Cashing In on the Britney Spears Meltdown

by Jarrett Martineau | January 7, 2008 at 09:22 am

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I'm not particularly excited to participate in the 'Decline of the Britney Empire' hype machine, so let's keep this brief.

In a celebrity saga that grows ever more disheartening with each narrative turn, Britney Spears has been hospitalized and who better to attend to her frail state than celebrity bully psychiatrist Dr. Phil?

Dr Phil McGraw, Oprah Winfrey’s favourite shrink turned TV personality, visited Spears before she was released from LA’s Cedars-Sinai hospital. At first it seemed he was just a kindly psychologist, familiar with the rigours of fame, offering help. However shortly after the visit, Dr McGraw blabbed to Entertainment Tonight.

"My meeting with Britney and some of her family members this morning in her room at Cedars leaves me convinced more than ever that she is in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention.

“She was released moments before my arrival and was packing when I entered the room. We visited for about an hour before I walked with her to her car. I am very concerned for her."

Dr. Phil has since come under fire for making the visit and this morning he defended himself to his critics:

TV shrink Dr. Phil McGraw defended himself Monday against criticism that he violated Britney Spears' privacy when he visited her in the hospital Saturday morning.

"I want to set the record straight. I went to see Britney at the request of her family. I talked to Lynne, Jamie, and Brian, because they were frustrated that she wasn't going to be held for a longer time," McGraw said on CBS' "Early Show."

Asked how he had come to be involved in the saga, Dr. Phil said, "Thursday night, the phone rang, it was Lynne, clearly she was very upset. Any parent would be. I was first contacted by her family a year ago, and had maintained a running dialogue for the last year or so."

Nevertheless, there are many others who stand to gain from adding further fuel to the Britney fire. An obvious first celeb-obsessed choice is gossip queen Perez Hilton, who has been revelling in the attention his own blog is receiving as a result.

[q
url="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3146864.ece"]The
famously acerbic gossip blogger Perez Hilton was so overjoyed that
Spears’s hospital admission increased the number of visitors to his
website, he breathlessly shared his good fortune with readers.

“You
guys really care about Britney Spears - a lot! Friday was the busiest
day we've ever had on Perez Hilton.com. Over the course of 24 hours, we
had over 10 million page views. 10,089,428 to be exact. That's insane!
Thanks, Britney.”

The message followed several days of
uncontained excitement from Hilton, who posted doctored pictures of
Spears sporting a straitjacket, a Hannibal Lecter mask, as well as one
showing devil horns protruding from her head. He slated her as a
“f***-up”, and posted video footage of Spears strapped to a stretcher
under the headline “The money shot”, and a video montage he described
as the “highlights of all the Britney Spears drama”.[/q]

So what does it mean to perpetuate this vacuous celebrity chatter? It's seems hypocritical for me to suggest that the Britney story is hardly worth covering...and then to cover it. I have no interest in 'cashing in' on the media fallout from the personal, psychological demise of young celebrities who are obviously in way over their heads. But perhaps there's some value, with the hypocrisy acknowledged, in trying to understand why it is that we're all so taken with this traffic accident of a story.

And I would highly recommend that you watch this beautifully empathetic monologue from last year by the excellent late night host Craig Ferguson, regarding the effects of participating in exactly this sort of celebrity exploitation: here it is.

"We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable people." Indeed.