White Trash Woes

I've held myself back from commenting on Brittany Spears, and the likes of the other limited talent but overexposed posse of young women, littered on the pages of enough magazines to have spawned a whole new industry or two. But the recent revelation of her 16 year old sister that she, too, is pregnant is beyond belief. The best part of this is that their mother, that woman whose parenting skills warrant dissection of a different sort, had written a book about just that--parenting. Amazing, isn't it? I find it so. It is just another example of the disintegration of so much that is wrong in our culture of voyeurism and exploitation.

First, let me say, I find Brittany's travails more tragic than funny or amusing. She could, in a dozen years or so, end up the way of a much more talented, but equally troubled mega star, Michael Jackson. Now, whether she ends up on the headlines again for child molestation is not the question. But simply that her troubled life, which didn't take many years to unravel compared to Jackson's demise, is an indication of the hyper-speed with which we are living our lives. Compare Jackson's illustrious career before the downfall--he'd been part of a mega successful family group, he then went on to record two chart topping albums. It was a little after his hair catching on fire that his descent started. Despite all the personal woes, most of which can be attributed to his parents and poor choices, his talent can't be questioned.

Brittany, on the other hand, is a product of today's music industry that is all about packaging pretty faces with limited voices. Her rise was meteoric before the media turned on her, just as she was acting out the way most adolescents do, albeit most of our shenanigans are done privately. So, who's to blame for all the mess that is her troubled, sad, disjointed life? Well, her parents would be a good place to start. And then the industry that exploited her while making gobs of money off of her, and has now kicked to the curb, as they say. Then there is just the young woman, who has to take a large portion of her blame.

It is a sad day when her sister is a role model for other young girls. It's amazing that a show, Hannah Montana, can create a frenzy where parents are buying scalped tickets for hundreds of dollars. Hopefully, the young woman behind this newest phenomenon won't go the way of her predecessor, who is seen all over LA, driving around aimlessly filling her time shopping and giving chase to the hounds of media. But I wouldn't hold my breath. I guess the next question that begs to be asked is what's to become of the progeny of these young women? Chapter Three--Brittany's boys are seen crashing cars, drunk, on drugs, in and out of rehab, spending money they no longer have, trying to sell themselves to this same industry so that they become known as more than Brittany Spear's lost boys.