Someone Ma'd Be Scared Of: A Playlist For Britney Spears

Download: Rolling Stones - "Mother's Little Helper"
Download: Hot Hot Heat - "Oh, Goddamnit"
Download: Rilo Kiley - "A Better Son/Daughter"
Download: The Cars - "You're All I've Got Tonight"
Download: Built To Spill - "Car"
Download: Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins - "Rabbit Fur Coat"
Download: PJ Harvey - "The End"
Download: The Replacements - "Little Mascara"
Download: Fields - "You Brought This On Yourself"
Download: The Arcade Fire - "(Antichrist Television Blues)"
Download: Radiohead - "Morning Bell" (Amnesiac version)

First thing I thought of when I saw that Britney Spears lost custody of her children: Man oh man, does this guy have his work cut out for him.

Second thing was the image of all of the gossip blogs acting as one big internet version of Nelson Muntz to her put-upon Bart Simpson. Except that I'm pretty sure that Bart has flashed his junk only once on screen this year.

On a more serious note, I find this to be quite sad and I wonder what kind of debate (if any debate is in fact necessary) the ruling will have. This is obviously the basso profundo of all of the low points of her life in the past few years. And, while I won't go far as to say that she shouldn't be left alone, I do feel like she is suffering from a major mental illness and desperately needs help.

But then, how do you help someone who is so clearing intent on making her life as miserable as possible? To what extant does someone like that deserve our sympathies? After all, she's 26 years old. She clearly should be the master of her domain. And yet, she is not. I'm certainly playing armchair psychologist here, but it would seem to me that Britney is so self-destructive because it's the only way she can have sole control over her life. If you think about it, she's had her entire life micromanaged and focus-grouped. All the people around her, from her mom on, controlled every movement of hers.

Even when she was acted in a controversial, so-called rebellious manner (like kissing Madonna at the 2003 VMAs, jailbait image, provocative videos), it felt like an empty gesture. She didn't rebel against anything or subverting any pre-conceived notions like Madonna was. She just played a version of House that vaguely goaded people into thinking that her sexuality was dangerous. Instead, it was merely flashy. More importantly, that image may of been entirely of Spears' design, but was not necessarily something that she controlled.

In that sense then, Spears never got the chance to rebel against her parents or against any of her controllers.

Jesus, I'm making her sound like she was held captive by a planet full of walking, talking, damn dirty apes.

What I am getting at is this: in the same way that Michael Jackson's strange behavior could be explained by the fact that he never really had a childhood, Britney Spears' aberrant behavior could be explained by the fact that she never really had an adolescence. Adolescence is basically an act of one-upmanship. You do some crazy batshit stuff in the name of finding yourself, and then your parents lay down the authoritarian gauntlet, to which you react by out-doing yourself even more. Britney's crazy batshit act was making a lot of money.

And since wealthiness is next to godliness in this country, no one wanted to keep her in check. So she over-rebelled and did whatever she wanted to do; which meant hooking up with someone ma'd definitely be scared of: Kevin Federline. Who then knocked her up twice. And in the meantime, Spears did enough drugs to kill Freud, who himself did enough cocaine to kill a small horse. And, since there was no one there to explain that partying like you're 17 tends to stop after things like marriage and children, Spears thought that she could live the life she lived when she was 17 forever.

Hopefully, the ruling will serve as a desperately needed wake-up call. Otherwise, we can expect to see Spears drown due to her lack of her identity.

(Jonathan Graef)