Has the popular press lost its humanity to the demon-gods of advertising rates!? Don't women have it hard enough living in a male value-burping world, living up to Mad Ave, Playboy-nurtured, digitally "sanitized," Photoshopped, air brushed, visions and images of how Hollywood movie women look, act, move, emote, even routinely sensuously lather and cleanse their bodies in the shower? (I don't know why I added this. It just popped into my fevered mind). Obviously not!  Harder, harder, ever harder.

 It seems that 51% of our species must account for, be punished for, not being perfect, not eternally sporting 11 year old skin; it must be ridiculed, derided for showing any signs of wear, tear and imperfection. Why there is not more insanity in women beyond what we usually see is most amazing. As a woman, where do you run? Where do you turn?

By their overseeing such grotesqueries as Celebrity Cellulite for eyeballs, ratings and put down, one-upmanship, hosts Mary Hart and Mark Steines must suppress empathy (one hopes) with these celebrities for the sake of the joke, the laugh, the self-aggrandizement-- they're flawed-we're not! They suppress their human sense of right and wrong for the ‘gotcha! moment'-- cheap shots of troubled young celebrities, that probably add more insecure women, celebrities and otherwise, to the pool of liposuction candidates.

And what the hell is Mary Hart doing participating in this circus of cruelty? Mary Hart, for crissakes. Miss Beige. Twenty-odd years ago, I appeared on ET on a quasi- regular basis. It was a time when psychologists were hot as guest commentators on almost everything, but especially the world of popular culture and entertainment. It was a time when John Tesh was Mary's co-host, and everyone, including yours truly, was twenty-something years younger-and looked it. Mary seemed a sensitive soul.

Tesh left the show in '86, because he had better things to do.   Mary Hart stayed.

Hart has staying power, (28 years and counting), kind of like Wheel of Fortune's Vanna White. They both exude that mythic blond, mid-western vaguely vapid, offend-no-one persona. Apparently with Mary Hart, it is indeed a persona, through and through. She can obviously be VERY offensive -- to other women.

Let's be honest: someone could do a strip search ET feature number, up and down 59 year-old Mary's aging signs that could take up an entire show. Maybe two. The fact that no one in the mold of, say, Joan Rivers-and-spawn, hasn't, may speak volumes about Mary Hart and her general stature as a worthwhile target for such gratuitous cruelty. In other words, really, who would care?

One wonders:If someone took Mary on about her age, charisma, cosmetic "refreshments," would she think that was fair? Deserving? Relevant to anything at all but some variation on Schadenfreud? Longevity on TV magazine shows obviously demands some Faustian bargains. Can Mary have any soul left after she so regularly sells out her sisters? What price Hollywood?

It wasn't so easy to sully celebrities early on.  Hollywood celebrities and movie studios used to control photographic or other image exposures. Image control was essential to keep stars, stars; keep the mystique... mystiquing. Hollywood had its own iron curtain, behind which only other stars and demi-gods could look.

Movie stars were stars, in part, because they were NOT like us mere mortals. Or at least we rarely saw them in mortal settings doing mortal things -- unless someone at the studio messed up or authorities wouldn't play ball, or someone sold an expose to the tabloids.

But, in the late ‘50's, early ‘60s, with the new celebrity factory emerging -- TV -- there came the slow dying of the "total control, "old studio system and the fumbling major studios got out of the business of in loco parentis . For good and ill (think Lindsay Lohan)., the stars were on their own, images and all. Increasingly, stars were free range and fair game; celebrity image management and privacy hit the skids.

Add to that power control shift the radical change in photo technology including miniaturization, faster film, digital photography, more powerful lenses taking in more and more light, wireless uploading of opportunistic, invasive, intrusive digital shots of private moments, more and more citizen photo-journalists and, of course, cell phone cameras snapping of every move, every breath, a starlet takes and image control is history. And the number of outlets and venues eager to buy images and stories multiplied like bacteria in a Petri dish just compounds the disease of lost privacy.

You see the problem ... along with a twisted mantra, "the public's right to know."

Today, celebrity stories, gossip, photos and videos are big business. Gathering that sleazy or glamorous material has become a underbelly profession unto itself. If images it embarrass and shock, so much the better. This, all for the celebrity-starved public's amusement, delectation and, oftentimes, for easing of someone's self-loathing. Celebrity mania hounded Princess Di and Michael Jackson to their graves.

And many other celebrities, no doubt.

What price fame.

Today's ugly truth is, then, it is never safe for star bodies to go into or even near the water. Someone will be watching and body scanning for another up-close gotcha photo to sell or, failing that, just post online for jollies.

The eye never sleeps. The maw is never satisfied. The cruelty never a factor of consideration - or maybe it's always a factor. What do you think, Mary Hart?

Big Brother, hell! Too retro. Too 1984. Today, everybody's watching...everybody. And young or aging female celebrities are just canon fodder for the public's schadenfreud appetite.

In some religions there's a morning prayer by men that include the words "thank God I was not born a woman." Gee, I wonder why?