Celebrity behavior, excuses make a mockery of serious problems

A man walks into a doctor's office. Doctor says, "I give you six months to live."

Man says, "But doctor, that doesn't even give me time to pay off my bill to you." Doctor says, "Alright then, I'll give you another six months."

Money - man's temporary permit to play God - especially if you're a celebrity.

There are so many things I could have written about this week - many important current events of local significance - but something in particular has put an aggravating stone in my shoe: celebrities who use their clout and money to buy the façade of rehab whenever they say or do something stupid enough to put their careers in the incinerator.

Whether it was Michael Richards' maniacal racial spew; Isiah Washington's insensitive public punishment of fellow "Grey's Anatomy" co-star T.R. Knight"; Mel Gibson's "passion of" the anti-Semitic slurs; Lindsey Lohan's recent paparazzi attack and other off-screen Hollyweirdness; or now pop singer Brandy's escape from what should have been a sure-as-hell manslaughter charge for slamming her car into another and killing the driver, Hollywood's golden calf has been milked abusively for the purpose of ceremonious escape. And it sickens me. It should sicken you, too.

Richards, Washington, Gibson and Lohan have all leaned on and bent the twig-like crutch of rehabilitation. The only thing rehabilitated was the wallet size of their agents, who were the ones who ushered that phony promise of reborn sanity to the media. Why does this all sicken me? Rehabilitation is a serious treatment - dead serious - and yet many celebrities treat it with clownish disrespect. To me, it's like lying about a family member's illness or failing health just to get a day off from work. Kharma wrapped around a bush of thorns.

There are many people - people in our families - who either suffer from depression or substance abuse and crucially rely on the powers of rehabilitation to restore their lives. Yet star-blinded dopes like the ones I mentioned earlier in this column lean so heavily on the crutch of rehab that they break its support, with the hope that their dumbbell antics will be rewarded with the forgiveness of their public. The socially and ethnically incorrect rants of rich pinheads like Richards, Gibson and Washington should not be forgiven just because of their "Cuckoo's Nest" media announcements to seek rehabilitation. The eggs of those slurs will remain incubated deep inside the fertilities of their behavioral tracts ... growing ... growing ... until they are ready to crack, and open themselves to the incredulous claim of rehabilitation again.

• John DiMambro is publisher of the Nevada Appeal. Write to him at jdimambro@nevadaappeal.com.