It's all the buzz on the Internet today ... Britney's "bomb performance" on MTV's Video Music Awards ceremony. There were numerous pre-show interviews of celebrities "anxious to see how Britney was going to top herself" (meaning the performance with the python and the one where she and Madonna kissed). Mind you, these two performances were done when Britney was at the top of her game. Yeah, no pressure. Anyone opening MTV's Video Music Awards ceremony show would be rightfully nervous, for this is an audience of their peers, most of which are very supportive of their own, but there was a strange energy at the 2007 awards, and "supportive" of Britney is not what came through the cameras. After all the recent bad press Britney has had, and oh, it's been bad, starting with her shaving her head, going in and out of rehab, partying too hard, being too fat, claims that she's an unfit mother, all the while Kevin Federline (who did what by the way to make his fortune?) is gloating and smiling away with his fake porcelain teeth that Britney bought him, I can't imagine why she might be just a little bit nervous for this performance.

Well, the performance was as bad as Britney's press has been. So bad it's painful to watch, but I encourage you to do so, for when you do, you will hopefully see why I am writing this article. There is a point early in her performance when Britney assesses the crowd. If you really pay attention here you will see that she instantly feels fear, embarrassment, self-awareness, and panic. During the performance, the only time she smiles is when she's looking at her co-dancers. The minute she faces the crowd, that smile disappears. She reminds me of poor Miss Teen South Carolina whose brain got scrambled when asked the question about why she thinks so many kids in the United States cannot locate our country on a map. Miss Carolina was just fighting for coherent, English words she could say while maintaining her smile for her answer. Britney was frozen in a different way, for I believe in those brief moments of assessment, she realized "all these people know about my business, and they are not here to see me succeed, they're here to watch me fail." A person just knows when this is true, and Britney is just like any one of us. Instead of her mind going blank, like Miss Teen South Carolina, her face and body did. She did the motions as best as she could, for this was better than just running off the stage, but the camera revealed some of the faces that were looking back at her, and they were not nice.

Do not get me wrong. I am in no way defending Britney's choices throughout her life who she is as a person, or anything like that. Heck, I'm not even that much of a fan of Britney's music. I am talking about simple human compassion and behavior and when we cross the line into just cruelty. The remarks now being said about her are just plain mean and sound like the words of an angry mob with stones in their hands ready to hurl and kill. A chance to redeem herself to the world, Britney went out and did her best, but instead she has probably handed the world the final nail to the coffin which holds the carcass of her dead professional singing career. I'm not sure who I'm more disappointed at, the tabloids and online blogs and Web sites who are trashing her now, the people who choreographed that ridiculous performance or the people with a twisted sense of humor who put her, well, less than runway model trim body (she has had two kids, people) in panties and a bra instead of a more forgiving, yet still sexy outfit. Take Britney out of it all, and it was still a disaster. There were too many people on stage, the performance was erratic, it lacked a real theme or vision, it was flat, and I believe it was all in the hands of Britney to bring that pathetic performance to life. Well, anyone who lives on planet Earth knows that Britney is having a hard enough time holding herself together and to put that much responsibility on her at this stage in her career was a huge error in judgment on someone else's part, someone behind the scenes who is not taking a bashing right now ... at least publicly.

Call me a bleeding heart, call me whatever you want, I don't care, but I will not sit here and watch a person get beaten down further into the mud by a cruel media who is absolutely loving her failure because it means higher ratings for them. Folks, admit it, we've all been in a similar position as Britney's, or Miss Teen South Carolina's to a degree at one point in our lives, whether it was in a speech class, or a work presentation we had to give, or just in some public situation where we just "beefed up" so badly we wished we could just die, or a hole in the floor would open and swallow us up. The only difference between "us" and "them" is that we are usually forgiven by the nice and kind people in our lives who pat us on the back and say "you did your best" forget what we did and let us get on with our lives. "They" don't. "They" get beaten and battered for as long as "we" want, for as long as it makes us laugh, for as long as YouTube will run their video, and as far as "they" are concerned, "their" mistake will last forever, because it will be seen by the world forever and live in infamy.

I don't care who you are, how much money you make, what mistakes you've made in your life, nobody deserves this kind of torment and torture. And if we are partakers in it, then we have to take that responsibility into our hearts and live with it. It's only funny to watch someone mess up when it's not you. Let us always remember that.

I wonder what Justin Timberlake feels like this morning knowing he took home so many awards on the night his ex-girlfriend was taken to the slaughter house.