I could point to full-blown reports, news stories, or portentious weather forecasts, but American residents already know the truth -- Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal.  Traffic jams, crowded flights -- it seems everyone is trying to get somewhere in the days before Turkey Day. 

With the general mantra of "hurry up and place your hands in a surrender position wait" governing these next 36 hours, I thought it would be worth considering how a better appreciation of the tools of stateraft might help those of you on the road to avoid unnecessary frustrations. 

Let's say that another actor -- which we'll call the target -- is pursuing a course of action that conflicts with your interests in world politics.  This presumably means that all your attempts to avoid this clash of interests in the first place have failed.  What are your options in developing a policy response? 

Well, there's always the denial option -- physically preventing the target from doing the thing that is bothering you.  Of course, denial often requires the overpowering, sustained use of force, and therefore is massively expensive.  Very few actors have this option available to them. 

If denial is not possible, another possibility is compellence.  In this case, the goal is to punish the target such that it recalculates the costs and benefits of doing what it is doing and acquiesces to you.  While less costly than denial, punishing the target will often involve punishing yourself, albeit not as severely.  Some actors possess this option, but its success rate is far from guaranteed

Compellence and denial sound very coercive -- what about inducements?  Surely the most efficient way to alter the target's behavior is to buy them off!  Not so fast -- sometimes the price is extraordinarily steep.  Sometimes the target doesn't want to be thought of as for sale.  And sometimes the target might con you. 

There's always the possibility of persuasion -- using sweet reason to get the target to reconsider their motives and reverse their actions.  Of course, what seems eminently reasonable to you might not look so smart to the target, so this is hardly a surefire recipe for success. 

Finally, one should always consider acceptance -- allowing that the costs of trying to change the target's behavior far outweigh the costs of adjusting to the target's behavior.  Intuitively, this is a very frustrating outcome -- but if you lack the capability or the budget to pursue the other options, then it still might be the best course of action.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Thanksgiving travel?  Quite a lot, actually.  Let's say you're stuck in a traffic jam on I-95, or you're on a plane with a crying toddler sitting next to you.  The natural instinct is to declare that the situation is "unacceptable" and that "failure is not an option."  All well and good, but let's run through our  list of generic policy options and see what's feasible if you're, say, stuck in a traffic jam: 

1)  Denial:  If you're on the road, sure, you could use RPGs to blast a hole through the traffic.  That would require an awful lot of them, however, and I hear they're expensive and illegal to use.  Good luck having enough of them to force your way through the tri-state area.     

2)  Compellence:  Lot of drivers seem to believe that there are forms of punishment that could be pursued:  constant horn-honking, hanging right on someone's bumper, and so forth.  This can work with a few drivers, but more often than not it simply creates reciprocal bellicose behavior/minor fender-benders/West Coast shootings by the targets. 

3)  Inducements:  The proffering of inducements on clogged interstates is exceptionally rare, for two reasons.  First, what can be offered?  Snacks?  Drinks?  A video player?  These are all exhaustible resources -- so in a traffic jam, this will only get you a few car lengths ahead. 

4)  Persuasion:  As Tom Vanderbilt so wonderfully explained in Traffic, communication across cars is difficult.  There's that horn, and of course gesticulations with one's fingers can also often be used.  Neither of these really persuades, however. 

Unfortunately, but logically, this leads us to acceptance as the best approach to handling Thanksgiving traffic jams.  It's the best of a bad set of policy options -- much like modern-day statecraft. 

[What about the crying toddler on the plane?--ed.  Oh, then this metaphor works even better -- crying toddlers are the uncontrollable rogue states of travel.  The parent could try denial, but suffocating children still carries serious legal penalties in most states.  Compellence is popular, except if the idea is to get a screaming child to stop screaming, punishment isn't really going to work well.  Inducements -- "here, have some chocolate!" -- can work, but the child quickly figures out the associated moral hazard and has an incentive to act out again to get more inducements later in the flight.  Using persuasion on crying children is something that non-parents are convinced will work -- until the moment they become parents themselves and realize their own utter stupidity.  No, if a child is bawling uncontrollably during a flight, it's not because the parent is derelict in their parenting -- it's because they've already exhausted the first four policy options and have no recourse but acceptance.]

