Hanging Britney High

Posted on August 3, 2007 in Bipolar Disorder Celebrity Journalists & Pundits Psycho-bunk

Pop icons appear to be something we run away to when the hard questions of life threaten to upset our conservatism — when it comes to evaluating our own motivations, our own living, our own complicity in the groupthink that buries women and men in absurd and painful roleplaying. Pax Nortona, July 27, 2003

Britney, Britney. Was it that long ago when I apologized to you for calling you a whore? I stand by what I said — the bit about how everyone jumped on you for being sexually promiscuous after [[Justin Timberlake]] (who is due to have a big show on HBO this Labor Day weekend) leaked the fact that he’d pierced that private place of yours. Remember how they turned this cad into some kind of whistleblower? Now it seems that you’re the subject of a new bit of celebrity analysis and I have mixed feelings about what is being said.

CBS News 13 out of Sacramento quoted two psychological professionals who declared that Britney’s impassioned behavior indicates that she suffers from a mood disorder, maybe [[bipolar disorder]]:

Recently, Spears’ actions have rivaled even her February head-shaving melt-down. Last month she jumped into the ocean wearing nothing but her underwear, and the next day she raised many eyebrows with her conduct during a photo shoot for OK! magazine. According to the magazine, she ruined thousands of dollars worth of clothes and even made off with some. At one point she was grooving to Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” and the next she was storming off.

The analysis sounds fair to me, but why must this become a news story? I check the news on Britney: It’s the usual stuff about how she can’t get along with people and acts oddly, such as the San Francisco Chronicle’s revelation that she tried to get her son’s teeth whitened. We love to detest her almost as much as we love to detest space alien Michael Jackson. But here I ask you: does the possibility that she is bipolar take the fun out of observing her?

I suggest that this is just more icing on the cake that nega-fans of Britney savor. The question we should ask of such reports is what do they do for the potential patient? I doubt that this story will lead Britney to seek out a psychiatrist for one thing. I doubt that it will move other potential sufferers of the disease to seek help. It’s another of those hit pieces that exist only for the purposes of pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Britney is a star and a star is important, the logic goes: so we must punish her with public shame.

The Information Age brings us a heavy load of drivel such as this. The ones who pay the cost are the celebrities who, in the case of Spears, may be fragile. “Bad Mom” is the journalistic tag line for Britney stories. I doubt that any of the compassion due to her as a sufferer of bipolar disorder will be granted as she continues to be hectored by the keyboardists of the scandal follies.

The use of “bipolar” as an explanation for bizarre behavior disturbs me on another level: the actions of this star become a poster child for what we bipolar sufferers “must be like”. So it becomes safe to turn Britney into a sort of criminal, a whiner who uses mental illness as a stone for hammering others.

I imagine this exchange between the ravening journalists and her publicist:

“Britney Spears, you have been found guilty of being a ditz.”

“My client suffers from bipolar disorder.”

“Well that explains it. And we’re still going to hang her high.”

[tags]bipolar disorder, Britney Spears, mental illness, punditry[/tags]