No News, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #87

August 3, 2010 Arthur Tebbel 1 Comment

Dear Art,

At 1:35am Monday morning I was released from jail.  I served 14 days in prison and, like many ex-cons, am having trouble getting readjusted to life on the outside.  The magnitude of changes that have taken place are hard to get my head around.  Can you give me a brief summary of the important events I’ve missed out on.

-Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay,

You wouldn’t believe the crazy world you now live in.  Oil is no longer leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at an unprecedented rate.  There is now a clear precedent for how much oil leaks into the Gulf on a daily basis.  Chelsea Clinton got married.  She seems to be a pretty well adjusted girl despite growing up in the spotlight.  I’m sure you two have nothing in common.  Maybe your publicist sent a gift?  Oh, and unemployment might be entering a death spiral but you don’t have to worry about it.  From what I understand you were wearing leggings from your new clothing line when you were released.  You can’t buy that kind of promotion.  Although if you could you might want to spend money to make sure you were seen on camera in them.

In entertainment news the new season of Jersey Shore premiered last week.  I think you can still catch it in the endless spiral of reruns that is MTV.  This might be insensitive of me.  You might not see the appeal of watching people from the greater New York area revel in their substance-abuse problems while living a life of seemingly endless partying.  You pretty much invented that whole bit.  It’s actually a fairly interesting chicken or the egg sort of conundrum.  Did you create this culture through your fame or did it always exist and you were just the first and most famous result of it?  Generations from now anthropologists will spend entire careers fixated on this question.  At the very least if you find it hard to get back to work in Hollywood you could probably try and sue MTV for stealing your bit.

This story might interest you from the field of criminal justice, the Los Angeles County prison system is, apparently, a complete fucking joke designed around the premise that celebrities should not be held accountable for their actions.  You served 13 days and one hour of a 90-day sentence.  A sentence you only got after flouting the authority of the legal system on a consistent basis for years.  Your sentence was supposedly reduced for good behavior despite local news in LA being flooded with stories of you disrupting the prison, including one about how you once cried all night until they had to move you so other prisoners could sleep.  You sound like a model inmate.  Not that we should really expect any better conduct from the sheriff here in LA who, in his spare time, hosts Emmy preview parties.  So really the most important thing for you has still not changed.  The laws still apply differently for you and no one will get in the way of you returning to the process of ruining your life.  Cheers!