Who's Your Daddy?

So, not one to comment on celebrity culture, I found myself appalled and aghast at the cover of today's New York Post.

Look - Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan may be fucked up souls, so confused by the negative attention/shameless idolatry of the majority of the US population that they just aren't capable of distinguishing between their lives and their fantasies. Point.

But who's fault is that?

Yes, maybe they are attention-hungry whores who have sold themselves to the great american butcher to be torn limb from delicate limb by all of us not ambitious or suicidal enough to make that kind of sacrifice.

But there's another side to it.

We are striving for salvation. We look towards the future to find it, because the past is white-washed perfection and today is always worse than any other.

For the human species, salvation offers itself up willingly, and with all innocence, in the form of an untouched, beautiful young girl - she shows us the potential of our species. That's no accident, because she is, in fact, fertile ground for reproduction, and consciously and unconsciously, we all know it.

[Look at the beauty/fashion industry and celebrity culture, especially the monotonous starlets, for confirmation.]

For a time, Lindsay and Britney embodied this salvation, this future, this purity.

And now they don't. Now they are women: bloodied and dirty from 'experience'.

And we are punishing them for it, mercilessly.

We feel cheated, disillusioned, and shamed for our idolatry. And now the paternalistic nature of our culture takes over full force to string them up in public and shame them for revealing how impure, vulnerable and self-deceiving we all are.

Lindsay and Britney are trying to figure out who they are - living and fucking up just like the rest of us. They deserve nothing but respect for that, and a little compassion, too.

So, American Public, shame on you!