Headlines of the Month (white trash pop tart edition)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Britney Spears has featured prominently in our Signs of the Apocalypse series, so much so that one might well call her a SOTA in and of herself.

And yet, as her star has faded -- that is, as her career has crashed into oblivion, her character into utter disrepute -- the justification to consider her worthy of such high acclaim, even in a negative sense, has withered. She has become a joke, or, rather, a different sort of joke -- once a successful joke, she is now a pathetic one. And she is simply no longer important enough to be, or to be involved with, a SOTA.

Still, she remains a cultural icon, of sorts, a source of much amusement, not to mention Schadenfreude -- much pleasure being taken in observing her decline. Am I too hard on her? Too cold? Is there something wrong with taking such pleasure? Perhaps, but so it is: There is something inherently satisfying here, as whenever any hyped-up celebrity falls from grace, particularly one as hollow as Britney Spears.

And so I could not help but smile -- a smile of bemused bitterness, of bitter bemusement -- when I came across these pleasure-inducing headlines at the BBC this evening, all from this month, in chronological order:

• Has Britney killed off her career?
• Britney is dropped by management
• Britney to undergo drug testing
• Spears charged with hit-and-run

And these, from earlier in the year:

• Highs and lows of Britney Spears
• Spears says she 'hit rock bottom'
• Spears sorry for 'brolly attack'
• Britney's ex wants legal expenses

And then there was the whole rehab and shaved head fiasco back in Feburary and March. Good times.

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Yes, I know -- I've just spent an entire post on Britney Spears, a pathetic joke in our celebrity-obsessed culture. I apologize. I'll get back to more serious topics soon enough.

But while Britney herself has become a pathetic joke, the phenomenon of Britney, of her manufactured stardom, of her rise and fall, is illustrative of some of our culture's more troubling qualities.

Britney is no longer important enough to be a SOTA, but that phenomenon is perhaps the SOTA par excellence.