Can We Leave Britney Alone Now?

This is probably the first and last article I will do that has anything remotely to do with Britney Spears. Why? Because as a citizen journalist, I feel the need to speak up once and for all: leave her alone.Please, leave Britney Spears alone. Please, paparazzi, TMZ, Fox News, anyone else in the Beverly Hills news area...leave her alone beacuse you are close to killing her.

I am not a huge Spears fan. I like exactly one song of hers (Toxic). I own no albums or stock in the products she used to endorse. I just don't understand the media coverage. There was a time when Ms. Spears was a popular musician/recording artist/lip syncing dancer. She warranted all the attention as a top performer and cute icon of innocent-girl-gone-bad. She controlled the charts. She made bad music sound catchy. She was a mouseketeer that dated another popular mouseketeer and boy band heartthrob.

And then her life changed. She cheated on said boy, married a back up dancer and had two kids. My question is this: what is the big deal?

Why did we start following her every step, every move as if she had done something important or iconoclastic? She kissed Madonna on stage? Wow, what girl hasn't? She got married and had kids? Well, many celebs have done that, too. She had a quickie marriage and divorce? That's not new (ask Shannon Doherty). Drug problems? Come on. Too many names to name.

Why did the paparazzi et al. wait until her supposed break down? It wasn't like she USED to be a good kid a la Miley Cyrus and then turned bad. Granted, she is in the top ten of albums sold in American history by a female artist, but we hadn't even paid THIS much attention to those above her like Madonna or Mariah Carey.
Madonna has had her share of controversy, fame, fortune, children, and SHE never commanded this much attention. And Madonna LIVED for it!

But Britney? Her success lays mostly in song and endorsement. She hasn't seriously branched out in other media. Britney has made exactly ONE movie. And don't even count those books or that semi-reality show with K-Fed.

Is she the first to go underwear less in Hollywood? Stumble with a child in her hand or make some other public parental mistake? Drink too much and make a butt of herself? Shave her head? Gain a little weight? I've done all of the above, and she looked a little cuter than I did with a few extra pounds.

So when you look back at it, why do we care? Honestly I believe that we, the media and the subculture media (paparazzi) are indirectly responsible for what has happened to her. We're following her to Burger King. Target. We're following a semi-talented performer around as if she was Princess Diana, and we all saw the result of THAT. OJ Simpson got away with murder, and he doesn't have a helicopter following him around.

So please, citizen journalists, I ask you to leave her alone. Regardless of what you think about Ms. Spears, I don't think she's really accomplished anything in her life that could even warrant half the attention she is getting. I believe she brought some of it on her own, but the rest is uncalled for.

And if you can't leave her alone for her sake, do it for the kids. They haven't done a thing and all we can do is follow their momma 24/7 while she tries to gather her thoughts. I would imagine it's hard to think when 10,000 camera men want to take pictures of you ordering a Whopper.