The Fallen Starlet story is as old as Hollywood itself: drug addiction, drinking problems, and mental illness are all "exciting" story lines that capture the public's attention, if only because they poke holes in the glossy facade of celebrity, and provide proof that even the most beautiful, the most famous, the most admired can be just as screwed up—if not more so—than the rest of us.

And yet, with all of the cautionary tales, the Hollywood machine continues to suck young women in and spit them out once they're past their "peak." Our response, as an audience to all of this—and we are an audience, mind you, following these very real people through very real problems via secondhand reports, paparazzi shots, and orchestrated interviews with "friends" and publicists—is usually to blame the actress herself. She's an addict! She's wasting her talent! She's wasting her opportunities! She's replacable! She's an embarrassment! She's worthless! And so on and so forth.

I came across a particularly nasty article this morning written by a female college student at Michigan State University, who decided to use the very public career troubles of both Mischa Barton and tabloid punching bag Tara Reid to write a "humorous" post titled "Celebretard Showdown." The author begins by expressing her delight at Barton's recent psychiatric hospitalization: "I gotta admit, I really do enjoy watching a mediocre TV actress fall from grace (and she fell hard!)," she writes, before comparing Barton and Reid in various categories to determine which of the two is the ultimate "Celebretard." Ugh. Just a helpful tip: if you are going to write an incredibly nasty article about two actresses who have succumbed to the pressures of Hollywood in fairly depressing ways, it is probably best to avoid attacking them for their lack of "class."

The article goes on to determine that Barton, though a "fail" as an actress, has a shot at recovering her career. As for Reid? "Maybe if she worked more and spent less time romping around random beaches she'd be less of a whore. Maybe." As gross as this article is, it's also a pretty good representation of the types of articles written every time a young actress has a public breakdown. Instead of taking shots at the industry and the pressures placed on these young women to look and act a certain way, we go after the actresses themselves, with claws out and guns blazing, ready to punish them for having highly publicized problems.

This is not to say that we need to hold Mischa Barton Rallies around the country just because we happen to share genitalia. Nor do I think we need to light a candle for Lindsay Lohan every time she's photographed drinking or walking around without pants. I'm sure many of us have friends who have gone through similarly dark times with alcoholism or drug addiction, and have experienced the same kind of exasperation as the illness seems to swallow the person we knew, but with Lohan and Barton, two women who have been acting since childhood, the problems are magnified and handed out to the general public for judging and speculation, and we all tend to point fingers at the women for "screwing up," rather than the system for screwing them up.

Perhaps, in a way, we make jokes and write nasty pieces in order to distance ourselves from the reality of the situation. And perhaps it's easier to blame a select few than to blame society in general, or the way women are packaged, pushed, and ultimately disposed of in Hollywood. In mocking the sad stories, we find a sense of distance and peace; the more ridiculous the story becomes, the less real at seems. We're not attacking fellow women in that way, then—we're attacking characters that Hollywood has created and destroyed for our personal amusement.

It's easy for us to crack jokes about the soap-opera esque nature of these women's lives: Britney's pink wig days, Lindsay's drunk driving, and Tara Reid's sad drunken tours around the world have spawned millions of nasty zingers over the past few years. These were young women who, we believe, had everything: money, beauty, fame, and opportunities, and they squandered such things in favor of drugs, drinking, and shitty ex-husbands. But does anyone really believe that any of these women wanted to let go of such things in order to become a tabloid joke? Does anyone really think that the decisions these women have made were based on rational thought patterns? Probably not. And yet we still insist upon kicking them when they're down, just in case the fall from their pedestal wasn't painful enough.

Celebretard Showdown: Mischa Barton Vs. Tara Reid [College Candy]
Did Mischa Barton Try To Kill Herself? [NYDN]

• Try not to get murdered It seems like an obvious thing, but even reading about the case I feel kind of weird wondering how my life would look to a zillion strangers.
• Make sure someone always knows where you are It might've helped Chandra (or at least would've helped the case) and — if he actually was innocent the whole time — it totally would've helped Condit.
• Remember that sometime's there's no explanation As a crime victim, the hardest thing for my family to accept on some level was that sometimes violence really is random. While it was important for the cops to know that Chandra and Condit were an item, anyone who recalls the case probably remembers how hard they pushed him as a suspect. In part, it's probably because he was a less-random explanation than the unimaginable horror of random violence. Did they do right? Possibly not — Condit was never charged and the cops didn't seemingly look that hard for an alternate explanation.
• Don't fuck a married man Look, seriously, whatever he says, just say no. If he's betraying her, he'll betray you. It's comforting to believe that you're different, that you're special but, really, as Chandra never really got the chance to find out, she wasn't. Congressman Condit was nicknamed "Condom" during his stint in the Statehouse.
• If you are going to fuck a married guy, don't buy his bullshit Fine, so you've made your choice. But don't fall for the whole, "I'm totally going to leave my wife and marry you" line. Is there anything more cliché? If he was going to leave his wife, he would've already done so or or would be in the process of doing so, which is a long and painful process. Instead, he's inserting his penis into your vagina. He's got exactly what he wants.
• Don't fuck around on your wife This is 2008, that was 2000, you are not required to be married, even as a Congressman. If Condit had been a single skirtchaser, no one would've had as much cause of question his motives and he wouldn't have faced the same opprobrium (see: Ford, Congressman Harold).
• If you are going to cheat on your wife, don't like to the cops about it Fine, you've also made your choice, and I'm judging you. But the cops aren't there to judge you for where you stick your dick, and lying about it makes you look sketchy and guilty.

I mean, basically, the whole thing was apparently a mess from start to finish. Maybe Condit had nothing to do with her disappearance, maybe she would've been murdered anyway, maybe the police would've fucked this up so bad from the get-go regardless that no one will ever know what happened to her. But, if there hadn't been so much dirty laundry to look through before they started looking for Chandra, maybe we would know the answer to those questions.

Who Killed Chandra Levy? [Washington Post]
Judge Dismisses Ex-Congressman Condit's Slander Suit Against Author Dominick Dunne [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

Another of the friends in the picture is a high-powered producer for a top television network who owns a Brooklyn condominium, another is in law school, and the last is independently wealthy. And where is Maureen Tkacik? Why, living in a tiny fifth floor rental apartment with the selfsame roommate — and, we hear, the selfsame Judas Priest photo —with whom she lived in the picture, which was taken ten years ago; a cautionary tale in downward mobility if there ever was one. She doesn't so much as recall meeting the future billionaire, and why would she? Her most salient memory from the house in which Ms. Southworth was photographed is being rushed to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.

Ms. Southworth is not alone; Ms. Tkacik crossed paths in school with numerous other individuals who proceeded to achieve things in life: Donald Trump Jr., one half of the screenwriting/production duo behind the Harold & Kumar films, New York Observer reporter Doree Shafrir. In fact, her entire life might be considered a case study in how not to climb the social ladder, and, the photo below, wherein she sits next to Kretchmar and her present roommate, goes much of the way to revealing why: that ensemble.

So what the fuck is their excuse? They weren't going to, like, run a criminal record check on such a fine young rich upstanding member of society? Did they learn nothing from the Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire debacle of '00?? Did the 300 women who applied learn nothing from "Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire"? Do none of us learn anything from anything? Is it a pointless act simply covering stories like this at all because there is always a new desperate ignorant cute girl waiting in the wings to learn the hard way??? Rhetorical question, but ha ha ha, we said "hard."

Cosmo's millionaire bachelor Robin MacDonald destroyed a year of my life with his drunken rages [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Why Superrich Guys Feel Entitled To Keep Underage Sex Slaves