Nathaniel

Shockey

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September 17, 2007

Britney Spears Didn’t Ask for This

It is amazing what has happened to Britney Spears since she became a star. The transformation was slow but steady and brutal. She’s such an icon in our culture that most of us feel quite comfortable verbally bashing her like the misshapen, shell of a person she seems. It’s sad, we say, but she asked for it by becoming the icon she now is.

I remember watching an episode of the “Late Late Show” with Craig Ferguson in which he stood up for about 10 minutes and spoke quite personally about his past alcoholism, as it related to Britney Spears’s short stint in rehab. He spoke about his unwillingness to make a joke about Britney Spears at the time because, quite frankly, he had to look himself in the mirror and sleep at night. It was interesting because during every phrase or sentence, it kept seeming like he was about to make a joke, and the audience would sometimes begin to laugh at these jokes that never came. But he didn’t give in. He spoke from the heart, and for me, it was probably one of the most riveting, affecting monologues I’d ever seen on television.

Granted, he takes cheap jabs at celebrities all the time, and this is not at all an attempt to raise Craig Ferguson up on a moral pedestal. But his words meant a lot to me, and when I consider what just went down with Britney Spears at the VMAs, I couldn’t help but remember that monologue.

I’ve seen some of the reactions, including a brutal thrashing by Perez Hilton, some jabs by David Letterman, and a few scathing comments posted throughout the internet.

Many people are aware of Sarah Silverman’s brief routine at the VMAs, during which she called Britney’s children the two most adorable little mistakes she’d ever seen. Rumor has it that Britney heard about this briefly before her lackluster performance, and there is reason to believe that she was on the verge of breaking down the entire time because of Silverman’s scathing personal comments. It would explain a lot. But whether or not this is true is not really important. What sucks is that anyone feels comfortable saying such horrible things about a person simply because she is famous and, therefore, she asked for it.

Britney Spears has done some incredibly stupid things, made some terrible choices and quite frankly she seems to have fallen so low that she can barely stand. But she’s a mother, a daughter and, lest we forget, she has a soul. Yes, we pity her, but can’t we pity her enough to shut up for a second about the mess she seems to have made of her life?

There is an astounding detachment that forms via the mystical screens of our TVs and laptops that separate the regular people at home from the icons in the public spotlight – us and them, those who are entertained and those who entertain.

If given the choice to be famous and rich at the cost of being constantly in the spotlight, judged, celebrated, and ridiculed for everything you ever did, I wonder what most of us would choose. I’d rather be me than Britney Spears right now, or Michael Vick, or Lindsay Lohan, or even Bill Belichick, for that matter. They’ve all made huge mistakes in one manner or another, some more costly than others.

But the common theme is the way they are publicly lashed. But they asked for it. They chose to become famous, to be worshiped or ridiculed when we deem necessary.

They shouldn’t have to make that choice. We worship them as though they are no longer human, and some of them begin to believe that they are better than human, and for this, we stop treating them like the humans they actually are. But yes, they are humans. And the poisonous combination of wealth and fame ruins people on a daily basis.

It is a vicious circle, because who wouldn’t want to be immortalized if given the chance? It’s that delicious apple hanging from the tree of good and evil that none of us could have ever resisted.

But perhaps we could collectively begin to curb the situation, to change our attitudes, to remind ourselves that no matter how famous a person may be, whether or not we ever see them anywhere but on those mystical screens we use at home, we are still watching a person. And if there is one idea we can hold true in this life, it is that there is nothing more important, no matter more serious and no situation more consequential than that of the human soul.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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