Pretty soon Britney won't even have Chris Crocker on her side anymore.
Are there no other medical emergencies in California? what are theyre like 50 fucking cops/emt's there... wtf.
I'm sitting here trying to imagine how I'd spend $750K a month.
Understand that I have damned expensive tastes. I loves me my big rock and my Mulberry handbags and my embroidered Prada boots. Travel is the biggest turn-on the world has to offer (this side of Mr. R, of course). I've been known to shop in the same stores as Ms. Spears, though never on purpose.
But to burn through that kind of scratch, you'd have to join the Mercedes-of-the-month club AND support a private jet AND spend $5K/day on clothes AND pay a sweet handful of entourage...and you'd still have enough left over to pay rent at the Waldorf-Astoria or any other damned hotel in the world and buy yourself a nice piece of jewelry two on the side.
That's living just WAY large. (Of course, if it was me, I'd sprinkle a goodly chunk of it liberally over favored candidates and causes -- my Rich Bitch vice would be playing a wicked Lady Bountiful routine, which can be a better high than any drug the Spears can conjure. Money buys access -- and if I had that much, I'd budget about a third of it to give away, nd have a whole lot of fun doing it. There's not a door in the country I wouldn't pry open with it. Who needs the Chateau Marmont when you've got the keys to the Lincoln Bedroom?)
A waste of talent, which created a pile of money that's going to be wasted on the biggest waste of life seen in Hollywood for decades. Judging from the number of sane, functional former child actors out there (Natalie Portman, Brooke Shields, Jonathan Taylor Thomas), we know a lot these days about how to raise a kid under the hot lights and not have it melt their their minds and their humanity. Too bad the Spears didn't find the people who know how to do that, and use some of that money way back when to pay them what they're worth.
(Of course, if it was me, I'd sprinkle a goodly chunk of it liberally over favored candidates and causes -- my Rich Bitch vice would be playing a wicked Lady Bountiful routine, which can be a better high than any drug the Spears can conjure. Money buys access -- and if I had that much, I'd budget about a third of it to give away, nd have a whole lot of fun doing it. There's not a door in the country I wouldn't pry open with it. Who needs the Chateau Marmont when you've got the keys to the Lincoln Bedroom?)
You'd have Rush and Doughy Pantload calling you "The Liberal Dragon Lady" or something like that! 
Ever see a psychopathic boss sink a company, all on his ownsome?
That is what happens when nobody calls you on bullshit, ever. Until the world hauls off and demonstrates gravity to you. That usually doesn't happen to PsychoBosses, because corporate culture shields them from all consequences that don't actually land them in jail. Pop stars don't have as much hellroom.
Brittney is the archtype of the Bubble People. She's news because her pathology out in the open for all to see. Her disease is relevant to more than just the people around her and the newswhores who fixate on her, because EVERYBODY in this fucked-up culture wants to be her.
How many times have you seen someone get promoted from the ranks into management, and the VERY FIRST THING THEY DO is to wall themselves off from any and all feedback from below. They can't do anything about feedback from above. But the pervasive Bubble Culture of American management has already taken care of that one. What they're told from further up in the hierarchy is generally dysfunctional.
Right now, I'm thinking of someone whom I liked and trusted 8 years ago, and wouldn't trust behind my back today if I were wearing plate armor.
She accepted the promotion. She also accepted everything that came with it. Including the disease.
Ah, Britney Spears. I recall her in 2001 - young, impressionable, dumb as a box of hammers.
Anyone with half an eye could have seen this one coming. You know you're heading in the wrong direction when Paris Hilton advises you to lighten up.
Do you remember that classic Chris Rock routine where he says that the most important job a father can do is to keep his daughter "off the pole"?
"Because if you don't," Chris bellowed in rage, "You fucked up."
And that's the bottom line of this tragic situation, isn't it? It's not just fathers, after all. Britney's mom fucked up. Because Mommie Dearest pimped out Britney when she was a child, she fucked up Britney, fucked up Britney's children, fucked up Britney's sister. Can you imagine how bad it is, when the K-man--an irresponsible sleazeball with children from another relationship who he doesn't see because they don't make him money--is the responsible one?
Inexcusable.
Maybe I'm wrong, but whenever Britney's mom goes out in public, she should be wearing a Scarlet Letter, just like Hester Prynne did in the classic Hawthorne novel.
Except, of course, it should be a dollar sign, not an "A". After all,that's what she sacrificed her children for.
Was there a second ambulance to cart off Mom's book deal?
