"Newsweek" Confronts Whores Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, et al

Those wacky celebrity skanks. Finally, someone in the mainstream press is taking them to task.

Is the bad behavior of today's pop twits legitimate enough reason to keep your daughter away from I Know Who Killed Me? Or is Newsweek's latest cover, "The Girls Gone Wild Effect," another example of media-manufactured alarmism?

According to the mag's new poll, 77 percent of respondents said Britney, Paris, and Lindsay have too much influence on young girls. (Perhaps that's what happens when you put them on the cover of a national news magazine.) Here's a quick look at the other data:

• "Sex surveys are notoriously unreliable, but the best available data show that the average age of first sexual intercourse for girls is 17 ... and hasn't changed by more than a few months in 20 years."

• "Smoking and overall drug use among teenage girls have declined in recent years."

• "The overall teenage pregnancy rate in 2002, the most recent available, was down
35 percent from 1990."

• "In the 2004-2005 school year, women earned 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees awarded and 59 percent of master's degrees."

Of course, this could just be a bunch of ivory tower numbers manipulation. What do today's real girls think?

• "My friends and I look at them to laugh at them," explains Emma Boyce, a 17-year-old from New Orleans. "Our lives seem pretty good by comparison. We're not going to rehab like Lindsay."

One of the best books I've read on America's celebration of decadence is Ben Shapiro's excellent tome "The Porn Generation". 21yo (at the time he wrote the book) Shapiro spouts the same topics Newsweek brings up: the utter rejection of morality by these very same celebrities and how much of a damaging effect it's having on our society, especially today's youth. If you haven't already read it I highly recommend that you pick it up.