How many of you out there read the Rolling Stone cover story on Britney Spears? I’m not talking about this one…or this one…I’m talking about this one…Anyway, this issue came out when I was visiting my folks back in frigid Pennsylvania. I flipped through it while my old man was fillin’ up the truck at the Sheetz mini-mart. I read the first two sentences of this piece (“The Tragedy of Britney Spears” by Vanessa Grigoriadis) and found myself completely roped in. I didn’t buy it to read the rest, however, because I couldn’t quite figure out whether I was roped in because it was good writing, or because I was expecting a brainless E! True Hollywood treatment of the train-wreck. Well, I got back to Seattle and discovered that a co-worker of mine (whom I respect and assume would like to remain nameless) was also completely enraptured by the piece. I printed it off from Rolling Stone’s website and finally finished it yesterday. I gotta say, it is one great piece of writing…as smooth and effortless as an exhale, but ripe with insightful passages, like this one:”If there is one thing that has become clear in the past year of Britney’s collapse — the most public downfall of any star in history — it’s that she doesn’t want anything to do with the person the world thought she was. She is not a good girl. She is not America’s sweetheart. She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes, doesn’t do her nails, tells reporters to “eat it, snort it, lick it, fuck it” and screams at people who want pictures for their little sisters. She is not someone who can live by the most basic social rules — she is someone who, when she has had her one- and two-year-old sons taken completely out of her care, with zero visitation rights, appeared at Los Angeles’ Superior Court to convince the judge to give her kids back, but then decided not to go inside, and she’s someone who did this twice. She’s the perfect celebrity for America in decline: Like President Bush, she just doesn’t give a fuck, but at least we won’t have to clean up after her mess for the rest of our lives.”If you haven’t read it yet, Rolling Stone has the whole thing available for free!