Trying to make the story about the story be the story
Laughs End With Bizarre Britney in Rehab
Britney Spears has been ridiculed for everything from her 55-hour first marriage to backup-dancer second husband and her recent pantyless partying escapades. Now that she’s entered rehab, though, the joke is over.
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“This girl is out of control,” Joy Behar, a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” said Monday. “And, she’s in a lot of trouble. A lot of people feel this is self-mutilation.”Craig Ferguson, host of CBS “The Late Late Show,” said that after seeing photos of Spears’ shaved head, he reconsidered making jokes at the expense of the “vulnerable.”
“For me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it,” he told viewers Monday. “It should be about attacking the powerful – the politicians, the Trumps, the blowhards – going after them. We shouldn’t be attacking the vulnerable.”
Oh, please. Where does this sanctimonious crap come from? Anna Nicole Smith was comedy fodder until her son died (and maybe after then, and maybe even after she died, for some), regardless of how much of a train wreck that was. We consume and mock and laugh and our celebs are rich and tragic because of our adulation. There’s a lot of stuff going on in our celeb culture and I don’t pretend to try and unpack it here in one paragraph, but the media can take their self-appointed respectable tone and screw off, because if Ferguson won’t make Britney jokes, someone else will. And should. Definitely should.