Dr. Phil to the rescue of Britney Spears! What can a world- famous celebrity meltdown case like Spears do at this stage that’s in any way positive or clarifying? Her career is over. She can’t see her kids any more. She’s a total wreck, a symbol of profligate indulgence and self-ruin. She’s Norman Maine and beyond.
The only thing Britney Spears brings to the table of any value right now is that she’s made her life into a stirring cautionary tale. Hundreds of thousands of teenage girls the world over will hereafter say to themselves for decades to come as they decide whether or not drug or alcohol consumption is going to be part of their nocturnal lives, “I don’t want to end up like Britney Spears…please God, not that. I will not trash my dignity.”
So in the end, despite having ruined her life and her career, Spears will have done more to keep impressionable youths from a life of pathetic boozing than if she’d been alcohol-free and filmed a series of p.a. spots about the pitfalls of the disease. If her life was a movie she’d kill herself in a car crash of some kind, or she’d be found dead like Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison. Then she’d really be a cautionary tale.