Safe and sane travels to one and all!   

Your humble blogger participated in a panel discussion at a "global strategy conference" over the weekend that was run by a Management Consultancy Group That Shall Remain Nameless.  The audience consisted of a lot of CEOs, corporate officers, and at least one business coach. 

Seeing as I'd just edited a book related to this topic, you'd think I'd have known what to expect in discussions about business strategy.  However, with my limited exposure to, you know, the for-profit sector, this was quite the eye-opening experience.  Management consultants are kind of like think tanks -- they matter a great deal, but no one is precisely certain why they matter so much. 

Chatham House rules prevent me from revealing anything that was said, but after 24 hours of exposure to cutting-edge management consultant practices, I am confident that I can pass on Ten Timeless Tips for How to Excel at, and Even Enjoy, Management Consulting. 

Ready?  Here we go:

1)  Market Every Piece of Advice as a Product.  Did you noticed that this list is called "Ten Timeless Tips"?  That's mine, baby!  [NOTE:  the Ten Timeless Tips may be updated at a future point in time.]

2)  Know And Repeat Your Buzzwords. This is an absolutely crucial aspect of the job.  The more business jargon you employ, the more your clients will need you to interpret what the jargon means.  For example, at the conference I attended, there was a lot of talk about the need for a "granular" perspective. 

For extra fun, try using neologisms from The Simpsons as your buzzwords.  Example:  "You need to embiggen your strategic perspective!" 

3)  Only Speak When You Have 14-Foot Graphics-Laden Screens Behind You to Amplify Your Points.  Otherwise, just nod sagely.  Bonus tip:  if you're having difficulty finding good graphics, just use this. 

4)  In Every Coversation with a Client, Mention Your Last Trip to China. This is tricky, as you have to be casual about it, while still drivng home the point that you are intimately familiar with the world's fastest-growing market.  Here are some possible ways to get this point into casual conversation: 

• "I was talking to one of our clients in Shenzhen On Monday, and..."
• "I was sunbathing in Chengdu a week ago..."
• "When I went bass-fishing in Chongqing last month..."
• "A funny thing happened when I went to a cockfight in Harbin on Tuesday...."
• "If, like me, you ever find yourself in Tianjin biting the head off of a live chicken...."

5)  Wear Lifts/Heels, and Stand on Risers Whenever Possible.  Remember, height is positively correlated with success in the business world.  To send a non-verbal cue to your customers that you deserve their money, try to sky over them. 

6)  Use Factoids To Distract Amaze Your Audience.  To drive home a point that might encounter pushback from the audience, be sure to snap off a statistic that seems related to your point.  For example, if you're trying to convince your customers that Western Africa is a more promising market than Western Europe, you can say, "Did you know there are more live births in Nigeria than in W. Europe?" 

Some other possibilities:

• "Did you know that in Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for any distance less than 30 miles?"
• "Did you know that the most popular first name in the world is Muhammad?"
• "Did you know that the first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum?"
• "Did you know that Jedi is an official religion in Australia?" 

7)  Put a Modern Spin on Old Cliches.  Example:  "To paraphrase Keynes, 'In the long run, we're all liquefie-- I mean, we're all liquid.'"

8)  Get Your Clients To Work For You.  The point of being a consultant is to get your client to give you the necessary information to do their job better.  Anything that gets them to reveal more local knowledge to you is useful and labor-saving.  Example: breakout sessions!

9)  Synergize!  Mention the various ways that multimedia campaigns can augment and properly orient your business strategy.  Oh, and say Web 2.0 a lot.  Example:  I already built buzz for this post using Web 2.0 -- a series of Twitter tweets.  How awesome is that? 

