Filed under: RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy
 Lame because: With DUIs, divorces, scandals and private travails for many stars and starlets this year, I can easily tell you the worst thing about bad celebrity behavior in 2007: The fact that people care about it. Lindsay Lohan may have appeared in more mug shots than films this year, but whether you feel bad for the suffering of a troubled young lady or laugh at the comeuppance of a spoiled young starlet, it's not your business either way. Acronym-heavy, content-light sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton and Yahoo's LOL (no links, because they don't deserve them) are turning the web into the mental equivalent of a supermarket tabloid -- but without the quality writing and comforting smell of newsprint. Our culture treats famous people almost like zoo pandas -- but while we watch pandas to see if they screw, it seems that we watch celebrities only to see if they screw up. Sure, famous people can do stupid things. So can you or I, but without the joy of camera people watching us waiting for when it happens. Everything a performer should be expected to show to the public takes place in their work, and showing any interest in what an actor or actress does outside of the credits of a film is -- and I mean no offense here -- a sure and certain proof that you have an How to turn it around: Like booze or smokes or pills, the first step to quashing celebrity culture (which, really, is an oxymoron) is to walk away. And never go back. And if you see a friend surfing TMZ or OMG or Perez Hilton, be supportive and sympathetic and tell them why they should stop. And if that doesn't work, secretly screw up their router software and disable their web access: Not only are you cutting off their supply, but learning how to fix it will at the very least give them something to think about other than the private lives of people they're never going to meet.
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