Andrew Breitbart & Mark Ebner: Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic In Babylon—The Case Against Celebrity

Given the furor over Janet Jackson's breast-baring, the box-office success of The Passion Of The Christ, and an already-divisive presidential election, the time may well be right for a book-length screed like Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner's Hollywood, Interrupted. Inspired by Anne Heche's public meltdown of 2001, right-wing gossip-gatherer Breitbart and celebrity journalist Ebner began compiling contemporary examples of Hollywood excess and arrogance, from chic sex parties and drug-abuse support networks to alternative spirituality and self-righteous political scolding. As much argument as scandal sheet, Hollywood, Interrupted begins with a section on the decadence and rootlessness of show-business families as a way of asking whether these people should be allowed to influence America's kids.

But make no mistake, Breitbart and Ebner's book is a scandal sheet, too. The authors' slipshod organization and simple factual errors (botched movie titles, misremembered plots, misinterpreted box-office data) is likely a product of their greedily cramming in as many sordid anecdotes as possible, while masking their guilty pleasure with a half-mocking, half-moralistic tone. A virtual absence of hard statistics hurts the book's case, as does an unforgiving character barometer that doggedly measures people by their worst public moments. It's also dicey when Breitbart and Ebner nail celebrities for being both too outside the mainstream and too politically correct, and it's an ill-advised leap to go from castigating celebrities' personal behavior to blasting their "blue state" politics.

What salvages the authors' argument is that some celebrities really are dopes, and that Hollywood, Interrupted is entertainingly ruthless about slashing through PR-machine cover stories to show how some well-known advocates for worker's rights treat their own employees like slaves, and how some proponents of neo-hippie living have sunken into venality. Between their own reckless dirt-dishing, Breitbart and Ebner get to the source of Hollywood egomania: a system that pampers and flatters former high-school drama geeks until they begin to think of themselves as ethically and spiritually above the rest of humanity. The most common sin fostered by this climate is hypocrisy, and whether that hypocrisy is substantially different from that of most Americans—or most opportunistic muckrakers—remains an open issue.