I was in a mainstream grocery store today and I purchased a People magazine at the register because I actually wanted to read about Lindsay Lohan’s recent, public problems with drugs and alcohol. “From adorable child star to out-of-control party girl arrested for DUI. Can anyone save her?” the headline reads.

You know what I think? I think this is such a fertile time. This is a cleansing. My kids are going to learn about rehab before they learn what a gin and tonic is (just as they knew the Grinch before they really had Christmas down pat).

While I’m sad for the confused, intoxicated young ladies in the public eye these days, I feel us as a culture examining what a meaningful life really is. Yeah, I guess this makes us all vultures, gazing (in Lohan’s and Spears’ cases) upon photos of pretty girls passed out, with their panties down, but I guess we’re needing to do that as a people, needing to see it all, so we can truly fathom that frolicking too much with the wine god Dionysus is a waste of the divine resources we’ve been given to set the world straight again.

How startling to watch these promising young women squander their sacred goddess energy! The message then becomes: Let’s not be that way, let’s harness true radiance, let’s get to work.

Don’t you think all the public exposure to these sexy babes gone bad is illuminating? We’ve been sent so much information on this in the last year. Shouldn’t we intuit a deeper meaning? I know, I know. Lovely ladies have been flaming out since before Marilyn Monroe, but the vivid, detailed intimacy our media allows us now seems to make these cases not only more public, but more cautionary somehow. What do you think?