10)  Leave them wanting more... in exchange for $$$$.  Example:  I have many more tips for those who truly want to know the Management Consultant Way.  Just send a check for $10,000 to the offices of Foreign Policy and you'll receive a registered letter containing the rest of them. 

I have been blogging at danieldrezner.com for 5+ years now, and it has been a wonderful ride.  When I look back on this half-decade, I think of the good times, like when I cussed out James Lileks, or when I corrected Matt Stoller, or I adapted A Few Good Men to explain pork-barrel spending, or my DC potboiler written in the jargon of IR theory, or [I think they get the point--ed.  Really, I'm almost done!]  or what Junior Soprano and the G-20 have in common.  Hell, this blog has outlasted the birth, life and death of TimesSelect.  But five years in the blogosphere is a looooooong time.  So, as of January 4th, 2009, this blog as you know it will cease to exist.  Gone.  Kaput.  Goodbye, farewell, and amen.....  ...because on January 5th, danieldrezner.com will be relocated to Foreign Policy's website at foreignpolicy.com!  That's right, I'm officially selling out!!    Now, in light of some recent developments in the blogosphere, I can imagine that longtime readers of this blog will be curious about what this means.  So, just to be clear:  I will continue to be the sole editor of my blog.  When I want to post something, it's going up -- there are no other filters here.  To put this in blunt blogspeak terms -- if either Jennifer Palmieri or David Kuo goes anywhere near this blog, I'll whack them with a f$%#ing two-by-four.  Seriously, Foreign Policy is not affiliated with any think tank or ideological foundation -- it is now owned and operated by the Washington Post Group (as is Newsweek and Slate).  And I will not be the only person joining Foreign Policy's web team.  Without spilling any secrets, I know some of the other political scientists that Foreign Policy is bringing in after the first of the year, and I've had zero problem disagreeing with them in the past.   Blogging will continue uninterrupted at this site until January 5th, after which all y'all will be re-routed to my new home at Foreign Policy.  Finally, in the only sucking up I plan on doing in public, a big thank you to Moises Naim and the rest of the Foreign Policy crowd for having enough stupidity faith to bring me on board. 

Your humble blogger is getting the hell out of Dodge for the rest of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. Blogging will be nonexistent for the next 36 hours, followed by ten days of, at best, posting whenever I damn well feel like it which won't be that often light to intermittent blogging. Since it is the end of the year and I will be out of the country, here is a short list of things I will not be missing while I am gone:

1) Paul Krugman's jihad against Barack Obama. As an outsider to progressive infighting, this was fun for a few go-arounds, but we've now hit the tedious patch when Krugman spends every column and blog post searching desperately for something to dump on Obama. This is Krugman at his most humorless and least persuasive. How bad has it gotten? If Krugman had written a column for Christmas Day, here's how I suspect it would have opened:

In the fifties, the elves at the Norh Pole were more than 40% unionized, and as we all know, it was the golden age of the elf middle class. Elf wages have since declined, and if you think that's only because of globalization and technological change, hey, here's a single magazine article from five years ago that ostensibly upends that supposition (while whiffing on the underlying causal trend). Moving, on, Barack Obama claims that, as Santa, he will help the elf middle class. He has also said, however, that he wants to be "the Santa of the naughty and the nice." He's criticized the elf union for funding alternative candidates. It's conciliatory rhetoric like that which will guarantee that Obama will not be elected by a wide margin, dooming the progressive elf movement to a curious footnote in history....

