Just follow the money, or the slime trails left behind by those making use of it.
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I got sucked into watching that last night. I mean I was vaguely aware of her during her rise to fame and vaguely aware of her eventual spiral into shame. I totally was unaware of the “free brittney movement” or what sparked it. The story is interesting and sad and sort of just how the actual fuck does this happen? Makes one wonder if a Judge is being paid off.
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I haven’t seen this documentary but his and other articles have convinced me to see it.
I we don’t know why her father was given conservatorship so it is hard to comment in her case without this knowledge, I hope the film will give me more insight to her case.
I am in the dementia caregiver community. Conservatorship is considered very hard to get. Meanwhile we see people with dementia scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and abused in various ways. People tend to avoid it because being a conservator can be a huge pain which requires a massive amount of paperwork. Mind you that the definition of conservatorship and guardianship can vary widely from one US state to another. In some states they use only one term, on others conservatorship might only refer to financial issues while guardianship might refer to health issues.
But you have to be concerned with public people. Conservatorship can be abused. There are probably gender issues in who gets declared in need of one. And the power of the power of the person requesting it shouldn’t be ignored.
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Seriously, this is sickening.
I remember when this happened! I remember all the events that lead up to this conservatorship. The fact that it’s still in place IMHO either means 1) Brittany’s mental health was way worse than the public realized or has worsened, or 2) the legal system makes it incredibly hard to undo this conservatorship even if it is no longer needed. I’ll bet it’s the latter, and that’s terrible.
And yes, I don’t know if the specifics are known at this point or not (While I paid attention in 2008, I have very much not done so since), but the court decided she had cognitive impairment, so that’s what’s relevant in this case.
Thom’s right though - even if you don’t give a shit about her, this situation is almost certainly judicial overreach and there are very many people whom likely find themselves in this position without the publicity or notoriety to help bring it to light, and folks should care about that.
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How has no one posted this yet?
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Disclaimer: I’m also not a fan, nor know much of anything about her situation, other than the tabloid crap that I usually don’t believe a word of anyway.
But I’m wondering how easily swayed a court is to decide someone is mentally incompetent (that is, impaired enough not to be trusted with the handling of their financial affairs). I would expect there to be a fairly high bar for that sort of thing.
Also, to answer the “person must be competent because they make a pile of money”. No, I don’t see that is necessarily the case. She may require lots of help to make (and keep) that pile of money.
Britney is a singer, and a pop star, and evidently must be good at that if she makes a pile of money. And presumably she enjoys it and is not being forced to perform against her will. However, she may well be not be competent to make reasonable decisions about what to do with that money (easily suckered out of her money by scams such as elderly folks often are, or not capable of doing things like paying the bills, or making impulsive purchases for things that she cannot afford). And may even not be competent enough to make that money in the first place, without some people around her to book her flights and concerts, guide her around at the airport, and point her to the stage, etc. Perhaps without the conservatory, she would screw up her career so badly that she stops making piles of money. I’m just saying that being rich and famous does not automatically make someone competent with their money. Her skill at singing does not have any bearing on her abilities at any other skill. There are severely [mentally] disabled people who can do things like incredibly complex math, but who struggle to put a coherent sentence together… So, she may be great at singing, but “disabled” at other things.
All of which, are things for the court to decide. I would tend to give the courts the benefit of the doubt on the whole subject, as I don’t think they are all that easily swayed to take control of people’s money away without darn good reason.
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There is a pretty long history of mental illness provisions in laws being used against women. This still happens, because our society still sees women as more emotionally unstable and less capable of controlling their emotions.
So, yes it still happens, and it’s likely it is the case here.
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From what I’ve been able to google, apparently, her father stepped down from the positions of conservator in 2019.
I’m not clear on if he has since asked to resume as conservator, or what the deal is.
