While I was engaged in my early morning prep work--including but not limited to the application of various hypoallergenic salves and ointments, epidermal sandblasting, consumption of own urine and/or uncooked bacon, and (continued) scheming to unmask Bono as alien ambulatory reptile (cross reference: V and V: The Final Battle)--I overheard the peroxided ding-a-ling on the local "news" saying something about the much-anticipated wheeling of Britney Spears out and away from her spawn on some sort of gurney. Of course, sharing the misplaced priorities of much of the world, I whiplashed my neck to get a gander at a snippet of helicopter footage of a kind of medical van (paddy wagon?) at some nondescript Californian locale. Ms. Spears, I heard-tell, was allegedly under the influence of The Junk, as they say in blaxploitation films. In other words, she was hopped-up and low-down, nearing the terminus of a career trajectory which reminded me of that Mountain Climber game on The Price Is Right--wherein a yodeling Alpine-type ascends to the summit and then, if the contestant lacks price-guessing acumen vis-a-vis Extra Strength Tide or Excedrin PM, said climber drops off a cliff to his presumably bloody demise. (Although the implicit gore was long soft-pedaled by Mr. Barker.)
I know: "Britney, Shmitney," you say. And you are correct to be pooh-poohing, Mr. and Ms. Cynic-Pants, but what interests me more than Britney the human being is Britney the phenomenon. What is it about this low-class, KFC-lovin' dame from down south, who comes into some dough by way of a few Nabokovian pop ditties and, by the way, doesn't wear panties, that collectivizes America (and the western world?) in a community of "full-on haters," as the pesky Kids might say? What, in other words, brings about this Schadenfreude? We can't agree on whether toilet paper should hang over or under the roll, but consensus has been reached regarding Britney (that weird Parker Posey-looking dude on youtube notwithstanding): She is spoiled, insane, fat, white trashy, dumb, smelly (okay, I added that one), and a short-list contender for the Worst Young Mother of All Time.
In case you skipped German class for a smoke in the art supply room (cross reference: Pump Up The Volume), Schadenfreude is defined by Wiktionary, in its first citation, as the "malicious glee experienced from someone else's misfortune."
And yet Britney is an every[wo]man. (Did I just write that?) I don't mean to imply that every person is an umbrella samurai or that we all enjoy flashing our downtown goodies (and their cleanshaven suburbs) to the paparazzi. What I am saying is that--perhaps more than power--money corrupts our rationality. Or perhaps more to the point, money is power, and power is transformative. We have no right to say, "What a stupid fucking fat cow she is. Why don't they lock her up somewhere?" Why not? Because we are all stupid fucking fat cows in our own stupid fucking ways. Let's get down to proverbial brass tacks here: If I were born in the south to Nascar-lovin' yokels who bleached my hair, put me in lip gloss, and sent me off to Disney to whore myself out to that ubiquitous mouse, and then later I had a hit song and video targeting the pedophile demographic, then I'd probably be listless and chubby in my VMA performance, too.
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