As humans, it's only natural that we look at Britney Spears from time to time and think "Golly, someone really did a bang-up job of raising that little delight to be a well-rounded and conscientious member of society."
However, our feeling of admiration at the exemplary way that Britney Spears was raised into the angel she is today is often tempered with a deep burning resentment at the fact that, no matter what we do, we'll never be able to bring up our children to be anywhere near the glowing standard of saintly humanity that Britney Spears has set. So we can't believe our luck that Britney Spears' mother Lynne Spears is all set to publish Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World next year. It's basically a how-to manual for anyone who wants to raise their kids to be just like Britney Spears. We're especially looking forward to the chapter about pushing your young child relentlessly through the machinations of fame at the obvious cost of her mental safety.
No, wait, that's the whole book. Our mistake.
No matter what Britney Spears may have been through over the last few years, like letting a redneck fill her up with accidental babies or divorcing the redneck or squabbling over the babies in public so that everyone knows how addicted to drugs she is, she's always had the love of her mother Lynne Spears. Admittedly it's a strange love that involves hoiking young Britney Spears around all kinds of talent agencies when she should have been enjoying her childhood, encouraging her to dress as a fetishised schoolgirl ideal and sing about liking domestic violence as a teenager and then selling Britney Spears' secrets to magazines as soon as things started going south, but it still sort of counts as a form of love. We think.
And it's completely reciprocated too – Britney Spears loves Lynne Spears enough to serve her legal papers and then slap her right in her face – a sign of affection in the Baptist states of America equalled only by filling up a loved one's duvet with venomous snakes and then firebombing their house. They do things different there. We shouldn't judge.
Anyway, lord knows that the only thing we want in this world is to ruthlessly drag our children through the lower rungs of the entertainment industry until they make it big so we can live vicariously through the success and inevitable dangerous instability that follows. But we just didn't know how to bring up our children to ensure that they'd try and kill themselves in a rehab facility by their mid-twenties – until now. According to E! Online, Lynne Spears is all set to write a parenting guide based on her experiences with Britney Spears:
Lynne Spears has inked a deal to pen a memoir focusing on her role as showbiz family matriarch, Curt Harding, a spokesman for the Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson Inc., told E! News Friday. Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World has been marked for a May 11, 2008—Mother's Day—release. Harding said that he has not yet seen a manuscript so he can't say how deeply the book will delve into the Spears' private lives or, more important, whether Lynne's viewpoint will encompass the current state of her daughter's career and high-profile lifestyle, both of which are obviously attracting a different caliber of headlines than they were a few years ago.
There aren't enough words in the English language to describe how much we want Lynne Spears' parenting guide to be a success, because of the satisfaction she'll feel in 20 years when she looks around the world at all the young men and women smashing up cars with umbrellas and getting their vaginas out and knowing that, in some small way, she made it all happen. Plus we'd like Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World by Lynne Spears to succeed because it'd open the door for more celebrity self-help guides to be written. And, let's face it, if people are willing to spend money on Lynne Spears' parenting guide, then they'd go crazy for the Amy Winehouse guide to clean and sensible living.
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Adam Gade says
I can’t recall any snake/firebombing stories from the South. Although, to be fair, I try to stay away from it. So, regardless of that, what’s the betting odds on a life and times book from Paris or her mother?
euclid says
This is wonderful!
Kind of like
The Vegan’s Guide to Veal Enjoyment
or The Fundamentalist’s Guide to Nihilism.
Wait. I think that’s exactly what it is.
JBollocks says
Paris has a mother? I kind of thought she just spontaneously appeared, you know, like smallpox, bird flu, or bubonic plague.