From the Green Room: Lohan to the Slammer

It’s three hundred degrees outside, the oil spill continues to befoul the Gulf Coast, the economy still looks like Max Schmeling in that second bout with Joe Louis, and yet what is today’s headline? Lindsay Lohan got sentenced to 90 days in the slammer.  

America’s Favorite Train Wreck will be remanded to Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood, California, segregated from the general jail population, but will likely serve just 22 days or so due to the overcrowding in L.A. jails. And it will be in an all female facility, a situation which, for Ms. Lohan, would be akin to Kirstie Allie living in the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar at Hometown Buffet. Not exactly like Papillon serving life in the Bastille, but that’s what you get for never meeting a highball you didn’t like, and then insisting on driving home after slamming a quart of Jaeger.

What I don’t understand is why so many celebrities wind up with DUI raps. The I-Man’s drug and alcohol use in the 70’s and 80’s is legendary, and yet he never ONCE got arrested for driving under the influence. You know why? HE ALWAYS TRAVELS BY LIMO.  What’s the point in being a famous person if you don’t ACT in the manner associated with BEING a famous person?  What’s the allure of taking your own ride down to the Ivy for mojitos?  Hollywood studios and broadcast television networks hand out star perks such as chauffeur driven stretches like they were needles at a methadone program.  That’s why God invented folks like Brant Eaton, Imus’s trusty driver for almost thirty years.  Being the only person sitting in the back of a 60-passenger black Coupe DeVille isn’t just a Quadruple E-sized carbon footprint. It’s the ultimate status symbol for why celebrities are not like the rest of us plebian, bourgeoisie underlings. They DESERVE preferential treatment. Which is why poor Lindsay is, understandably, so upset that her A-List status didn’t cut any mustard with the judge.  

She has been ordered to attend an additional 90 days of rehab as part of her sentence, since she didn’t take the court-ordered alcohol education classes that were part of her original conviction. One would think, given her demonstration of how to set off a alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet at the MTV Movie Awards after party, that she requires no further instruction on how to drink.  But then again, I don’t pretend to understand the “nuances of the court system,” which was the excuse her lawyer used to explain why she was prone to the “missteps” that got her sentenced in the first place.

Like the nightlife listings in the New Yorker maintain, just as “musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives,” so do wastes of Hollywood human protoplasm.  Apparently, Lohan skipped her rehab sessions due to flight problems at a North Carolina Airport; her Uncle’s funeral (which she neglected to attend); and her charity work with Moroccan children.  

Hasn’t this poor woman suffered enough?

In a word?

No.