Scotty W
Banned
Vulture magazine published an article in November 2022 on the #freeBritney movement. Partway through, we meet this sentence about her behavior in 2006-2008:
“Britney married her backup dancer, had two children in quick succession, divorced the backup dancer, and became what the press called erratic and unstable and, very often, crazy, though to many people later on, she looked like a person going through her 20s.”
www.vulture.com
I did not pay close attention to the Britney saga while it was going on, but it was impossible not to be aware what was happening simply by virtue of omnipresent web, tv and magazine coverage. Nonetheless, I feel like I am the only person who remembers that time, and what I remember is thinking “She is going to die any day now.”
But she didn’t, thanks to the conservatorship. If you go back and look at articles published during that time— and for years afterward— you will see the press refer to this period as a “downward spiral” and the conservatorship as a good thing.
Here is the thesis: the press hounded her to the point of madness and into the conservatorship, then when it became convenient for them, they changed themselves into her liberator.
In fact, as late as 2019, tmz, of all people, was claiming that her former manager Sam Lutfi, who assisted her greatly on her downward spiral, and who had been fighting the conservatorship for over a decade was responsible for the #FreeBritney movement.
https://www.tmz.com/2019/05/07/britney-spears-restraining-order-sam-lutfi/
Let’s back up and get some context. Of you look at Britney’s dating history, a pattern emerges.
Justin Timberlake- worked together on the Mickey Mouse Club. She cheated on JT with her choreographer. Then, as legend has it, Fred Durst. She married a childhood friend named Jason Alexander in Las Vegas for 55 hours before getting the marriage annulled (this is an exception to the pattern, also, remember this guy). She married Kevin Federline, her backup dancer for two years and had 2 children with him. Next, during her darkest period, she dated a paparazzo named Adnan Ghalib and (apparently) her Svengali like ‘manager’ Sam Lutfi. Then her agent, a lawyer and a TV exec son, before finally meeting her current husband, Sam Asghari, when he was a backup dancer in one of her videos.
The pattern is that nearly everyone is someone involved in her career or the entertainment industry. She has little to no life outside the media. Gwyneth Paltrow hit the nail in the head, saying: 'Look at what they've done to Britney. The paparazzi and magazines have blood on their hands. They literally made her go insane.’
‘She's got classic Stockholm Syndrome she fell in love with a paparazzo and went insane. The photographers and the editors of these magazines have such bad karma. It's pretty dark.'
For context, check out this video filmed just days before the conservatorship began.
These people! They are worse than wolves! (Side note: Britney had been named the worst celebrity dog owner a year before this video).
If you watch any video from around this time, you will see the same: adulation, mockery, attempts to show pity for her and never ending flash photography. And she had a symbiotic push/pull relationship with these people- rather than escaping she both fed the wolves and tried to beat them back. In any case, every moment in her meltdown needs to be thought of as having been attended by unrelenting flashing lights.
So let’s look at her breakdown.
At the start of 2006 was a minor event that drew endless criticism. Due to the difficulty caused by the swarm of paparazzi she found it difficult to put her baby in his booster seat, so she put him in her lap as she drove. A similar event would occur several months later, followed by a stumble while holding her baby. This led to very intense criticism of her as a mother, which she and K-Fed (her husband) would bizarrely mock in an awards show video:
You may recall, but the media absolutely HATED Kevin Federline, and so people were overjoyed when she broke up with him by text message just weeks after the birth of her second child. You can actually see the moment it happened in November 2007.
After this, time seems to speed up. Days later, she began to party with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton- heavy cocaine users according to Steve O. Days later she was removed from a strip club after getting up on stage.
On January 3, 2007, she wrote a gushing note for her fans. A day or 2 later, she and K-Fed came to a custody agreement regarding their children, which she would gradually lose out on. An aunt who she was quite close to died during this time too.
The next month, February, she went to rehab for a day before checking out. The very next day is the famous shaving head incident.
Followed by the famous umbrella incident.
From the video description: “Just days after shaving her head, Britney Spears went to Kevin Federline's house in the San Fernando Valley around 7 pm and rang the bell at his gate three times with no answer. She was so frustrated that when her assistant stopped the car, Britney grabbed an umbrella and went after our photographers.”
The golden thread running through a lot of this is her children. Remember, this is 2 months after her second child was born, she was probably going through postpartum depression. There is a kind of self generating reciprocity going on throughout all this: she was definitely not in a good place before her child was born, but she has post partum after he was born, which leads to wild behavior, which leads to her losing her rights with her children, which leads to more crazy behavior and so on.
