So I won’t.

6

I was going to say that the only time I’m even aware of what’s happening with Britney is when I choose to go SEE what’s happening. I somehow have escaped the bombardment.

7

The sad part, IMNSHO, is that you, I, and many others like us, who wish she’d go away are still giving her, and her hype machine, space in our heads. I don’t think I’ve knowingly listened to a single song of hers, seen more than a few images of her “work” and those mostly in commercials that I couldn’t turn off quickly enough.

But I know who she was married to, I know about her annulment, and how many children she has. I know similar details about other celebs whom I couldn’t care less about (Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Lindsey Lohan) for the same reasons - the information is damned near at saturation level. I make jokes about living in a cave, I couldn’t recognize Deal or No Deal from a verbal description of it, and I still know too much about this woman’s train wreck of a life. And that her sister may be following her lead.

After a certain point, it becomes human nature to want to know what happened next to the person, or character, that one has heard about. And that’s what I believe is going on here: the celebrity train wreck lives that I’d mentioned are well publicized because often news is being marketed as entertainment. And these characters (and I use the word with full recognition of all the ways that it may be applied in these cases) focus audience attention even more that JR Ewing had when he got shot.

sigh

If people would stop paying attention, it might go away. But by the same token, I don’t think it is. Of course, let’s be honest - it’s not exactly a completely new phenomenon: In the years since they were written many works of Virgil have been partially, or completely lost. Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars has never been in danger, it seems. (Though I wonder how it was that his Lives of Famous Whores was allowed to disappear.)

I think there’s a reason for that.
ETA: fatgail, Otto, seriously, how do you manage to avoid the bombardment? I don’t have cable, I don’t watch TV more than an hour or two a week, I don’t listen to much radio, I read the paper, but not religiously. And usually I only skim the entertainment news. And I still know more than I want to about the woman’s trainwreck.

8

“Dad, who was Britany Spears?”

“Well son, she was a scary lady who lived in the magazine racks at the check out isles at the grocery store waiting to steal away children who tried to touch the candy rack.”

9

Just to make the obvious comparison, Sean Young entered rehab yesterday with no media coverage, save for one paragraph on IMDB, because no one cares.

10

I end up watching Brittany News Channel when my coworkers tune in. Just yesterday the heads talking were discussing the “fact” that unlike the rest of our economy the “Oh, my God, Brittany!” industry is growing, and producing 170 million a year in commerce.

So, hey, let’s all thank her for saving the American economy!

Tris

11

I don’t entirely avoid it. I watch “The Soup” and “Best Week Ever” and they’re usually good for a couple minutes each per week. And the “Gay Pimping with Jonny McGovern” podcast can be counted on to have at least a half-hour per show dissecting the latest. But I don’t read articles about her, I don’t watch Access Entertanment Insider dot TMZ or any of that tabloid stuff. I know the headlines but I don’t know the details, is what it amounts to.

12

I think her first couple of albums were a lot of fun. I like all types of music, POP isn’t my ‘central genre’, but “Hit me Baby One More Time” was a blast to dance to. I guess it’s because I don’t despise her or think she’s inherently ‘worthless’ that her story is sad to me. Yes, there’s a LOT more important stuff going on in the world, of course, but man, to see someone crash so quickly is scary.

Just like we decry famous people getting more help, attention, resources, why don’t they get any more compassion or sympathy? If she was your sister you’d be really ripped up at the names people call her and you’d want her to get help, wouldn’t you?

13

I don’t think any celebrity deserves the attention that the media gives them, but I don’t blame the celebrities themselves for it. The unavoidable truth is that the paparazi show up because the public wants to buy the Enquirers and watch this crap on Entertainment Tonight. It’s all about demand. I’ll never understand why anyone gives a shit who these people are fucking or what they’re wearing or any of the other mind-numbingly uninteresting, unimportant things that the tabloids cover so breathlessly but I guess I can at least begin to understand the schadenfruede that fat, unhappy, middle-aged housewives get from watching the Britneys and the Lohans and the Paris Hiltons of the world go down in flames. It’s a completely spiteful, jealousy-based, tiny-minded emotional impetus which drives the fascination with seeing beautiful, famous people destroy themselves, but it’s also very, very common and the press is just responding to the market.

14

My TV is my alarm clock, and it is set to a news station. I don’t mind when celebrity fluff takes up the last 5 minutes of the half hour segment. That’s my cue to get my lazy, fat ass out of bed and into the shower. Brittney, however, seems to invade the real (and I use that word loosely) news segments. So, my slumber is interrupted by her never-ending antics before I’m awake enough to find the remote and try to find the news station that has already passed the latest Spears incident.

15

Thank you both for your answers.
Otto, I think where we begin to diverge is that I’m defining knowing the headlines as more data than I want to have. :wink:

fatgail, I do feel sorry for her. And while I have little respect for what I’ve seen of her thinking, I’m not inclined to insult her for many of the things I’ve heard people castigate her for.

But I’m a mental health consumer. To say that her drama, by now, is entering the endgame of a very ill person with enablers all around her, is putting it mildly. I’ve seen, and dealt, with too damned many people who could be her, had they the attention for their every misstep. There is a certain point at which one has to accept that the mentally ill person has a responsibility to decide whether they will accept that what they have been doing isn’t working. Britney has, IMNSHO, passed that point without even pausing to look at it in the rear view mirror.

Her story has become pathetic, and terribly sad. And I can’t care. I’ll save my energies for caring, and helping, those persons who are trying to change their circumstances. Including myself, I’ll admit.

16

See, this just proves that you aren’t paying attention, because if you were you’d know Britney doesn’t use her rear view mirrors.

17

One reason she gets so much attention is she makes it easy. She courts the paparazzi, she lets the know where she’ll be, she talks to them, she gets in their cars, she dates them. The other day they were making a big deal about her being in tears after a fight with her manager or somebody and she went outside her home and sat on the curb by the gates where the photogs could see her and talk to her.

I think she has mental issues but I think her attention seeking is intentional and not involuntary. It would be great if everyone could stop giving her the attention so maybe she’d actually consider getting help but as long as she makes it easy for the paparazzi they will keep filming her.

At least it takes some attention away from their accusing Heath Ledger of drug use. “We have a video of him with some guys who said they did drugs together! He’s not doing drugs in the video but he’s with those guys so it must be true! We’re just going to keep speculating on his drug use instead of waiting for the actual toxicology results!”

Frankly, I think Brit didn’t like all the attention Heath was getting and broke out a new batch of crazy. Remember her last breakdown came around the time baby sis was getting all the press.

18

On a side note, I heard this morning on the radio that Britney’s music still earned her eight million last year. That is probably why she still relevant, she is in the top 10 of female musicians.

19

Cite? This allegation that she tells the paparazzi where she’s going, etc. is one that I’ve seen before but what is the basis for it? It sounds like victim blaming to me. A way that people can assuage their consciences by telling themselves that “She WANTS it. She LOVES this attention.” I doubt it.

20

Sean Young never flashed her cooter at me. :frowning: