This morning, while I was running around with the regular morning routine - you know it:  making breakfast, asking kids to come down to breakfast, packing lunches, repeatedly asking kids to come down to breakfast already, loading backpacks, yelling at kids to come down to breakfast-I’m-not-making-this-for-fun-you-know - I turned on the news to find out what happened in the Iowa caucuses.

Well, with her usual impeccable timing, my daughter Freckles decides to walk into the kitchen while the news is covering the other big story of the day… Britney Spears being taken to the hospital, apparently under the influence of something, after getting into a fight with her ex.  To my horror, Freckles saw the chyron which read Britney’s something-or-other, and she immediately said, “Britney?  Britney Spears?”  Despite the fact that Freckles is only 10, owns no Britney Spears music, videos or posters, and wasn’t old enough to tune into pop culture when Britney was actually a pop star, she knows who Britney Spears is and all about her.

It’s amazing how in-tune kids are to this stuff.

How do you fight it?  And you can forget about trying to counter the fact that Britney’s 16-year-old sister Jamie Lynn is pregnant - that kid’s a Nickelodeon star, there’s no way to keep that one quiet.  How did this looney family hijack our culture?  Why is the press giving this so much coverage?

And here is the saddest part of all (and I copied this from an AP article):  “Britney’s mother, Lynne Spears, would not disclose any information about her daughter’s condition. ‘Just say prayers,’ she told the celebrity news show Access Hollywood by phone Friday.”  Do you get this?  The mother is on the phone with Access Hollywood!! 

Did you know Lynne Spears was supposed to be writing a book about parenting?  A book about parenting!  Fortunately, the book’s publication was postponed indefinitely.  Unfortunately, so was her parenting.

This picture from Getty Images shows photographers surrounding Britney Spears’ car at one of her court appearances.  This drek (do you guys know what drek is?) gets more attention than important stuff like…  whether or not Jay Leno used scab writers.

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  Posted by: Sarit Catz