2) Any more talk about Jamie Lynn Spears... really, it's the female equivalent of the Mitchell Report. There's a lot of "what about the children?" gnashing of teeth for both issues. In the spirit of Peyton Manning's Pep Talks, here's my advice:

Wondering what to tell your children about Jamie Lynn Spears being pregnant? Tell them it means that Jamie Lynn Spears is clearly a better actress than her sister, since the character she portrays is apparently much more level-headed than Spears herself. In the end, it doesn't matter all that much, since the girl is worth gazillions and can therefore afford to hire people to assist in raising the child competently. Unless your children are as wealthy as Spears, however, assure them that if they get pregnant at that age, regardless of what they choose to do, they're going to be creating a serious wrinkle in how they thought their life was going to turn out.

3) Debates about whether Juno or Knocked Up is the better movie. It's like asking which gender you prefer -- there's no right or wrong answer to the question. I've seen both of them - I laughed harder at Knocked Up, but found more of Juno's characters (and cast) more interesting. What's more interesting is the notion that the writers of these movies -- Judd Apatow and Diablo Cody -- might be having an extended film conversation, if this Entertainment Weekly profile of Cody is at all accurate:

Cody's taste runs more toward movies like Rosemary's Baby and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (she props a Spicoli black-and-white-checked sneaker onto the booth as evidence of her devotion), or sharply funny TV like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. ''God, I would slit my wrists to meet Judd Apatow.'' After Cody saw Superbad, she immediately went home and started writing a female response to the teen comedy, which Universal promptly snatched up. Girly Style, named after the wuss version of push-ups, tells the story of some nerdy college women.

4) Blogger endorsements. Yes, I toyed with the idea, but Ann Althouse has a valid point -- I didn't endorse during the 2004 primaries. Why start now? On the other hand, Matthew Yglesias and the Concord Monitor are onto something with the "undorsement" idea. So, my two undorsements of candidates that could ostensibly win are.... John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani. My reasons for the Giuliani undorsement have been made clear. As for Edwards -- I can't take seriously anyone who thinks that a free trade agreement with Peru -- Peru!! -- is somehow going to devastate workers and communities. Proposing to "make top prosecutors at the Department of Justice responsible for enforcing trade agreements"? I love how Edwards wants to re-engage with the world and simultaneously bully these governments into accepting American terms. Hillary Clinton's trade positions are problematic, but Edwards is Hillary on steroids.

So I stumbled across MyHeritage.com today -- which claims to have a face recognition program that lets you upload a photo and tells you which celebrities you look like. Of course, I couldn't resist. After uploading the picture on the front of the web site, here's the list of celebs I was told I resemble:

Matt LeBlanc Dustin Hoffman Antonio Banderas Usama bin Laden George Clooney Pierce Brosnan Jason Biggs Roberto Rossellini Hugh Grant Tom Stoppard

If you've managed to contain yourself to this point, well, you have better self restraint than I. Needless to say, their technology appears to be heavily dependent upon the angle of the face in the photo, hair length, facial hair, the presence of eyeglasses, etc. In other words, it's pretty much rubbish. When I uploaded a Salma Hayek photo, the program declared her to be only a 74% match with... Salma Hayek. So this was a waste of time..... until I realized that I could upload pictures of other bloggers and see who they resembled. The resulting lists of names are pretty friggin' funny.

Focus on the Family's Focus on the Child has ever so helpfully set up a web site entitled "Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?" There are some very useful tips for parents:

Evidences of gender confusion or doubt in boys ages 5 to 11 may include: 1. A strong feeling that they are ?different? from other boys. 2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy. 3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play. 4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes. 5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them ?queer,? ?fag? and ?gay.? 6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even ?think? effeminately. 7. A repeatedly stated desire to be ? or insistence that he is ? a girl.