In May 2007 she met Sam Lutfi in a nightclub. From the Dailymail:
Lutfi told jurors how he met Spears at a nightclub in May 2007 and said she struck up a conversation by asking him if she could have his hat.
He said he told her no. 'She liked that. She doesn't get told "no" often. So it was refreshing to hear "no" once. We started talking, hit it off and she started calling and texting me. We hung out and became friends,' he said.
He then became her manager and (apparently) her fiance (it is difficult to tell). It seems that he played an extremely dark game with her. He told her that he was going to get her clean and keep her away from drugs. At the same time, Britney’s mother Lynne claimed in a book that Lufti was crushing up pills and putting them in Britney’s food to keep her in a stupor. Apparently a lot of the videos of Britney going out late at night and acting strangely are his doing. Word has it that he used to coordinate with the paparazzi.
At the same time, she also started dating a paparazzo named Adnan Galib, who had been selected to photograph her. I have never been able to figure out the connection between Lutfi and Ghalib. Even when this was all going down it seemed like she was switching between them day by day. There are conflicting reports as to why they broke up. According to some sources, Ghalib was coordinating with the press for photo opportunities for a big payday.
www.thesun.co.uk
According to other sources, she caught him cheating on her in March 2008, AFTER the conservatorship had started. Then “Britney Spears is said to have reconciled with ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib because she fears him releasing a secret sex tape, MailOnline has been told.”
www.dailymail.co.uk
But this is months after the conservatorship has started. Let’s go back to that.
In the early days of 2008, she was being called into depositions about child custody, and not showing up. On January 3rd, her sons were visiting her. K-Fed’s bodyguard came to pick them up. According to People:
“She had already put Preston in the car when Britney locked herself in a room with Jayden,” says the source. “The cops came and got through the door and tied her down to a gurney.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(89x0:91x2)/brit_spears-c8d63e1f349b4344b3e6fe9f58972e88.jpg)
people.com
A lot of strange stuff seems to have continued to go on in January 2008 until the end of the month. Tmz: “Last night, Britney's new psychiatrist went to her home and felt she was a danger to herself and others -- partly because of her reckless driving and partly because of her "downhill behavior." As a result, the shrink launched a plan (days in the making) to have Britney committed to UCLA Medical Center by calling the cops.”
www.tmz.com
The conservatorship began the next day, and Sam Lutfi was forced out of her life with a restraining order, as he continued to stalk her. It must be pointed out that Sam Lutfi was also involved in Amanda Bynes’ nervous breakdown in 2014, that Courtney Love got a restraining order against him in 2018 and that Britney got another restraining order against him in 2019.
This was a personal conservatorship, a financial conservatorship began some time later.
In all this, if you watch even the supposed crazy videos, she never acts insane. She always maintains her composure, except for the umbrella attack, which is a single moment of much deserved frustration.
What I get the sense of is a disintegration of soul. She didn’t snap, the nerve dissolved under prolonged stress. She is a shell of her former self. It not that she is mad, it is that she is incapable of not getting swept up in the madness. If you pay attention to her online activity even today, something still seems wrong.
I don’t know if it was necessary to keep her in her conservatorship indefinitely, but the demonization of her family seems unnecessary. I recall seeing a story talking about her father living in a “luxury motorhome.
www.mirror.co.uk
This story claims he was taking about 16,000$ a month. But compare with this story from tmz:
Jamie also says he's "dutifully and faithfully served as the Conservator of his daughter's Estate without any blemishes on his record." He goes on to say when he came on board, the Estate was in debt and facing 10's of millions of dollars in lawsuit, and he turned it around, so it's now $60+ million strong.
www.tmz.com
Britney has come out very strongly against her family. She is furious. I think she is feeding off of social media, just like she fed off of the media. There is definitely an argument to be made that the conservatorship should not have gone on so long, but the idea that it should not have begun in the first place is just wrong. The entire media said the conservatorship saved her until it occurred to the media to save her from the conservatorship.
“Britney married her backup dancer, had two children in quick succession, divorced the backup dancer, and became what the press called erratic and unstable and, very often, crazy, though to many people later on, she looked like a person going through her 20s.”
House of Spears
One year ago, Britney Spears was freed from a notorious conservatorship. What possessed her father to seize near-total control of her life?
www.vulture.com
I did not pay close attention to the Britney saga while it was going on, but it was impossible not to be aware what was happening simply by virtue of omnipresent web, tv and magazine coverage. Nonetheless, I feel like I am the only person who remembers that time, and what I remember is thinking “She is going to die any day now.”
