Well, my baby is  still in jail. These are so sexy. Little cameltoe and pokies

Celebrity Journalism is like crack. Americans are addicted to it. We need to hear the Mel Gibson tapes and see Lindsay Lohan report to jail. So why do newspapers, magazines, and television keep feeding our habit?

As Charles Taylor stated in a 1998 article on Salon.com, “Having a celebrity on the cover sells magazines. That keeps advertisers and the publisher happy, and that, in the here-today, gone-tomorrow world of magazines, keeps the editor employed.”

If the mainstream media doesn’t cover celebrities, people will get the news anyway through outlets like Radar.com, TMZ, the Drudge Report, Perez Hilton, and National Enquirer. Of course, it was Matt Drudge’s breaking of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that put him on the map.

Celebrity journalism outlets are not only popular, but they are gaining grudging respect. The National Enquirer was recently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the John Edwards’ affair.

According to Victor Merina on Poynter.org, during a 2004 conference panel at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, in collaboration with the Poynter Institute, Dan Rosenheim, news director of KPIX-TV in San Francisco, said, “One ignores viewers or reader interests at your own peril. We risk trivializing ourselves and marginalizing ourselves.”

Last week, hundreds of photographers and journalists camped out at the Beverly Hills courthouse in the latest celebrity journalism media circus to cover Lindsay Lohan’s perp walk. In the lead up to the spectacle, MSNBC cut away from its coverage every 15 minutes or so to show the scene outside the courtroom. They even had the O.J.-like helicopter shots of the two
SUVs that brought team Lohan to court. MSNBC wasn’t alone; Fox News also ran the live helicopter shots. All of this led up to her being whisked out of her car and briskly walking past the media who were shouting questions. It all lasted around 10 seconds. Her booking into jail just made you want to tweet “Eeeks.”

There were many other national and world news stories that merited coverage last Tuesday, the day of the Lohan spectacle. Most significantly, British Prime Minister David Cameron made his first White House visit to meet with President Obama to discuss BP’s alleged involvement in freeing the Pan Am terrorist, Afghanistan, and the global economy. There was Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The Senate voted on extending unemployment benefits. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin announced that he would run in the 2010 special election to fill Robert Byrd’s Senate seat. Yet, despite all of that, Lindsay stole the show.

Journalists consider many things when deciding whether to cover a story. Journalism textbooks such as Writing and Reporting News, A Coaching Method by Carole Rich with Christopher Harper indicate that factors of what constitute news include timeliness, proximity, unusual stories, celebrities, human interest, conflict, impact, helpfulness, entertainment, community issues, and trends. Regarding celebrities and entertainment, if a Lindsay Smith in say, Peoria violates her DWI probation, it won’t get extensive news coverage; maybe a short blurb in the local newspaper. But when Lindsay Lohan violates her probation, it becomes a national obsession.

Another factor for what constitutes news is economics. If American newspapers regularly focused on issues like copper mining in Argentina, people would cancel their subscriptions. When Natalee Holloway was reported missing, news hosts like Greta Van Susteren went to Aruba to air her show, which turned out to be her highest rated shows for that year. She wasn’t alone in the obsessive coverage, as Nancy Grace and Larry King constantly focused on that case as well. Celebrity magazines are doing well in a poor economy. According to MSNBC.com, People Magazine is second in consumer magazine circulation behind only Cosmopolitan, with a circulation of over 1.3 million readers.

In an ideal world, media outlets would ignore the trivial banalities of celebrity meltdowns and focus primarily on the real world issues that concern us all. However, the media needs to give the people what they want in order to survive. Most reporters and editors don’t want to keep acting as celebrity journalism crack dealers, but it’s a necessary part of the business.

Read more: Lindsay Lohan, Perez Hilton, Tmz, Mel Gibson, Celebrity Gossip, Celebrity Journalism, National Enquirer, Celebrities, Media News

The talk of the town.

Read more: Bp, Lirr, Charlie Rangel Ethics Probe, BP Oil Spill, Lindsay Lohan, Long Island Railroad, Slidepollajax, Jersey Shore, Charlie Rangel, New York News

Photoshoot for GQ Germany August 2010 issue with Ellen von Unwerth [video from celebnook.proboards.com]

Joan Rivers is right about Lindsay Lohan. Sadly, her comment that Ms. Lohan will not survive another ten years of her current lifestyle appears reasonable and prescient.

But equally troubling is the punitive call to lock her up and punish her. This is outrageous envy and hateful herd mentality toward someone who “should” be grateful for what the public has given her, but is not following that script. Lindsay Lohan is mentally unwell. I know the term “mental illness” sounds as harsh as Joan Rivers does to the average ear. However, while Joan is a comedian who cares, as a therapist, I am not interested in using terms like “mental illness” glibly or to trash talk for shock value.

