Of all the terrifyingly screwed-up stories Lost in Showbiz has ever brought you, this one has to take the cake. Don't bother looking for canned goods on your supermarket shelves: I already bought all the stocks and have headed for high ground to await The End.
You may or may not be aware that there is a US reality TV show called Celebrity Rehab, which takes drug-addicted celebrities and films them 24/7 as they receive treatment. That's not the depressing bit. Or rather it is, but it gets worse. The show has just begun filming its second series - but that's not the depressing bit either. Here it comes: one of the new batch of "celebrity" patients is Rodney King.
Yes, that Rodney King. For our younger readers, Rodney . . . how the hell do you even put this? Rodney was previously the star of a handheld documentary? Rodney's earlier work provoked a mass response? Rodney is not a suitable reality TV pick?
Let's just turn it over to Dr Drew, the media medic who runs the show, who says of Rodney: "People are going to see him in an entirely different way."
You mean not in night vision?
But really, who could fail to be encouraged by that "different way", because it suggests that unscripted-programming executives have decided that the best way to treat people with serious drug addictions is actually not to have a bunch of bent cops kick the crap out of them.
Obviously, I realise the latter approach is still being trialled in metropolitan areas around the globe, and I wouldn't want to prejudge the findings of that research. But, according to TV network VH1, the best way to help addicts is to get them to sign all-encompassing release forms, wait till they begin to be racked by withdrawal symptoms, then film it all for the benefit of a slack-jawed audience who clearly are in no way done watching Rodney suffer. You know the bit in his first media outing when he was down on the ground? According to Dr Drew, since the cameras began rolling this time around, the stars have been "retching on the floor". This will be, like, a sequel! Don't leave it so long next time, Los Angeles.
And so to Rodney's co-stars, because I think we all need to see upon whom is being conferred a kind of cultural equivalency. Well, we have former Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler, Rod Stewart's boy, Sean, a model, and some other people too unknown to list. Oh, and appearing as a life-coach will be Gary Busey. Seriously, Busey. I didn't realise he was at "sober sponsor" stage, but whatever.
Until now, the definition of the word "celebrity" seemed most dubiously expanded in March, when videorazzi website TMZ covertly filmed Fawn Hall at work in a bookshop. Fawn Hall! If you were ever wondering what your favourite stars of the Iran-Contra hearings did next, turns out the formerly shredder-happy Fawn now works in a bookshop. Col Oliver North (retired) writes for Lost in Showbiz's favourite publication, the in-house journal for mercenaries that is Soldier of Fortune magazine, and provides what I'd call a masturbation recovery service for lonely, angry guys with his Fox News show.
As for What the Stars of Police Beatings Did Next . . . of course, recovery is about taking the positives. Let's just acknowledge how sad it is that so few performers are able to make the transition from the famously difficult police brutality circuit, all the way to headlining a major television show with faux-clinical benefits.
Far from his exploitation being the clearest sign yet of the impending apocalypse, King's graduation to bankable addict should be regarded as a modern American success story, and we must hope that show producers will coerce him into making one of those "it's been an amazing journey" speeches that are the money-shot of all reality TV shows.
If you can't go along with that, humanity, then hunker down. Flood's a comin'!