Wanderer- it's been like watching the car wreck you know is coming and can't stop. And as always that bit of morbid fascination.
Sadly many other folks hit the skids in life, they just get all the press coverage the Spear's girls get.
Mrs. R.,
I like your plan, but the reich wing would call it "Soros spending syndrome".
err- ...they DON'T get all the press coverage...
*turns red*
Uhm...going through 750K a month is fairly easy if you have bipolar.
I suspect old Britney is seriously mentally ill. No ONE wakes up every day as says "Another day, another opportunity to totally fuck up my life."
I'm probably going to get flamed, but Britney needs:
1. Serious and probably life-time mental health care.
2. Our compassion.
3. Her so-called parents, friends, and professional staff need our scorn and contempt.
Just because someone is ignorant, young and rich, doesn't mean they are immune from mental health issues.
"'Cause seriously, soon it won't be an ambulance taking you to the hospital."
Yeah, Britney would be my first choice in a death pool, followed closely by Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse.
And if I did have them in a death pool and hit, that would be the only reason to celebrate or mourn anything about them.
I suspect old Britney is seriously mentally ill.
You will get absolutely no argument on that score from me. She never needed to grow up, so she never did.
But I really don't think anybody know how to treat this. It's not like biochemically induced depression. That you can control with meds. If I had to hazard a complete layman's guess, I'd guess her problem is situational.
Suppose a kid gets raised by wolves (or somesuch), and grows past the point where she can learn language easily. Learning to talk is something our brains are primed to do at 1-5 years old. Mid 20s, not so much.
What the hell do you do then? Besides tending the victim over their entire lifespan, I mean.
What the hell do you do then? Besides tending the victim over their entire lifespan, I mean.
I concur. This is probably kind of bitchy of me, but whenever I feel like coming down on myself for being a trainwreck of a human life, I can look at Britney and say, "No L&L, you're just fenderbender: Lot's of metal-crunching sound and fury but no real structural damage. That poor Spears woman is an example of a trainwreck!"
I'm gonna say it here 'cause I said it to everyone I know...
I think the chick as a severe case of post-partum depression. One that turned into posst-partum psychosis.
She had two babies and a divorce in two years. At what 23 - 24 coupled with all the media pressure there aren't too many people who cold withstand that kind of pressure.
I truly feel bad for her and hope and pray she can get her life back together.
Brown Sugar
I know this sounds terrible, but one of Britney's chief problems is that she's dumb. A lot of unhappiness spreading through this generation is founded in a general lack of intellectual stimulation. Everything is about self-gratification via material items. Does Britney read? Does she have a hobby? Is she even interested in learning how to be a good parent?
The younger generation dismisses anything that doesn't resonate as 'cool.' But 'cool' is a killer of brain cells. No wonder so many need medication. I went through a depression when I was 22, before the days of anti-depressants. What pulled me out of it was a bit natural shock therapy (my mother became ill) and getting interested in SOMETHING. Anything outside this whole striving for materialism, constant adulation from the opposite sex, partying, mind-altering substances, you know the drill. Instead, I simply put my mind to work.
And I wasn't dumb. Who knows? Britney may have a very intelligent woman hiding in there. But right now, she has no anchor. Not even her kids. In her mind she's a star, a celebrity. Unfortunately, that isn't enough to hold a mind together.
Unfortunately, that isn't enough to hold a mind together.
But it is just enough to blow it to smithereens. 
The younger generation dismisses anything that doesn't resonate as 'cool.' But 'cool' is a killer of brain cells. No wonder so many need medication.
The younger generation goes through a systematic process which is, for all intents and purposes, designed to stamp out every last ember of learning ability that is in them. It is called "American education". Sadly, private schools are usually no better than the public ones, and often considerably worse.
I went through this 40 years ago, and my hatred of the experience, and the damage it does, is still fresh.
Most of us treat our kids like shit. And, as per usual, we never for a single moment allow ourselves to actually examine what we are doing.
Instead, we lie to ourselves endlessly.
Hypocrisy is America's defining sin.
I think you hit the nail on the head JJ.
Combined with the fact that her family and "handlers" apparently have no one among them who can sit her down and drill in to her fucking head that she needs professional help, it is a truly pathetic situation. You know when LAWYERS walk away from a legal 'whale' like her she is out of fucking control.
Whatever you think of KFed at least someone has the interests of the kids in mind...whether he gets paid or not. Lord knows he'll likely do a better job than Britney's mother would do if she got her claws in them.
The whole family reinforces the notion that money doesn't buy happiness...or class for that matter.
