Pop Quiz
The Bad Behavior of Celebrities
By Daniel Muniz

What do Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton all have in common?

This is not a trick question although for some people, the answer may be kind of tricky.

And no, it is not celebrities who flash their panties to the cameras of the paparazzi or flash themselves wearing no panties at all. No, it is not party girls flashing their bra or their bare breasts. The answer has nothing to do with flashing any part of their body or running around naked or jumping into the beach only wearing a bra and underwear and it is definitely not about any kind of sex tape. Try again!

And it doesn’t have anything to do with drunk driving, getting arrested, or spending time in jail or in rehab.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, although naked celebrities’ breaking the law does saturate the airwaves. It seems that the public cannot get enough of the antics of rich starlets.

The answer is all that all three girls have parents.

The initial reaction for some folks is “what does that have to do with anything.”

For a segment of the population, they are incredulous about such an insinuation. On the surface, their disbelief does have some merit because they assert that parents cannot control the actions of their children who are now grown adults. Offspring who are in their reckless youth may do outrageous things like drunk driving, driving with a suspended license, use drugs, or publicly flash their bare breasts and their skirts without having any panties on, but parents cannot stop that. There is only so much a parent can do.

However, there is another segment of the population who is equally incredulous but at the former group of people.

These are the people who make sure that their kids turn in all of their homework, finish school projects, and study for tests (from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade). They do not allow their children to skip class or have discipline problems at school.

These people do not buy liquor for their teenagers for a night of drunkenness and debauchery in their own house. In fact, they don’t even allow their kids to stay out late at night or go to wild parties. They don’t allow their kids to smoke, snort, inject, or ingest any illegal drugs. They are nosy parents who want to know who the friends of their children are, where they are going, and what they are doing. And they do a pretty good job of keeping their kids out of trouble and they definitely will not tolerate any excuses for bad behavior.

Their mothers do not wear plunging necklines where their boobs may pop out at any moment or wear tight, sheer mini-skirts in front of their children. These mothers are not known as the “cool mom” or the “party mom” to their children’s friends. In fact, these parents do something called parenting instead of trying to be friends with their children or trying to fit in with all of their friends with the latest trends and fads.

What is amazing about Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton is that all three of them have parents who blame everybody else for their children’s emotional and criminal problems. They contend that this bad behavior is the fault of fame, fortune, the paparazzi, the media, and Hollywood. These parents have never bothered to look in the mirror and examine whether or not their bad influence or permissive parenting had anything to do with the trials and tribulations that their daughters are going through.

Now a parent cannot control the decisions of their children. In fact, a person can do everything right and a kid can still exercise poor judgment and make bad decisions especially in their youth. In fact, just about every young adult experiences a period of recklessness and irresponsibility.

But what a parent can do is provide a solid foundation of upbringing where there are rules and boundaries for maturity and decency. It is this foundation that allows a wayward youth to easily fall back to a structure of values because it was always there since childhood. Integrity, responsibility, respect, and a work ethic are universal values that are taught to children by their parents with years of reinforcement.

In the absence of such values, the only advantage that celebrities still have is money. Even though an acting or singing career may be ruined because of nefarious antics, they still have more than enough money to enjoy a lifetime of ease. It also allows them to hire high-priced lawyers to minimize the consequences of their criminal behavior.

Although Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton all have fame and fortune, the one thing they don’t have are good parents who established boundaries on their behavior which could eventually form the basis of their maturity. As a result, the public has gotten an eyeful of young, rich, and glamorous celebrities who live by no rules. In the beginning, their antics filled the news wires but now their unruly behavior is starting to make them pariahs to the pop culture that once admired them.

Unfortunately, an ordinary kid does not have the luxury of vast sums of money. Bad behavior, an arrest record, a suspended driver’s license, and huge fines can ruin a young person’s life and destroy their career. Certain bad decisions and poor judgment can have the consequences that last a lifetime.

Perhaps the sordid behavior of these luscious starlets is a vivid reminder that good parenting is available to anyone regardless of socio-economic status. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor or middle-class to be a decent person and to be a good example to your children.

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