Cursed Tongue: Dear Drunken Celebrity Driver,

Posted by CursedTongue on May 12, 2007

So, you’ve managed to wrap your Bentley around a tree and survive. Don’t even try to flee on foot. Take the advice of veteran celebrity drunk driver Andy Dick. Smoking pot does not make you run faster or jump higher than the LAPD. Especially if you have the spindly physique of a nerdy comedian.

It’s never okay to drive while intoxicated. DUI’s are not a celebrity rite of passage. I don’t want to hear your belated pledges to attend rehab. I won’t buy the argument that you’re special because you’re some B-List skank who didn’t know you were too drunk to drive to the In-n-Out burger for something you would throw up later. (I also won’t buy that you were being ironic on purpose by going to the In-n-Out, because every good bulimic knows dinner comes back up tastier if you’ve had a chocolate shake.)

Pleading “No Contest” does not absolve you of admitting guilt. It just makes you look like a washed-up hack that clings to the belief that you’re better than people who didn’t get to produce 14 craptastic episodes of a TV show with their name in the title.

There is no cure in rehab for your unprovoked, racist tirades. There is no cure in rehab for your $50,000 prostitute habit. There is no cure there for the state of mind that allows you to throw a cell phone at your maid. Rehab will not magically turn you from an egocentric jackass to an upstanding citizen. Just ask Morton Downy Jr.

If you want the public to forgive you for doing lines of cocaine off the skinny thighs of a supermodel and then trying to drive California State Route 1, you should try working the talk show circuit in a pink contrition tie like a wayward politician who did something really bad, like shoot his friend in the face. It seemed to work for Dick Cheney. But then, even the supervillan V.P. didn’t flash the addict-celebrity-under-the-influence card.

The celebrity-endorsed method of rehabracadabra is not enough to redeem you for your flagrant disregard of public safety. Now you’re a drug addict and now you’re not. The truth is, if you were really an addict — as opposed to a spoiled child with an overpaid lawyer, after rehab you’re still an addict.

It’s refreshing when a celebrity is sent to a correctional facility for driving on a suspended license (twice). Using your publicist as a go between for you and your lawyers is not a defense. Even if you did need him to explain the big words. It will be good for you to learn that there are people in this world who are not lucky enough to own a
lemon zester, just as Martha Stewart did.

Look at your jail sentence as free publicity. Why, you’ll probably even get sympathy from brainless tweens that idolize you. You’ll be segregated from the general prison population. If you do have to deal with the felonious hoi polloi (poor people also unfairly imprisoned), you can afford to buy everybody’s friendship with cartons of cigarettes.

Your money, your fame, your latest perfume that apparently rivals the bouquet of Children’s Motrin, your lack of talent, your reality TV show, and your chain of nightclubs, shouldn’t be able to help you of a jail sentence. Neither should your appeals to the Governator.

Your sentencing is not a joke. You are not being treated unfairly. A fine is not a punishment that would upset a woman who goes through the equivalent of the annual Gross National Product of Malawi in a month. When regular people violate the suspension on their licenses, I’m certain they are punished similarly. The only reason they might be given the option of a fine is that it may actually discourage them from wantonly breaking traffic laws. Because they, most likely, don’t have enough money to buy Uruguay.

I have enough pity for you to fill the solid gold thimble you use as a food dish for your tiara wearing Chihuahua. No, wait, it’s even less than that. If the Governator pardons you, I’ll have lost absolutely every modicum of respect I have for him. Which happens to be two.

If you can afford a publicist, you can afford a driver and a keeper. I believe the latest fashion accessory for the DUI celebrity on the go should be a chauffer. And if you really can’t seem to handle the terms of your probation, you should also hire a minder who will tell you when you are about to do something stupid, or something that violates your probation. Sort of like a nanny for people old enough to be adults.

After you return to your world of $700 Dolce and Gabbana bags, domestic staff, and $80 meals you’re going to regurgitate, don’t think for a minute that everyone still loves you because you’ve paid your debt to society. Not everyone loved you before. And you’re still indebted to society for producing the suckers who bought items from your clothing line produced in a Honduran sweatshop and sized for a rare breed of human stick insects.

I’m sure you can call the gentler, kinder ex-felon Martha Stewart for encouragement. After her stint in Camp Cupcake, her empire is doing better than ever. I attribute it to her newfound understanding of the underprivileged that shop at Kmart and her familiarity with the finer points of crafting shanks.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: celebrities, humor

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