Lindsay Lohan, when the future was bright
I’m still rooting for Lindsay Lohan to turn things around, so I didn’t want to make too big a deal over her recent tweet in connection with the 24-year-old’s latest drama, a felony charge for walking out of a jewelry store wearing an unpurchased necklace priced at $2,500. Being still on probation as she is, the downward-spiraling former child star is facing the possibility of serious prison time. The tweet said, in part,
“…I was not raised to lie, cheat or steal…!”
This is either self-delusion on an epic scale or one of the most brazen lies since Lindsay told police, when they found cocaine in the pocket of her jeans, that she wasn’t wearing her own pants…or perhaps since she told a judge that she couldn’t make her court appearance on a drunk driving charge, after flying off to the Cannes Film Festival shortly before she was due in court, because “her passport was stolen.” As for the stealing part, Lindsay has stolen before, and is in fact infamous for walking off with clothes and accessories from photo shoots. As for her upbringing, it is the classic example of a dysfunctional parenting duo failing to set boundaries for a child star. Her mother encouraged her to hit the club scene while still a minor, and ridiculed complaints from producers, directors and actors regarding Lohan’s unreliable conduct on the set. Her father, Michael Lohan, is a commodity trader. He was absent for much of her childhood, having ended up in prison twice as a result of insider trading allegations—that’s Lindsay’s cheating lesson.
If you set out to raise a morally and ethically confused young woman with responsibility, integrity, self-discipline and honesty deficits, you could hardly do better than Michael and Dina Lohan. Contrary to her tweet, their trouble daughter was raised to lie, cheat and steal. She has lied, a lot, and stolen too, and is in the process of cheating herself out of the happy and successful life as a popular and successful performer that seemed so certain just a few years ago.
Ethics Alarms 
My dear father passed many years ago. He was one of those old kind of attorneys who, many times, used the barter system. I can remember eating the farmer’s goods, chickens and vegetables in exchange for legal services. He knew they didn’t have the money.
One day dad and I were having a “discussion” where I was spewing this and that. This is your fault type of thing and I was doing all the blaming. The “discussion” was about my teen age behavior. Quietly, dad said, “Okay, think of it this way Lizzie, shame on my parents for making me this way, but shame on me for staying this way.”
Miss L. has been given many breaks. I, too, would like to see her turn her life around, but there comes a time when she needs to be responsible for her actions and stop “staying this way.” Hope she does before the courts decide for her.
I guess I should clarify the “shame on me for staying this way.” Dad was not the “me.” He had me repeat that phrase several times until it sunk in.
It sounds similar to the blog on Paul Getty III causality of parenting at a discount that crimes follow dozens a dime. There’s a Chinese proverb: If you find a student wrong, find who the teacher is and punish him. I remember a story that I read in my school days called ‘City of erehwon’ as to how such Ms. Lohans are treated. She needs treatment not punishment.
Total agreement. She needs treatment.
Agree she needs help too.
In the photo accompanying this article, Ms. Lohan looks very bad for 24 years old…this is sad and she is a royal pain-in-the-ass. I feel for her, and understand her pain while growing up, as I’ m the father of a quite wonderful, loving, responsible daughter who turned out OK, despite having an alcoholic father who was not always there for her in her impressionable years (she’s a PhD, serves on the board of the international Society for Conservation Biology — like to brag about her every chance I get).
Lindsay Lohan needs treatment, yes, and she needs a whole lot of quality time with an AA group. AA will accept and love her without accepting her bullshit.
Lindsay does need help badly. I’m assuming by the picture in the article, you mean one other than the photo in my post, which is of Lindsay when she was about 11. In current photos she indeed looks strung out and prematurely old; presumably this is reversible, as she is so young and genetically gifted. As you know, it’s never too late, but her life, not to mention her career, is hanging in the balance.
It is shame what a sad life a former child star like her is going through now. She definitely needs a lot of help to get her life and herself back on track before it is too late.
It’s a sad history out of Hollywood. It lures our best and brightest kids into its maw, exploits and corrupts them and their families, and reduces them all to either misfits or animals before the child even attains legal adulthood. One of the saddest aspects of this comes merely when one views (as above) the shining face of a little girl with a seemingly marvelous ahead… but knowing where that life will actually lead.
Lindsey Lohan is only the most visible wreckage wrought by this inhuman system at present. There have been others. And, God knows, there are more who’s travails have only temporarily fallen out of the spotlight. You’ll soon note them when Lindsey’s dark sun has finally set. And they’ll be even worse, because now the abuses start in the preteens.
