Read Online Celebutards by Andrea Peyser - Free Book Online

then walked out of the show.
    It was reported in 2006 that Springsteen’s life was affected by 9/11 in another way: the star was said to have grown close to a redhead, not his wife. She was a widow Springsteen met while organizing a charity event for survivors of the terrorist attacks. But Springsteen responded to the rumors of marital discord, posting this on his personal Web site: “Due to the unfounded and ugly rumors that have appeared in the papers of the last few days, I felt they shouldn’t pass without comment. Patti and I have been together for eighteen years—the best eighteen years of my life. We have built a beautiful family we love and want to protect and our commitment to one another remains as strong as the day we were married.”
    ----
    A letter-writer to the New York Post who attended the concert informed readers that “droves of people” ripped up their tickets, booed and shouted obscenities at Springsteen, then walked out of the show.
----
    If there remained any question what side Springsteen was on, he put it to rest with the release of Magic the next year.
    “This is a song called ‘Livin’ in the Future.’ But it’s really about what’s happening now. Right now. It’s kind of about how the things we love about America, cheeseburgers, French fries, the Yankees battlin’ Boston, the Bill of Rights, V-twin motorcycles, Tim Russert’s haircut, trans-fats and the Jersey Shore…. We love those things the way womenfolk love on Matt Lauer.
    “But over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of that great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the Constitution. And the loss of our best men and women in a tragic war.
    “This is a song about things that shouldn’t happen here happening here.”
    From trans-fats, of which he evidently approves, to rendition, illegal wiretapping, etc., all of which he apparently does not.
    And then, he sang.
    I’d already changed the channel.

7
The Bimbo Summit
PARIS, BRITNEY, and LINDSAY
    What is Wal-Mart? Is it, like, they sell walls?
    —Paris Hilton on The Simple Life
    The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.
    —Britney Spears on the road
    I am lucky enough to of been able to work with Robert Altman amongst the other greats on a film I can genuinely say created a turning point in my career. He was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I’ve had in several years….
    —Lindsay Lohan on the director’s death
    B EAT POET A LLEN G INSBERG wrote in Howl —“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”
    With apologies to Mr. Ginsberg, I amend that sentiment:
    “I saw the feeblest minds of my generation destroyed by drugs, anonymous sex, illiteracy. Bingeing, puking hysterical dead.”
    It’s been said that a nation gets the government it deserves. The same can be said about celebutards. Still, a mystery that sometimes keeps me awake at night, at least until the Ambien kicks in, is this: What awful crime must the people of the United States have committed to ensure that, several years into the millennium, the three most famous people in this country, if not on the entire planet, are named Britney, Lindsay, and Paris?
    We may never know what we did to deserve them, but stuck with them we are. As long as a girl child bares her navel or bears neglected children to emulate Britney Spears, we must pay attention. As long as a youngster enters rehab before reaching the age of twenty-one, à la Lindsay Lohan, we can’t forget. And so long as a child exhibits no ambition other than to be ushered in to the VIP section of the hottest nightclub, or perhaps receive infection from genital herpes, as Paris Hilton, we don’t dare look away.
    In November 2006, the world as we know it ended. That was the night