Britney story in Rolling Stone

I read it in the bookstore last week. It was pretty good, but I thought it went a bit long. Great color, though, particularly on the sleazy hangers-on trying to bleed money out of Rolling Stone for an interview.

and I gotta agree: the inbred swamp thing line is not just the line of the story but one of the greatest lines in memory.

 

Not just $1 million - but pre-approval of the finished story!!

What the hell magazine did they think they were talking to?

 

Great story. Grigor...whatever is one of the best at RS. On the same topic, here's Chuck Klosterman's highly prescient story about Britney from Esquire in 2003. It really illustrates what a sheltered idiot she was then, and all but forecasts her fall.

http://www.esquire.com/women/women-we-love/ESQ1103-NOV_BRIT_wjump

 

the klosterman piece is fucking brilliant

 

You thought it went on long? I was waiting forever for you to finish the damn magazine so I could read it. Waited through three grande hazelnut mocha lattes.

 

Blender had a similar Britney cover story this month. Not as good and not nearly as long, but covered a lot of the same ground. That one started off with a strong bit about Britney driving like a nut with the paparazzi following her.

 

Reitman, IIRC, also did the Scientology one in RS, which got a nod in the most recent BAMW. Grigoriadis also had one in there for a piece in NY Mag.

 

so was her body back then. yowzer

 

That is the first I've ever read of Chuck Klosterman and if that's brilliant, then brilliant ain't what it used to be.

 

Out of curiosity, about how old are you?

 

Jesus, who cares how old he is?

No, the Klosterman piece wasn't brilliant. Anyone who says it is has never read Esquire's "Women We Love" issue, because - if you had - you'd have known about five guys have written the same story, in the same tone, about five different chicks in the five previous years.

There's absolutely nothing there there.

It's word-processor masturbation, one man's thoughts on the greater significance of Brittany Spears, as if there is greater sigificance. It's not bad, it's just literary junk food, much like Spears' singing is musical junk food.

 

To me, this is the money quote from the Klosterman piece:

Britney: I don't know. Maybe because those people are pretty and appealing, and they work their asses off, and they believe in themselves.

People like Britney Spears don't think that they are gorgeous because they were lucky to be born that way. There's no humility there whatsoever, no gratitude, no sense of, "Damn, was I lucky." She thinks she's beautiful not because she's fortunate, but because she's a better person than you are, than all of us are. She thinks she's that way because she "works her ass off" and because she "believes in herself."

Which explains why she's just as likely to toss it all away. Because, for the most part, she's still in the 99.9th percentile of beauty, or can be with about one month's treadmill work and stomach crunches. And when she's out about town being a fucking idiot, or driving with her kid on her lap, the fact that she's still gorgeous, and that people still fall all over her, reinforces to her that she's doing things the right way, and the rest of us are the ones who don't get it, who aren't trying hard enough, who don't "believe in ourselves."