JJ, post-partum psychosis does sound really plausible -- the way she treats her kids is very consistent with the desperation women feel in the throes of this. So does all the self-medication.
But what are the odds that she'll find her way to a doctor who will treat this? And even if she did, what are the odds she'd listen to him/her?
Mimi, I did a riff on this here a few months back -- but would also refer you to Benjamin Barber's "Consumed," if you haven't read it already. (Hmm. May need to blog that.)
Green: There's no shortage of lawyers in LA -- though she's pretty much run through the well-connected ones who have the chops to keep her out. Next stop: Joe's House 'o Torts, a storefront operation down on Pico and 13th. Joe will take her on for the sake of the publicity -- but since nobody down at the courthouse knows him (except for that bit of cockfighting defense work he's done, he won't have Paris Hilton's chances in heaven of keeping her from doing some real serious time.
And after she wanders off from the minimum security prison along about Day 11 of her 120-day sentence, it's going to be off to Frontera -- which ain't no spa. (They don't even have a masseuse on staff there, unless you count the matron who does the cavity searches. And there's no 24-hour on-call chef, either. Imagine the hardship on our poor little Brittany.)
Then again, all this thrashing about may just be the result of all that crazy blind faith trust in Bush.
/snark.
I do, strangely, feel somewhat bad for Britney. She's obviously on a planet of her own making but she's also clearly hurting and I don't enjoy witnessing that any more than I enjoy listening to her music.
I know this sounds terrible, but one of Britney's chief problems is that she's dumb.
I have a friend who would agree with you wholeheartedly. A few years ago she was on the project team for one of Britney's DVDs, and she had the misfortune of interacting with her and her entourage a few times. She came away with two observations:
* In her opinion, Britney has some sort of developmental disability (what used to be called "mental retardation"), possibly combined with a case of ADHD. Not only did Britney seem slow on the uptake, she also seemed weirdly disconnected, as if most of the stimuli from the outside world simply wasn't getting through.
* Whatever her illness was, Britney's handlers appeared determined not simply to shield her from the consequences of it, but to feed it and make it worse. My friend was profoundly creeped out from working with them.
Ever since I heard all that, I've felt really sorry for her. At a very early age -- and being too disabled to protect herself -- she fell in with a pack of vampires (led by her mother). By now they've just about drained her completely, and she'll be off to the discard pile when they're done.
Well, one can acquire both dumbness and ADHD simply by going through severe deprivation.
I'll never forget the museum director who was explaining he set up an exploratory display for kids in the Bronx... and he includes things like Scotch tape. These kids had never seen Scotch tape.
That's deprivation from poverty. But there's also deprivation from excess; like Stormcrow's been saying, when you've never been anything but a puppet, you might have missed the window.
I read "Consumed." What a scary book. It explains a lot about many people who seem a molecule deep.
Hypocrisy is America's defining sin.
Yes, that's one of them. The other one is narcissism.
* In her opinion, Britney has some sort of developmental disability (what used to be called "mental retardation"), possibly combined with a case of ADHD.
I read once, in Psychology Today, an article about a "new" syndrome called "Dumb Blond Syndrome". Its archetype was a patient who had been in and out of mental institutions with various diagnoses for years, and she finally got a female therapist, who wasn't quite as distracted by the fact that the patient was fabulously beautiful, and who finally tested her IQ and found the patient wasn't mentally ill at all, but was mentally retarded. Once they treated her for her real problem, the other problems disappeared.
D.R. Scott I agree with you. Jail the mom for pimping and pandering.
Britney is symbolic of what is wrong with America, with Disney, and with unrestricted amoral capitalism. What happens after the purity balls, the beauty pageants, and "the pretty" when it starts to go away? What could serve to worse equip a person for life? And how much profit is there in creating and then killing a monster?
I went over to TMZ.com and her situation is totally fucked up. The hospital has released her after only 36 hours (they had the legal right to keep her as long as 72 hours) and after she kept on throwing tantrums demanding that she be let out. On top of that, her family invited Dr. Phil to visit her (despite the fact that she didn't give her own consent to the visit) and he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade her to come on his show so he could stage an intervention and "help" her.
With a hospital kowtowing to her demands, a self-serving TV shrink, and her stage parents, this poor woman has no chance of ever getting better. It's a tragedy, really. The only good thing is that she has lost all custody and visitation rights of her children so they won't be subjected to her madness.
>That's deprivation from poverty. But there's also deprivation from excess;<
There's a reason psychiatrists have found that extremely-rich kids and extremely-poor ones have the exact same kind of deprivation-related issues.
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