People Who Have Clearly Lost Their Minds

Of course, it goes without saying that we give our national (and international) celebrities a particularly generous leeway when it comes to expectations of their behavior.  We don't just expect that they will be outrageous and over the top, we hope they would be.  How disappointed would we be if Madonna were to settle down, crank out a few puppies and live the domesticated life behind closed doors?  Wait... she did?  What a rip off! 

We smile when Dennis Rodman wears a wedding dress to his wedding.  We love it when Bjork wears a stork to an awards show.  It's so cute when Matthew McConaughey is arrested for banging his bongos naked in his apartment.  (OK, that was cute)  Absurdity amuses us and makes us smile and say, "Awww." 

As a nation, we crave the stories of outlandish behavior and star temper tantrums.  We have whole racks at the supermarket dedicated to the reporting of the most intimate news of the personal lives of such people, just hoping that someone will drop their basket and come a little bit more unglued than what is socially anticipated.

From People Magazine to The Star to The Sun to The Weekly World News to Entertainment Weekly to The Globe and on and on and on, our hunger for what they are doing, what they are thinking, where they are going and with whom they are doing all of that is damned near insatiable.  

The good news is that this is a situation where supply and demand tend to feed off themselves just beautifully.  Although the paparazzi is more than willing to go the distance to get the most intimate of stories for their own respective rag, the celebrities seem perfectly content to deliver the goods all on their own.

Take for instance, Poor Britney.  Poor Britney, we have learned through too many interviews and much too much overexposure, is just a dumb little white trash girl under all that posh make up and lighting.  She is the classic example of a public figure who would have benefited astronomically from some of that good, old-fashioned "Hollywood Mystique" of the past.  Her marriage to wannabe rapper, Kevin Federwhine was scrutinized from beginning until its recent end and likely will continue beyond "the end" since Kev Fed has promised to make Britney's life a living hell and the courtroom door a revolving one.  I suspect we are only moments away from the shots of KevFed camped out on the lawn of Brit's trailer court, ala Peter Holm (Show me your media-ho-ness if you know that one!  I know the Media Ho will know)! 

Not since Michael Jackson has a public figure turned into such a caricature of themselves.  First, in February of this year while allegedly trying to elude photographers in a Princess Di sort of way, Brit sped away in her car with her five month old son, Sean Preston, sitting on her lap:

Pretty much anyone knows you just don't do that and you especially just don't do that when you are doing it to avoid photographers who generally have these things called cameras with them.  Cameras may not steal your soul as was one thought, but they can sure steal any degree of dignity you have left in a matter of a few shutter snaps.

Doh!  She just should not oughta done that.

Of the incident, Britney talks about how terrified she was of the paparazzi, reluctantly admits that she made a mistake, but also says, "I did it with my dad!  I'd sit on his lap and I drive.  We're country!"  Um, yeah, maybe you WERE country, but now you're CITY and Malibu isn't the town to be comparing to Backwoods, Louisiana where you were raised, girl.  In CITY, no matter what, you jam your kid into a car seat.  If you are fleeing for your life from the Amityville Horror house, that kid better be strapped in and tightly buckled before you gun it.

Britney again came under scrutiny two months after that when she rushed little Sean Preston into the emergency room after he became "groggy and tearful."  This came 6 days after the tot bailed out of his high chair and smashed his head on the floor.  Medical officials became suspicious and contacted Los Angeles country child welfare officials to investigate.  The social workers were escorted to Spears' home by sheriff's deputies.

The Newark Bears, a minor league baseball team from New Jersey, hosted a "Britney Spears Baby Safety Night" to spread the word about keeping little tykes safe.

The previous Christmas, Brit and Kev transformed little Sean Preston's bedroom into a nativity scene, complete with a cherrywood manger, six life-size waxwork models and several life-size toy donkeys and cattle.  Now there's some nightmare material for a baby.  But then, who hasn't thought of transforming their baby's room into a stable?

(New meaning to the oft-barked, "CLOSE THAT DOOR, were you born in a BARN?")

I'm sure anyone who really was their friend that year gifted them with coupons for plenty of child counseling.  I hope Li'l Sean Preston isn't worried about what they'll do to him on his 33rd Easter.

Then, poor Britney got snagged again this day:

Naw, it wasn't for wearing the most godawful, ugliest, gofugyourself.com-worthy outfit on earth, although that is another problem altogether. I mean look at that little pink whale tail and those low-butted jeans!  That's somebody's mama!!

If it's true that she is single-handedly responsible for the trends of tramp stamps, whale tails, low-rise jeans and navel piercings then for that alone, she should be condemned to some special kind of fat woman hell.

But what we are talking about is what happened later:

So far, so good.  Got the drink in one hand, the kid in the other, the foul, disdainful and aloof expression securely entrenched on her face when:

Shit!

SHIIIITTTT!!

Britney tripped on her too long pant legs and body guards moved in for the save!  Fortunately, baby Sean Preston suffered no ill-effects from his near-encounter with the pavement and even more importantly, Britney managed to not spill her drink in the process.

She was, however, heard to say, "This is why I need a gun" because people looked at her when she nearly dumped her kid.

