Spears
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday, Feb. 1:
Ah, young adulthood - a time when newfound freedom and poor judgment collide, sometimes spectacularly. Drink till you puke, shop till your credit's ruined, party all night, sleep all day, abuse your body and fall in love for all the wrong reasons.
Your parents worry. Once in a while, the police show up. But the tabloids hardly ever write about it.
Then there's Britney Spears, whose every misstep plays out with the entire world watching. At 26, she's experienced higher highs and lower lows than most people will ever know - from uber-successful pop maven to unfit mother and substance abuser - in full view of the cameras.
Every moves plays out like a tragic pop song. Two failed marriages, two babies, an ugly custody battle in which she lost visitation rights. The pack of photographers who trail Spears caught her shaving her head, shopping for a car in her wedding dress, and swimming in the ocean in her underwear. Photos showed her attacking a photographer's car with an umbrella, weeping on a curb after a reportedly rocky reunion with her parents, being wheeled into an ambulance after a confrontation with her ex over the kids. Distanced from her family, she's even invited photographers into her inner circle.
The papers revel in her maternal failings and her emotional meltdowns. It is perhaps the most thoroughly documented mental breakdown ever, and it isn't pretty.
If you believe half of what you read, which you probably shouldn't, then it's easy to conclude that Spears is selfish and unstable, bent on self-destruction. That's true of a lot of people, sadly. But those transgressions are harder to live down when they play out in the white-hot limelight. Mistakes look so much better in the rear-view mirror than through the long lens of a paparazzi camera.
