It’s just not funny anymore. And I’m sick of it.

I follow dumb celebrity behavior so closely that oftentimes I can’t see the forest for the celebritards. I begin to assume that the whole of Hollywood is caught up in the basest of actions, lowest of morals, and heights of ineptitude, both mentally and physically. I am now immune to obnoxious socialites, inane quotes, patronizing interviews, and dumbed-down entertainment. I have begun to hate the thing that I love.

But then I remember that that’s not the case. Sure, not everyone in Hollywood is a Rhode Scholar, but surely not everyone is an idiot, either (hell, Geena Davis is in Mensa and Dolph Lundgren has a PhD from M.I.T.!). I remember that some people still care about the craft of acting, the craft of filmmaking, and the craft of being a respectable human being. Most of all, I remember that the reason I feel this way is not due to the majority, it’s due to three people.

Britney, Paris and Lindsay.

The bad apples, the flat beer, the assy chicken McNuggets, or whatever bad food analogy you want to use, those three girls are the reason I hate Hollywood right now. It’s just them. And their inability to keep their crazy in check. Their remarkable way, and I do mean remarkable, to continually find new ways to screw up. To destroy lives others would kill for. To piss on their god given talent (for the one that actually has some). To hate themselves, so wholly and so publicly.

We used to just joke about it and let it slide. “Oh, there goes Paris driving drunk again! What a spoiled little girl! Another scary, yet hilarious, cry for help from Britney! Let’s ignore her and instead post pictures of her fatty thighs. BURN!” But you know what? It’s just not funny anymore. And it has got to stop.

If Lindsay Lohan was an athlete, they would have kicked her out of the league two seasons ago. If Paris were a student at a University she’d have been on double secret probation since the last millennium. If Britney were just an average girl, she’d be tragic. Even more so than she is now. But society would have taken care of the problem. Society would have treated the problem with respect. Society would not have put these lost girls back into harm’s way. And we should all be ashamed of ourselves that haven’t followed suit.

Every photographer that sells pictures of these girls coming out of clubs is contributing to their downfall. Every tabloid that popularizes them, while at the same time exploiting them, is contributing to the breakdown of their mental health. And every producer, executive or company that employs them is contributing to their never-ending means of acquiring that which destroys them.

Lindsay Lohan was arrested yesterday for drunk driving, possession of cocaine, and for chasing down her assistant who had resigned because she couldn’t handle Lindsay’s crazy lifestyle. This, while she was wearing an alcohol monitoring device put on after her last drunk driving and cocaine possession arrest earlier this year. And let’s not forget, she’s fresh out of her second stint in rehab since the Super Bowl.

Britney has been having a breakdown of Anna Nicole-like proportions since her divorce last fall, and she’s a mother of two. She’s shaved her head, been to rehab no less than 7 times, posted countless insane messages on her website, partied every night, flashed her vag and her tits, disowned her mother, ignored her children, dressed like a crazy person, and generally looks like more of a scumbag than her scumbag ex-husband. And again, she’s a 26 year-old mother of two.

And Paris, well… she’s Paris. She was back in the clubs twelve hours after getting out of jail. And she went on a vacation to Hawaii while on probation (a crazy big no no).

What do these girls need to do to get the help they so desperately need? Rehab is a joke to them. The justice system favors their celebrity and throws leniency at them to the point where the girl’s don’t see consequence to their actions (it took five driving mishaps before Paris saw jail time. I’d have been in jail after the second one.). Their friends and family are obviously no help. And the blog community reveres them because their wacky shenanigans drive up traffic (I know I’ve reaped the benefit of their misfortune). So where’s the recourse for their actions? Where can they go? Who will step up?

