podcast: http://beyondutopia.net/podcasts/britney-deconstructs.mp3   Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Love - the commodification of personal disaster is discussed from the point of view of a postmodern media confessional. This is a variant of the genre of the confession or confessional. Susan discusses how the tabloid / media spectator confessional differs from that of, say, St. Augustine, or Rousseau, or even Thomas DeQuincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The tabloid confessional creates a false catharsis within the viewer that drives a hunger for another catharsis. It engenders addiction. We can apply the ideas of Baudrillard or Lyotard quite nicely to this; also Richard Rorty. Please see eLearningQueen:  http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com