Well, as a child, I certainly suffered from 1, 2, 4, 5, and maybe 6 (Depends how you define "think effeminately"). If you'll excuse me, I have to go tell my wife and children about my latent homosexual qualities and accompanying gender confusion. I fear that my son will probably cry and feel different. Readers, talk amongst yourselves -- in particular, how boys who like the "the roughhousing that other boys enjoy" could never be gay. Hat tip to Giblets at Fafblog, who provides additional tips for detecting future homosexuals in our nation's children:

Dunk your son into a deep pool of water. If he floats to the top, he is full of buoyant gaymotrons (identified by physicists as the gay particle) and therefore gay. If he sinks to the bottom and drowns, he is a poor swimmer and unathletic and therefore gay. If he begins to sink and then just sorta hangs there, the water is gay.

UPDATE: Another topic for discussion -- did this historical character display gender confusion as well?

When we last left the topic of food porn, the staff here at danieldrezner.com was gently mocking the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) for awarding this label to the Hardee's/Crl's Jr. Monster Thickburger, pointing out that:

[T]heir decision to label all Thickburgers as 'food porn' guaranteed that they would earn sound bites, but the effect might be the opposite of what they intended. I gotta think that if a consumer sees something with that label, it will pique rather than retard their interest.

From the comments to that post, it was clear that many readers were eager to eat the burger out of sheer bloody-mindedness because of the CPSI's excessive preachiness on the topic. One wondered, however -- riling a group like CPSI works only once in generating the kind of necessary buzz. Which group could Hardee's/Carl Jr. manage to rile up in order to secure the appropriate payoff? Which brings me, of course, to Paris Hilton:

What you see above you is a still from the new Carl. Jr.'s ad for its new Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger. Click here to see the ad running on the Carl Jr.'s site, and here to see an extended version of the ad -- as well as.... commentary by Ms. Hilton herself. [How would you describe the ad?--ed. Er.... Paris Hilton doing a really bad job of washing a Bentley and an OK job of washing herself. And how would you describe her interview?--ed. A major turn-off. Hilton describes her outfit in the ad as a "bikini." For God's sake, the one thing she's supposed to actually know is fashion and she can't even use the proper term?] According to Lester Haines of The Register, the new ad caused the Carl Jr.'s website to crash from traffic overload (read all of Haines' article by the way -- wickedly funny). Newsweek's Jonathan Darman reports that the usual suspects are not pleased with this ad:

The Paris pictures were news because the Parents Television Council (PTC), an influential broadcast-decency group, wants the ad banished to late-night television or off the airwaves altogether. The ad "meets the exact definition of pornography,? Tim Winter, the group?s executive director, tells NEWSWEEK. ?Families shouldn?t have to be subjected to that.?

CNN gets an even better quote from the PTC:

"This commercial is basically soft-core porn," said Melissa Caldwell, research director for the PTC. "The way she moves, the way she puts her finger in her mouth -- it's very suggestive and very titillating."

Wow, that's hot. Note to self... check out the PTC web site more often. Meanwhile, Carl's Jr. is just delighted by the PTC's ire:

Carl's Jr.'s message to the PTC: The group needs to "get a life," said Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr., a subsidiary of CKE Restaurants. "This isn't Janet Jackson -- there is no nipple in this. There is no nudity, there is no sex acts -- it's a beautiful model in a swimsuit washing a car." Puzder says he has shown the ad to his three children, ages 12, 9 and 7, and they have shown no signs of being corrupted. "Maybe people are excited because it's Paris Hilton, but there are far worse things on television that these groups should be worried about," Puzder said.

So far Puzder has managed to aggravate the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Parents Television Council -- both to brilliant PR effects. However, one wonders whether Puzder has run out of useful fools. Readers are strongly encouraged to suggest the next watchdog group that Puzder will provoke in order get more associations of his food products with porn.