At least the Lohans never starred their daughter in a child pornographic movie then, like Dakota Fanning’s did. At least they never turned her into a foul mouthed butcher, like Chloe Moretz’s did. At least they never turned her into a prancing little stripper, like Abigail Breslin’s did. And, at least they never had her portray a cross-dressing object of homosexual pleasures, like Jimmy Bennett’s did.
These crimes against chldren for profit have inevitable consequences. For the aforementioned- all of whom are still children- those negatives have already been registering. Only quietly. Hollywood is not yet given to publicizing its perversions with children pridefully… as it does with the adults.
Lohan shows that what goes on behind the camera and after shooting stops does more damage than what happens in the studio. Her films, except for “I Know Who Killed Me,” weren’t very objectionable, but my guess is that Abigail, Dakota et al, will be better off than poor Lindsay, whose mother trained her to be irresponsible.
I can’t agree on that point, Jack. Particularly on the Fannings. My studies on their story increasingly indicated that the corruption was there from the beginning. With Kym Breslin, that point’s still unclear. But Joy Fanning’s is one that points to a deliberate and methodical manipulation of her daughters’ careers for profit that- as is so often the case- stemmed from her own frustrated ambitions and jealousies from her youth.
The adverse effects of this on Dakota’s personal life have been mixed. I think she’s still a good kid at heart… which would be a testament to her after the perverse upbringing she’s been subjected to. But she’s still- without question in my mind- the most exploited child actress in Hollywood’s ill-starred history. Those things have consequences. And those consequences have been noted, despite their being carefully understated and concealed by those who retain a vested interest.
Oh, BTW, your point on what goes on behind the camera being important is well taken. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve often made the point that Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, etc., were never exposed to on-screen sexuality or violence to anything like the level that a number of current child actors have been. Even Disney- low as it’s sunk- largely shies away from that. Yet, the perverse environment of Hollywood took its toll along the way. Given that, what can be expected from the current crop of child actors who’ve been and are now publically exploited in ways that their predecessors never were? It’s not a pretty scene to contemplate.
I don’t know where Mr. Pillin lives, but I suspect it is not in “Hollywood” (which is just the nickname for a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles). I’ve lived here for years, and probably know it better than he.
His rant (and that’s what it is) is unfairly bigoted toward thousands of people who work in the “Industry”. Some are vicious “bad guys”, some are ethical, caring “good guys”, and probably in the same ratios as the general population, including him. They are not all the same, and don’t deserve an all-encompassing N-Word.
The issue of talented kids getting chewed up in the “maw” of the “system” rests with the wisdom, or lack, thereof, of parents. The parents of wrecked kids are not helpless, hapless victims of the system, but of their own greed and hunger for fame.
Dear Curmudgeon:
You’re quite right when you say I don’t live in Hollywood. Never set foot in it, in fact. I’m from Houston. I also agree when you say that there are many good people still there. Having made a number of associations there (and with a good many who share my viewpoint… and more) I can attest to this. I speak from a standpoint of research, personal experience from my law enforcement background and a plain sense of Christian decency.
I’ll also agree on something else, which is a point I have often elaborated on in many articles. The parents are ultimately responsible. They may be goaded into infamy by corrupt agents. They may be provided the opportunity to degrade their own children for profit by debased filmmakers. They may be inticed into foul dealings through initial ignorance. But, in the final tally, they are responsible. Nothing can be done to or with children in films or any other endeavor without their written permission.
Some stage parents start off with the highest of intentions, but are led to compromise in ever larger increments over time until they find that they’ve fatally eroded their values and their moral authority… and that their child has become jaded from it to the point where any pull-back on their part would result in a rupture. Some started out morally compromised from the onset. But they all got there when they reached the point to where their child ceased to be a beloved son or daughter in their eyes- first and foremost- and became, instead, a financial asset. The responsibility IS their’s.
What I object to is a system that can lure and exploit these people into profitting from the desecration of their talented children. It is not only corrupt, but criminal in the most basic sense of the word. They’re children FIRST. Any system that contributes to the delinquency and moral turpitude of a child can be characterized as such. I firmly state that the laws that condemn and penalize such actions beyond the havens of Hollywood- and that extend to parents and professional panderers alike- be applied equally. If they had been, these abuses would be of little issue today. Instead, they are rampant… and growing in perversity.