I see that she apparently keeps going in and out of “treatment clinics” (not sure what that actually means), and tweets about “needing time for myself” (as the reason for canceling shows I think), and apparently, burning down her gym. And she apparently has not asked to end her conservatorship, just that her [new?] lawyer be designated the sole power. At least that is what the lawyer says. So, I’m not sure what to think, or who to trust…
as you said, all the drama mostly missed me at the time, since I don’t give a shit about celebrity gossip or pop music in most cases. I’ll admit that Baby One More Time was a jam and even Toxic worked on the dance floor on a Wednesday night at MJQ once. but in both cases, I perceived it as talented pop producers using a former mickey mouse club kid who blossomed favorably as a figurehead to hang their song/beat on. which is what the career of all pop stars more or less is, but I’m not so jaded that I can’t admit that Spears was certainly a talent performer within that framework.
but the thing I knew most about the issue at hand wasn’t so much what was happening with Spears, it was this meme. which frankly made me care even less about it. but that may be part of the problem in a nutshell: the turn-off of brainless pop music and celebrity drama by non-fans may have enabled and emboldened the father and/or the courts
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reminds me of Elvis in the later days, but in his case his doctor and management was intentionally pharmacologically keeping him “down” and then bringing him “up” for performances and then putting him back down again and riding the gravy train. but if you asked E, he’d probably say he asked for those meds specifically to deal with the unnatural demands of a superstar performer. that may have been true in the beginning, but it sure seems like after it became business as usual, it became (yet another) means of control. he deserved better, and it sounds like Spears does, too.
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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s easy to bag on pop music, especially women who make pop music and the young women who consume it - it’s a very popular thing to do among SERIOUS music dudes. It’s easy to say it’s inauthentic, derivative, etc, and there is some truth to that… but it’s also made by real people, not cardboard cut outs. I think many of us are probably more sensitive to how exploitative the industry (and other culture industries) is and how it can really damage people who get put through that. I think we’re all more willing to talk about the political economy of the various entertainment industry and how hurtful it can be for young people who get sucked into them.
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And there’s an equally long history of hollywood parents mismanaging their kids’ $$$
I suspect that her earning potential is the key thing here. I can’t imagine that any caring parent would say “Hey, you’ve made more $ than most small countries, certainly more than enough to retire and live off forever. You had a very public mental breakdown? A long time away from the spotlight would be good? Nah. What you need is to headline Caesars!”…
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I’ll bet there’s quite a bit of overlap in the readership of Boing Boing and Cracked. I know that I enjoy both. (Sorry for the aside.)
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I met someone who wrote a book on Elvis’ death. Elvis had a very keen knowledge of pharmaceuticals. He was specific in what he asked for. The medical community and the people around him failed him by never saying no. His dentist provided many prescriptions which resulted in the restricted ability for dentists to prescribe drugs. Elvis had many hanger ons who depended on his generosity and didn’t want to endanger the gravy train.
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Okay but “Toxic” is a legit banger.
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This jumped out at me, because of cases in the news involving what seemed like well-meaning actions by courts that led to people being placed into horrific scenarios of mismanagement and abuse. As important as taking control away is who receives that control, and monitoring what they do - even when family is involved. By the time stories about systemic problems make the news, it’s startling to note abuse didn’t take much effort to uncover - it just wasn’t a priority. Reported problems didn’t stop the courts from continuing on the same path for long periods of time.
Cases like the one below highlight what happens with the courts and social services. One person was given control over the lives and finances of one hundred people. That all went through the courts. This is a pattern we see repeatedly with the most vulnerable: the elderly, children in foster care, the disabled, and more.
Bribery cases, bias studies, and evaluations of disparities in judgments or sentences show how easily swayed the courts can be. Even a backlog can cause people to get a bad outcome, because courts get overwhelmed, too. Unfortunately, just like in other parts of the “justice” system, it’s not easy to remove bad judges from the bench or correct systemic problems that have been allowed to continue for decades.
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I see a lot of confusion between courts being the final authority versus them being infallible. The courts themselves acknowlege this distinction, and are very reluctant to issue a judgement when there’s a less extreme way to resolve things.
The massive backlog of court cases means that the law is not keeping pace with life as its lived. Too many people are relying on judges to sort out these messes, instead of changing the laws to be more effective.
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