But she didn’t, thanks to the conservatorship. If you go back and look at articles published during that time— and for years afterward— you will see the press refer to this period as a “downward spiral” and the conservatorship as a good thing.
Here is the thesis: the press hounded her to the point of madness and into the conservatorship, then when it became convenient for them, they changed themselves into her liberator.
In fact, as late as 2019, tmz, of all people, was claiming that her former manager Sam Lutfi, who assisted her greatly on her downward spiral, and who had been fighting the conservatorship for over a decade was responsible for the #FreeBritney movement.
https://www.tmz.com/2019/05/07/britney-spears-restraining-order-sam-lutfi/
Let’s back up and get some context. Of you look at Britney’s dating history, a pattern emerges.
Justin Timberlake- worked together on the Mickey Mouse Club. She cheated on JT with her choreographer. Then, as legend has it, Fred Durst. She married a childhood friend named Jason Alexander in Las Vegas for 55 hours before getting the marriage annulled (this is an exception to the pattern, also, remember this guy). She married Kevin Federline, her backup dancer for two years and had 2 children with him. Next, during her darkest period, she dated a paparazzo named Adnan Ghalib and (apparently) her Svengali like ‘manager’ Sam Lutfi. Then her agent, a lawyer and a TV exec son, before finally meeting her current husband, Sam Asghari, when he was a backup dancer in one of her videos.
The pattern is that nearly everyone is someone involved in her career or the entertainment industry. She has little to no life outside the media. Gwyneth Paltrow hit the nail in the head, saying: 'Look at what they've done to Britney. The paparazzi and magazines have blood on their hands. They literally made her go insane.’
‘She's got classic Stockholm Syndrome she fell in love with a paparazzo and went insane. The photographers and the editors of these magazines have such bad karma. It's pretty dark.'
For context, check out this video filmed just days before the conservatorship began.
These people! They are worse than wolves! (Side note: Britney had been named the worst celebrity dog owner a year before this video).
If you watch any video from around this time, you will see the same: adulation, mockery, attempts to show pity for her and never ending flash photography. And she had a symbiotic push/pull relationship with these people- rather than escaping she both fed the wolves and tried to beat them back. In any case, every moment in her meltdown needs to be thought of as having been attended by unrelenting flashing lights.
So let’s look at her breakdown.
At the start of 2006 was a minor event that drew endless criticism. Due to the difficulty caused by the swarm of paparazzi she found it difficult to put her baby in his booster seat, so she put him in her lap as she drove. A similar event would occur several months later, followed by a stumble while holding her baby. This led to very intense criticism of her as a mother, which she and K-Fed (her husband) would bizarrely mock in an awards show video:
You may recall, but the media absolutely HATED Kevin Federline, and so people were overjoyed when she broke up with him by text message just weeks after the birth of her second child. You can actually see the moment it happened in November 2007.
After this, time seems to speed up. Days later, she began to party with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton- heavy cocaine users according to Steve O. Days later she was removed from a strip club after getting up on stage.
On January 3, 2007, she wrote a gushing note for her fans. A day or 2 later, she and K-Fed came to a custody agreement regarding their children, which she would gradually lose out on. An aunt who she was quite close to died during this time too.
The next month, February, she went to rehab for a day before checking out. The very next day is the famous shaving head incident.
Followed by the famous umbrella incident.
From the video description: “Just days after shaving her head, Britney Spears went to Kevin Federline's house in the San Fernando Valley around 7 pm and rang the bell at his gate three times with no answer. She was so frustrated that when her assistant stopped the car, Britney grabbed an umbrella and went after our photographers.”
The golden thread running through a lot of this is her children. Remember, this is 2 months after her second child was born, she was probably going through postpartum depression. There is a kind of self generating reciprocity going on throughout all this: she was definitely not in a good place before her child was born, but she has post partum after he was born, which leads to wild behavior, which leads to her losing her rights with her children, which leads to more crazy behavior and so on.
In May 2007 she met Sam Lutfi in a nightclub. From the Dailymail:
Lutfi told jurors how he met Spears at a nightclub in May 2007 and said she struck up a conversation by asking him if she could have his hat.
He said he told her no. 'She liked that. She doesn't get told "no" often. So it was refreshing to hear "no" once. We started talking, hit it off and she started calling and texting me. We hung out and became friends,' he said.