What you see above you is the Hardee's Monster Thickburger. The burger contains 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat according to MSNBC. Here's their more complete description:

[T]wo one-third-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. The sandwich alone sells for $5.49 or $7.09 with a medium fries (520 calories) and soda (about 400 calories). [Which adds up to a 2,340 calorie meal. If memory serves, it's commonly assumed that the daily caloric intake of a healthy adult is around 2,000 calories--DD] McDonald’s Corp., Wendy’s International Inc. and other fast-food giants have broadened their offerings of salad and other lower-calorie fare amid concerns the industry could be held legally liable for America’s obesity epidemic. Hardee's [also called Carl's Jr. in some parts of the country--DD] offers no such concessions, although the chain is not completely oblivious to dietary trends, offering at least three "low-carb" items including a low-carb Thickburger. In an interview on CNBC, Hardee's chief executive Andrew Puzder was unapologetic, saying the company's latest sandwich is "not a burger for tree-huggers." "This is a burger for young hungry guys who want a really big, delicious, juicy, decadent burger," he said. "I hope our competitors keep promoting those healthy products, and we will keep promoting our big, juicy delicious burgers."

This CBS report by Jim Axelrod has more funny quotes from Puzder:

You got all four major food groups. You got beef, pork, mayonnaise and butter. "You got everything ... yeah," said Hardee's CEO Andy Puzder.... On one hand, it's inspiring late-night ridicule as a heart attack on a bun, as talk show hosts such as David Letterman jest. One showed a picture of faux doctors performing defibrillation on an imitation Hardees owner. "They actually had somebody play me on a TV show, and I had a heart attack," Pudzer said. "I even thought that was good. My ex-wife wanted a copy." And harsh criticism from the food police… "This is the epitome of corporate irresponsibility, marketing this kind of junk," said Michael Jacobson, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "We call this kind of product food porn." But despite the bad press, or may be because of it, it's also produced an 8 percent growth in sales for Hardees. Blue-state critics, meet red-state consumers. "Well it's a heavy burger," one consumer said. "It definitely fills my stomach up." The reporter told Puzder, when halfway through his burger: "I can't eat another bite. I'm all done. Is this common?" "Not for me," Puzder said.

Speaking of food porn, Puzder's irreverent sense of humor translates into Hardee's new and risqué advertising campaign. Seth Stevenson has a review of these ads in Slate -- as he concludes, "Whatever I may think of these ads, I bet they're effective with the target demographic." He's probably right -- click here for the ad that, er, goes the furthest along this line (it's entitled "Fist Girl"). [What, exactly, was the point of this post?--ed. Well, there's a complex observation to be made here about what "Red America" wants -- Many lefty commentators believe that Red Staters are getting hoodwinked into buying deceptive political propaganda about "moral values" hook, line, and sinker. The appeal of the Monster Thickburger suggests that Red State denizens know exactly what they want, and appreciate it when it's sold to them without any deception whatsoever. Oh, bullsh**t, you just wanted to write a post with the title of "Food Porn" in it and get yourself a Wonkette link!--ed. The two points are not mutually exclusive.] My question to readers -- does the blunt salesmanship make you more likely or less likely to go to a Hardee's and order a Monster Thickburger? UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds offers his answer as well as a food review. ANOTHER UPDATE: Based on the comments so far (and previous blog posts on this topic), there's another possible reason for the appeal of the Monster Thickburger -- the fact that institutions like the Center for Science in the Public Interest preach against it. Indeed, their decision to label all Thickburgers as "food porn" guaranteed that they would earn sound bites, but the effect might be the opposite of what they intended. I gotta think that if a consumer sees something with that label, it will pique rather than retard their interest (insert your own joke about "larger beef" or "more pork" here). If I was Hardee's Andy Puzder, I'd try to spam e-mail this CPSI warning to as many potential customers as possible. [What if you were working for the CPSI?--ed. There are two possibilities. One option is to try to beat Hardee's at their own game and go snarky rather than excessively earnest -- like the truth ads with regard to smoking. The other option is to be callous and wait for the Red State population to prematurely decline on its own accord after elevated consumption of Monster Thickburgers.] FINAL UPDATE: This post nicely coincides with Department of Agriculture release of Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. Among the key recommendations: "To maintain body weight in a healthy range, balance calories from foods and beverages with calories expended." (link via food economist Parke Wilde)

Daniel Drezner... he's intelligent and cute, and I'd sleep with him.

