While idly flipping through the channels yesterday, I inadvertently stumbled across a Birttney Spears video. Howling in pain, I was fortunately able to gnaw off my own ears to escape, but the psychic trauma will, I fear, be lasting.

I wonder, though…

Do you suppose Ms. Spears, somewhere underneath all the training and conditioning instilled by the legions of writers and choreographers and image consultants and media relations people and producers and handlers and public relations consultants and hairdressers and other sundry puppeteers who surround her, realizes that she has sacrificed her own identity to get the fleeting instant of fame she’s enjoying right now?

And do you suppose she cares? One wonders if, left to her own devices, she would even have an identity worth developing…