People seem to exclusively be hooked on the substance abuse angle of Lohan’s story. Substance abuse is one symptom of a psychological disease; only a piece of the picture.
I am not defending drunk driving or waving away any of Ms. Lohan’s notorious angry public acts by saying that she is mentally disturbed. There is such a condition, even if we don’t speak of it. In Ms. Lohan’s case it is public and an obvious problem. To discuss a problem, it helps to first identify what it is and understand it. And then, of course, to care.

For those who think it’s an apologetic stretch to diagnose her as mentally ill, here’s the thing. The “bible” of psychological disorders, known as the DSM or the Psychological Diagnostic Manual, lists mental diseases and identifies “clinical disorders,” such as “anxiety, adjustment, dissociative, impulse control, mood, and substance related,” all abundantly present in Ms. Lohan’s public “performances.”

The truth is that Lohan is acting out a terrible rage, to the possible point of flirting with suicide. What is she trying to say? (No, it’s not a simple nail-painted “F*ck You”, Nancy Grace).
Not pretty to watch, but unless we personally know her, we do not know her, and media analysis is nothing more than bloated conjecture, common gossip, a showcase of vicious righteousness and expert arrogance. Why? Why the rage against her? I’ll say it again. She is not mentally well. Is that not obvious?

I deeply wish Ms. Lohan the chance for health and recovery that can only come from becoming conscious, and having real desire for the brave journey, an intensive healing process involving authentic support with wise counselors and guides.

When a person is mentally unwell, answering to extreme and illegal behaviors is commonly delivered with a “f*ck you” attitude of defense, denial, and staunch victimization. It is not at all surprising that Lohan feels persecuted and sees herself as a stoned Iranian woman — even though she is “stoned” in a very different way and voluntarily. I can imagine how she internally distorts the ironically crazed masses in their responses to her, where it may feel as if she were being metaphorically stoned by people hurling hateful, angry words.

What is well worth noting is that these symptoms of mental illness are rampant today. The rudeness, the denial, the dissociation from one another — and one’s own behavior — in public life is commonly on display. It is fascinating that the very reactions to Lindsay Lohan mirror her own rage and carelessness. In other words, the common public response is to hate, hate, hate her, and that is just as troubling as her own behaviors.

This makes me think about the notion that a community was once a place where people looked after one another. This is a gone idea. Today we have Nancy Grace presiding over Weekend Edition Lindsay Lohan Specials, hours where Grace can shriek uncontained rage about Lohan’s “bratty entitlement.” How did Grace herself become so punishing and hateful, I wonder.

Such shows are distracting garbage for a turned-off audience, and a ratings winner, I’m sure, but what’s up with the heartlessness and the absence of intelligent commentary about mental illness?

It is an ironic parallel between Lohan’s “acting out” and how it is met with equally extreme “acting out” responses to it such as those of Nancy Grace and her audience. When did all this extreme rage become normalized? Lohan is a mirror of societal acting out in the extreme. It would help to identify the parallel extremities of our own behaviors! (Perhaps we can start with people screaming on talk shows, sociopathic rageful driving, and the popular demand for punishment for Lohan).

Most disheartening to me is the absence of simple kindness about any person — even the wealthy and famous among us — who suffers such destructive torment and mental dis-ease. I’m sure this will not be agreed upon by all, but Joan Rivers expresses an almost solitary voice of compassion about Lindsay Lohan, with a depth of compassion way beyond Rivers’s own comic barbs.

It turns out that in this so-called country of “compassion,” the real thing is scarce.

Again, this is not a case only of substance abuse. Let’s refrain from falling exclusively into the stupidity of exclusive “substance” explanations and corresponding simplistic psycho-babble solutions.

Symptoms keep us mesmerized in a blame game, to which ignorant judgements and band-aid solutions are slapped on top of deeper truths. Rather than spending our energy on one or even a constellation of symptoms, it is essential to identify actual mental illness when it exists.

Of course, calling out this truth is inconveniently honest and not as snappy as making everything an addiction and producing reality shows featuring visually glamorous, openly cheesy, addiction spas.

The open wound of American society oozes with unconscious envy, hero worship and a sense of public ownership of the famous. The normalization of cruelty and brash cold-heartedness is the brand of our time. Our current obsession with Lindsay Lohan and accompanying lack of generosity is one clear warning that American society, itself, is in desperate need of help.

Read more: Mental Illness, American Society, Psychology, Substance Abuse, Lindsay Lohan, Compassion, Joan Rivers, Nancy Grace, Entertainment News