He then became her manager and (apparently) her fiance (it is difficult to tell). It seems that he played an extremely dark game with her. He told her that he was going to get her clean and keep her away from drugs. At the same time, Britney’s mother Lynne claimed in a book that Lufti was crushing up pills and putting them in Britney’s food to keep her in a stupor. Apparently a lot of the videos of Britney going out late at night and acting strangely are his doing. Word has it that he used to coordinate with the paparazzi.
At the same time, she also started dating a paparazzo named Adnan Galib, who had been selected to photograph her. I have never been able to figure out the connection between Lutfi and Ghalib. Even when this was all going down it seemed like she was switching between them day by day. There are conflicting reports as to why they broke up. According to some sources, Ghalib was coordinating with the press for photo opportunities for a big payday.
Who is Adnan Ghalib and when did he date Britney Spears?
BRITNEY Spears’ ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib feared the star would take her life during the height of her troubles in 2007. From photographing Britney to becoming her boyfriend to receiving a restrain…
www.thesun.co.uk
According to other sources, she caught him cheating on her in March 2008, AFTER the conservatorship had started. Then “Britney Spears is said to have reconciled with ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib because she fears him releasing a secret sex tape, MailOnline has been told.”
Britney takes back ex-boyfriend Adnan amid fears of sex tape being released
Britney Spears is said to have reconciled with ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib because she fears him releasing a secret sex tape, MailOnline has been told.
But this is months after the conservatorship has started. Let’s go back to that.
In the early days of 2008, she was being called into depositions about child custody, and not showing up. On January 3rd, her sons were visiting her. K-Fed’s bodyguard came to pick them up. According to People:
“She had already put Preston in the car when Britney locked herself in a room with Jayden,” says the source. “The cops came and got through the door and tied her down to a gurney.”
Britney on 72-Hour Mental Lockdown
Meanwhile, Federline's lawyer arrives at court to try to strip Spears of her visitation rights
A lot of strange stuff seems to have continued to go on in January 2008 until the end of the month. Tmz: “Last night, Britney's new psychiatrist went to her home and felt she was a danger to herself and others -- partly because of her reckless driving and partly because of her "downhill behavior." As a result, the shrink launched a plan (days in the making) to have Britney committed to UCLA Medical Center by calling the cops.”
How Britney's Second Psychiatric Hold Went Down
TMZ has broken story after story in the middle of the night, detailing the second commitment of Britney Spears that occurred in the last few hours. For all of you who have just logged on, here's a summary:
www.tmz.com
The conservatorship began the next day, and Sam Lutfi was forced out of her life with a restraining order, as he continued to stalk her. It must be pointed out that Sam Lutfi was also involved in Amanda Bynes’ nervous breakdown in 2014, that Courtney Love got a restraining order against him in 2018 and that Britney got another restraining order against him in 2019.
This was a personal conservatorship, a financial conservatorship began some time later.
In all this, if you watch even the supposed crazy videos, she never acts insane. She always maintains her composure, except for the umbrella attack, which is a single moment of much deserved frustration.
What I get the sense of is a disintegration of soul. She didn’t snap, the nerve dissolved under prolonged stress. She is a shell of her former self. It not that she is mad, it is that she is incapable of not getting swept up in the madness. If you pay attention to her online activity even today, something still seems wrong.
I don’t know if it was necessary to keep her in her conservatorship indefinitely, but the demonization of her family seems unnecessary. I recall seeing a story talking about her father living in a “luxury motorhome.
Britney Spears' father Jamie's trailer unveiled in storage facility car park
Singer Britney Spears' father - who reportedly gets $16,000 per month in salary plus an extra $2,000 monthly for office space for his role as her conservator - lives in a motorhome parked in Kentwood, Louisiana
www.mirror.co.uk
This story claims he was taking about 16,000$ a month. But compare with this story from tmz:
Jamie also says he's "dutifully and faithfully served as the Conservator of his daughter's Estate without any blemishes on his record." He goes on to say when he came on board, the Estate was in debt and facing 10's of millions of dollars in lawsuit, and he turned it around, so it's now $60+ million strong.
Jamie Spears Says Britney's Personal Conservator Says She's 'Mentally Sick'
Britney Spears personal conservator told Britney's dad less than a month ago, Britney was so mentally impaired the conservator raised the prospect of putting her under a 5150 psychiatric hold ... this according to Jamie Spears in new legal docs.
www.tmz.com
Britney has come out very strongly against her family. She is furious. I think she is feeding off of social media, just like she fed off of the media. There is definitely an argument to be made that the conservatorship should not have gone on so long, but the idea that it should not have begun in the first place is just wrong. The entire media said the conservatorship saved her until it occurred to the media to save her from the conservatorship.
. Gained a few pounds
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