Insert Foot: Aren’t we a little late to the Britney Spears sympathy party?

Britney Spears, Free Britney, #FreeBritney, Insert Foot

Protesters attend a #FreeBritney Rally at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles on March 17, 2021. Original photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

You’re being told to care about Britney Spears again.

Should you?

Everybody’s doing it. She’s heroic. She wants her life back. She wants to dump the birth control and get married again. She wants to drop her creepy weasel of a father from the payroll he’s been co-hording for 13 years. Spears allegedly wasn’t sane enough to make rational decisions but could still be a judge on a reality show for a nice paycheck and more exposure.

Well … yeah.

Since everyone has an opinion on Spears telling a judge last week she wants her life back, I no longer have to write another shitty piece about the Mumford & Sons guy crying about being canceled. I’m so tired of Mumford & Sons and that song with the banjo. Right … that one. It’s haunting … not like Ned Beatty hearing a banjo haunting, but still. (RIP Ned Beatty. There should’ve been a law after 1978 mandating he and Gene Hackman share the screen in a new movie at least once a year.)

But back to Britney, bitch. Because I care … desperately. We all seem to.



Actually, I don’t. I’ve had Faith No More making fun of Live Aid in my head for years now. The list of what to care about got too long after we elected a walking pork chop to start an abusive relationship with democracy that seemingly won’t end. It’s tiring.

However, regarding Spears, I do have a few questions/points/maybe neither, we’ll see.

The first: Are you serious? You’re just noticing Britney Spears gets treated like something pretty in a store window, propped up with a big price tag on it?

Where were you and your outrage when she wasn’t being exploited on the “Mickey Mouse Club?” Or on “Star Search?” Or when she wasn’t being exploited dressing up as history’s hottest underage schoolgirl pleading to be hit one more time?

Yes, she was. We weren’t supposed to say so, which is sensible. But … she shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Sex icons should be old enough to legally decide to become sex icons.

We can scroll down the decades-long list, but you get the idea. This kid–who’s now 39–has been a commodity her whole life.

Adults using children like circus animals has been going on forever. It’s repulsive, as is the late outrage (you’re mad at Justin Timberlake? Because he wasn’t another circus performer who happened to get a bit luckier?).

The second point is kind of the same thing, in reverse: What do you care about that isn’t being shoved down your throat by People magazine?

It’s awful someone forgot to hit the reset on the whole Spears conservatorship thing. She alleges she’s been drugged against her will in order to perform. She says she can’t even change her clothes in private. California law is apparently completely bass ackward in that Spears must prove she’s competent to manage her own affairs, rather than the more obvious idea of someone instead having to prove she’s not.

And, as terrible as all that sounds … what else aren’t we bothering with? Because there are some pretty serious issues floating around, at least if you’re into human species survival and whatnot.

Yet, big headlines were made when “Framing Britney Spears,” the documentary directed by Samantha Stark, was released earlier this year. There’s at least one more documentary about Spears’ struggle being made. Big crowds show up to support her, strangers sob, social media catches fire.

I understand the fascination with celebrity. But, again … why now?



Wasn’t it obvious we were helping fuel a tragedy? Where have you been? Where have I been? I fed the machine as well. I bought the records and took my kids to see other children sing and dance and line the pockets of adults.

Situations like this have been happening forever and will happen again. That shouldn’t minimize Spears’ pain. But we relate to Spears, a gorgeous, semi-talented, white girl who grew up in front of us, and whose records were part of the happy soundtrack of our reality.

I’m not saying not to care. But let’s not kid ourselves. Our obsession with youthful beauty and (wink, wink) innocence set to a beat you can dance to is as American as automatically taking the word of the loudest car salesman in the room.

All this caring and treating Britney Spears like she’s finally a human being is late–maybe too late. The bigger question is why will we let it happen again?

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.

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