Cry Me a River, Lindsay Lohan is Going to Jail

Sue Millinocket

Actress gets exactly what she deserves

In the latest installment of Hollywood Eats Its Young, Lindsay Lohan is headed to the clink.  Her crime?  Ignoring the terms of her probation on a litany of drug and alcohol related offenses.  90 days in the slammer followed by mandatory inpatient rehab.  Sweet.

The court refused to address her real crime, which is appearing in public repeatedly and purposely looking like an unwashed, dead-eyed, strung-out junkie in spandex leggings from 1984.  But since that’s more a crime of fashion, I understand that it’s more appropriately dealt with by peer pressure.  Oh wait – Lindsay has no peers, only subordinates.

So why is this even news?  We all know Lohan is a train wreck.  Her blubbering of excess make-up all over her attorney’s sweater doesn’t make me any more likely to want her set free than does her overly collagen-injected pout.  She did the crime – repeatedly, and refused to follow even the ridiculously lenient probation terms – she can do the time.

But there’s something else here – the real reason she deserves this sentence.  Once she’s in jail, she’ll get better treatment than she’s received in her entire life.  She won’t be catered to, she won’t be coddled, she won’t have a mother who thinks having an alcoholic teenager is just dandy, she won’t have a jailed father trying to weasel his way into her fortune.  She might actually have a little discipline, some guidance and some real life, grown-up advice on how to get her shit together before it kills her.

God knows she needs it.  Lohan is a 24-year-old infant, without the slightest ability to care for herself or make appropriate, reasonable adult decisions.  She has never been expected to do so, why should she learn?  What, do we really think responsibility just blossoms out of teenage pores when they hit the age of majority?  Newsflash – child stars are screwed up because the adults around them fail them miserably.

Some get through it.  Robert Downey Jr. and Britney Spears both look to be on the upswing (especially RDJ).  But none of that happened before they paid a heavy price for their infantile behavior.  Downey did jail time and Spears not only did some inpatient time, but also lost custody of her kids.  

Those who never pay a big, head slapping price for their actions (the actions set in motion by the adults meant to care for them) do not fare as well.  Michael Jackson, Corey Haim, Dana Plato, River Phoenix.  All dead.  Why?  Because they never became adults and never had to answer for their juvenile foolishness in any meaningful way.  They got their way until their way killed them.

So count your blessings, Ms. Lohan.  Cry until you have no more tears to shed.  But that judge probably just saved your sorry ass.  Oh, and your life.  Pull yourself together and stop acting like a baby.  Maybe then you can count yourself as a child star survivor instead of just another child star tragedy.

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