The Most Embarrassing Celebrity Scandal Ever

Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

More Fads: The 1980's
No decade since the 1950's has so boldly established itself as a fad juggernaut as did the 1980's. In comparison, the 1990's were a sad decade for fads indeed, making one wonder where the will for conspicuous time wasting had gone. Probably the best... (4/5/04)

You're So Vain:A 10-Minute History of Haiti
If reader email and misguided public graffiti is to be taken as any indication, all the hullabaloo and carryings-on in Haiti lately have left most Americans feeling like they just walked in during the middle of a bad action movie with no idea why... (3/8/04)

More Fads: The 1970's
All that writing about accidental TV nudity last column got me thinking about one thing: big hair, bare bottoms, and the Decade of the Streak. That's right, the 1970's. Actually, to be totally accurate, the 70's weren't really a historical decade,... (2/23/04)

Did You See That Shit? The History of Accidental TV Nudity
A nation awoke last Monday already colossally beyond-tired of hearing about Janet Jackson's titties, yet knowing intuitively they'd have to endure at least a month of teeth-gnashing from the three people in the world who were offended by sort-of... (2/9/04)

A Lazy Miracle: The History of the Remote Control
The American people should thank the inventor of the remote control. We should thank our fat asses off. Because if it weren't for the remote, we'd have to get up off the couch every time something crappy came on TV, which means we'd all have bionic... (1/26/04)