Are people just being too hard on Poor Britney or is Britney truly a walking disaster?  Earlier that same week, reporters got their own whale tails all in a bunch because they spotted her driving with Sean Preston facing forwards in his baby seat instead of toward the back of the car.  Presumably, this does not mean the child was actually backwards in his baby seat, but more accurately that his baby seat was not facing the rear of the car as is prescribed in Baby Safety 101.  Perish the thought!

Cameth the word that Britney and Kev Fed were expecting their second child, just like their psychic predicted.  Still the bad guy reporters wouldn't let up after seeing her "sunning her bump" for two hours in 80 degree heat near her Mailbu home. 

Later, when she changed her entire look for a Harper's Bazaar photo spread (and after all that bad baby press, who'd want to be recognized?), reports surfaced that she was endangering her little unborn Federline with the chemicals in her hair dye that could cause birth defects.

Baby Sutton Pierce was born in the early morning hours of September 12 by cesarean section, presumably without sun damage.  He was promptly renamed Jayden James and God Help Us Every One.

So who has lost their minds here, Britney or the press?  Really, it's hard to say.  Having been a mom for almost 30 years nonstop through six children, I can tell you that I've done some really dumbass things with my kids, even through the best of intentions.  I, however, am not world famous and under constant scrutiny, thank the gods.  If I were Miss Brit, after the first incident, I'd personally hire some Mary Poppins type to go everywhere with me and save me from myself.  The girl makes more money than Oral Roberts ever handed God on a silver platter and can definitely afford it.  Admitting that you have a problem is the first step and Brit, honey, if you have not yet figured out that you're in way over your head, I'm going to have to write a much longer column on you in a year or two.

Who else has lost their minds?

Aside from the whole, "I think he actually did it, as does the civil court he was tried in after criminal court" thing, OJ Simpson really went above and beyond this month when it was revealed that he would be unveiling a book and two-night interview detailing how he would have killed his ex-wife, Nicole Simpson and her waiter for the night, Ron Goldman had he done it.  This is likely to be, I'm sure, completely different from how they were actually killed since he has now had about 10 years to work out the details.  He was aptly titling the project, "If I Did It."  As soon as it was announced, public outcry started, led appropriately enough by Ron Goldman's father, Fred Goldman.  Evidently, the idea of OJ making money off the the blood and bones of his son by describing how he actually would have killed him if he had committed the murders didn't set well with him.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation (News Corporation owns Fox Broadcasting, who were to televise the interview and also owns HarperCollins, whose subsidy, ReganBooks, was to publish the book) apologized for even considering the project, saying, "I and senior management agree that this was an ill-considered project. We are determined that the individual or individuals who perpetrated this scheme are made to pay.  We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

OJ, who stood to make 3.5 million dollars from the book and 2 night interview (previously to have been broadcast on Fox on November 27 and 29) feels that the cancellation was racially motivated.  When learning about the cancellation of the project, OJ threw his golf club and ranted, "Black man can't get no justice in this country. If I had written a book about how I would murder Whitney Houston and some brother who was doing her, nobody would have said a damn thing; but because I described how I would have killed two white people, the man comes down on me for being uppity."

The book was briefly offered on ebay with bids as high as $1500 and one (thought to be fictitious) for over $1 million.  Ebay freaked out and pulled the listings.

O.J. Simpson announced that he would spend Thanksgiving afternoon serving a gourmet dinner to needy residents of the Miami suburb of Pinecrest. Although Mr. Simpson's appearance at the Pinecrest Polo Association has been called “a cynical attempt to repair his image,” his attorney, Yale Galanter, insists, “This is coming from the heart. O.J. knows what it’s like to squeeze by on a $30,000-a-month pension while living in a modest, middle-six-figure house.”

Well thank goodness for that!  I guess if you're going to be needy, do it in Malibu.

If it's not Mel Gibson ranting drunkenly about the Jews or OJ being persecuted by the man for not being allowed to describe how he could have killed a couple of white people (if he'd done it), it's Kramer going psycho on a couple of hecklers.

At the Laugh Factory, a Los Angeles based comedy club, actor Michael Richards (who played that cuh-razy neighbor, Cosmo Kramer, on "Seinfeld") was doing a stand up comedy bit when two African-American men began to heckle him and he pretty much lost his mind:

Since then, he has appeared on David Letterman (the same night Jerry Seinfield, his Seinfield boss and co-star, was featured to promote the newest release of "Seinfeld" episodes on DVD) and apologized, avowing to find the root from which all racial tension springs, not just in himself, but in the whole entire world.  He has also hired a spin doctor (a Jewish guy with "deep connections to the black community), Howard Rubenstein, to fix things up.  Calls were promptly made to Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton.

I wonder if that will help.

Lastly, I have to pick on Tom Cruise a bit, which these days is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.  At his wedding reception, his wife, Katie Holmes or now I guess, Katie Cruise (is that not just so precious?) was "completely touched — laughing, loving him and enjoying him.." when he serenaded her with...

what?

...the Righteous Brothers' song, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."

I mean really, WTF???

I love my little mountain home where I can read about this kind of madness and know it's far, far away!