This goes beyond preferential treatment. People make mistakes and are forgiven. Hollywood loves to embrace those seeking redemption, provided they are worth the effort. If Lindsay didn’t show enormous potential, she’d have dropped off the face of the earth years ago. Just ask Jodie Sweeten, she’ll tell you what it’s like to be on the other side. But we’ve flown far past letting these girls off the hook in the service of marketable or worthwhile talent. Whatever abilities Lindsay has are negated by her reputation and public perception. I will never again buy her as an ingénue, as a professional or even as an innocent, likeable girl. Those parts are gone for her. And I don’t even buy her as the stripper she plays in her new movie. And why would I? I’ve seen her do worse a dozen times. I know the person she truly is because she’s fucked up so egregiously so many times that we are unable to ignore it.

I can watch Bruce Willis drunkenly curse at a basketball game and not think less of him. I can watch Victoria Beckham try to be funny and accessible on her reality show and not think poorly of her (case in point: she’s a celebritard who takes care of her kids, never gets arrested for drugs or alcohol and seems to be in a loving, stable relationship. That’s how you do celebridom!). I can even look at people like Matthew Broderick who killed a person with his car, or Halle Berry who performed a hit and run, or Winona Ryder who so famously shoplifted, and not decry their existence or continued career. They made mistakes, they apologized, they didn’t let that part of their behavior continue. They never glorified in their malfeasance. Paris and Lindsay seem to revel in their ability to do harm and get away with it. They seem to enjoy being this character they play (though I think the idea of them playing characters and it not being their true personality has long since been abandoned).

I’m just sick and tired of awarding popularity to these stupid girls. And I refuse to endure it any longer. If one of those girls was a friend of mine I would not being laughing at them, or pumping them up. One of my three best friends is a functioning alcoholic. She used to like to stay relatively sober for most of the year, than go completely balls out of her mind during the summers. She called it “her time to drink”. And I had to watch her destroy herself every time it got warm outside. One summer I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of the bad behavior, tired of holding her hair back while she puked on her lawn, tired of walking in on her hooking up with some sleezy dude (on my bed!), and just tired of her being an all-around shitty friend. So I told her I was done; that when she decided to clean her shit up, she could come find me. And I walked away. It was the only way I could get through to her how much I felt her actions were hurting her. And we didn’t speak for a long while. Eventually she called and apologized, promised not to hit the drink so hard. And I forgave her.

That is until the behavior returned. And I promptly disowned her. I wasn’t going to show her that I tolerated her actions. We stopped being friends for more than a year. It was sad and lonely and awful. I missed my bestfriend. But she cared more about destroying herself than about herself or our friendship and I can’t abide by that. One day many moons later she was in town, we hung out, and it was nice. She was her old self again. She was in school. She had direction and purpose. She was past her recklessness. She was my friend again. If my cutting her out of my life helped in any way to prompt her life change, than it was worth it. Now we are as close as ever, and I even take her to wine tastings every now and again!

I hope these three famous lost girls have someone in their life that will treat them the same way. I hope they have something to push for and look forward to when they finally turn it all around. I hope one day they look back and are disgusted by how they acted. I hope they apologize for taking away the potential we saw in them, and for degrading the opportunity we afforded them.

I’ve past the point where I find this funny, so I’m not longer gonna allow it on this website. From this point forward I will no longer be writing about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan unless it specifically relates to their acting or singing work. I won’t make fun of their partying, their drug use, their alcohol dependency, their clothing (or lack thereof), their boytoys, their obvious insanity or anything else that is tragic about them. I’m just not going to do it. That’s my contribution to their recovery. It’s my contribution to the recovery of the belief that Hollywood has good people living and working within it. That all actors aren’t sad, drugged-up, party-whore burnouts.

My contribution to the hope that future generations of Celebritards learn that this type of attitude and behavior is, as Paris stated in her Barbara Walters interview, “no longer cute”. And to the hope that I never have to turn my humor website into a soapbox like this, ever again. I like to have fun and make fun here, and nothing about this story, or any of the hundreds of similar stories that have come out about these girls, is funny anymore.

Please check out this clip of Craig Ferguson talking about his feelings on the February Britney Spears head shaving trainwreck. I agree with what he says 100%, and it was this speech that prompted my questioning of how I write about celebrities, and the effect those choices have on me.

Bangarang!