Somebody's little girl

Here's what you won't read in our celebrity-obsessed media's non-stop coverage of Britney Spears' descent into madness: Britney Spears was somebody's little girl. She -- such as she is -- still is somebody's daughter.

And as she descends into the alcohol-, sex- and psychically fueled hellfire of her own making -- and as scads of American websites, newspapers, tabloids and magazines make s***loads of money chronicling every aspect of the destruction of a human being . . . turning profound tragedy into spectator sport -- those who love her grieve. Those who love her want her to just stop it, stop it now.

But they are utterly powerless to make her stop it.

They cannot stop her headlong -- now bald headlong -- descent into that special hell inhabited by poor little rich girls (and boys) for whom the camera never blinks. For whom the inner demons do their dirty work in front of 300 million slack-jawed gawkers who worship the rich and famous as they wait, just wait, for all of those Britneys to screw it all up . . . screw it all up bad enough so that their ordinary American lives seem just a bit less futile and meaningless by comparison.

We -- the hopelessly ordinary -- gawk at these magnificent human disaster areas for whom all the money and fame (and, sometimes, maybe even talent) in the world has profited nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Rien.

Britney Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Paris Hilton. Pete Doherty. They're to today's mass media -- to today's mass media consumers -- what a good train wreck was to silent movies. They're Harold Lloyd hanging from the minute hand of a giant clock 15 stories up.

They're Slim Pickens riding the Big One down to the Apocalypse.

All for our amusement . . . and for our entertainment dollar.

SOMEWHERE, some poor little rich girl's mama cries.

Somewhere, an American media consumer -- leading a life of quiet futility and despair -- sits wide-eyed in front of the television set (or computer screen) waiting for the next human train wreck on Entertainment Tonight.

I am guilty. And so are you.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' mama sits, crying over her daughter adrift in a sea of futile wealth.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' children's souls are being lashed by an invisible bullwhip, the wounds from which will bleed somewhere down the road.