This according to Meryl Yourish. Woo-hoo! Yes, I'm happily married -- but as a complete geek who could never get girls in high school, this kind of information always nice to know. Oh, wait... Yourish was just satirizing this John Hawkins post of the top ten bloggers he would want to be stranded on a desert island with. Yourish was just kidding. I feel so... cheap and used. Sniff. Excuse me, I gotta go watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan again.

I'm sorry, I just haven't been able to focus today because of Britney Spears' marriage/annulment. What could explain this sort of tabloid celebrity behavior by such a... celebrity? I think it was that Christina Aguilera. According to the Associated Press:

[Spears] relates a story about seeing Aguilera, her former friend and fellow Mouseketeer, for the first time in two years: "She comes up to me in a club in front of all these people and tries to put her tongue down my throat! "I say, 'It's good to see you,' and she goes, 'Well, you're not being real with me.' I was like, 'Well, Christina, what's your definition of real? Going up to girls and kissing them after you haven't seen them for two years?'

That and a liplock from Madonna? You can witness the bad morals spreading from mouth to mouth! More seriously, Entertainment Weekly (subscription required) had a great November cover story -- that's the cover above -- that chronicled the beginning of Mariah Carey-like behavior. One section:

[E]ver since her breakup last year with first love Justin Timberlake (who later cast a Britney look-alike in a none-too-flattering role for his ''Cry Me a River'' video), and that much-publicized but never-materialized yearlong hiatus she promised to take, there have been plenty of highly visible symptoms. Like her tear earlier this year through virtually half the nightclubs in New York (where she couldn't even light up a cigarette without tabloids making a huge fuss). Those rumors of a fling with the balding 32-year-old Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst were pretty shocking too. (Durst went on ''Howard Stern'' and gallantly described Spears' pubic region to millions of listeners.) Add to all that the legitimate anxiety over her musical staying power. And throw in all the other stresses and strains of being the world's most scrutinized 21-year-old pop star -- the grueling video shoots, the countless interviews, the big-dollar endorsements, the endless grind of disrobing for magazine covers, not to mention the hurtful backlash from conservative Brit-haters like Kendel Ehrlich, the governor of Maryland's wife, who announced her desire to ''shoot'' Spears (while speaking at a domestic-violence conference, of all places) -- and it's easy to see why the poor girl got the flu. ''She probably needs to get laid,'' Spears says, rolling her eyes, when asked about that trigger-happy governor's wife. ''These parents, they think I'm a role model for their kids, that their kids look at me as some sort of idol. But it's the parents' job to make sure their kids don't turn out that shallow. It's the parents who should be teaching their kids how to behave. That's not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your kid.''

Even more seriously, Andrew Sullivan notes:

[C]an you not see how something like Britney Spears' insta-marriage in Las Vegas might infuriate long-committed gay couples who, even now, don't have a shred of the rights Ms Spears enjoyed for a few days? It is one thing for people to declare their commitment to traditional marriage - i.e. procreative, life-long, heterosexual. It is another thing when that ideal has almost no relationship to civil marriage as it now exists for straights; and when it is nevertheless used to deny gay people access to the institution. Over the holidays, I found myself watching all those VH1 list shows, and happened across the top ten or twenty (I forget which) shortest Hollywood marriages in history. Ha ha ha. We live a world in which Britney Spears just engaged in something "sacred" (in the president's words), where instant and joke hetero marriages and divorces are a subject of titillation, and where a decades-long monogamous lesbian marriage is a threat to civilization as we know it. Please.

I wonder if Britney is still Karl Rove's dream voter. UPDATE: Scrappleface has more. And since Instapundit says this is "the only Britney Spears wedding post you need to read," I'll also link to the Smoking Gun, which has Spears' annulment papers.