Where so recently we were awash in underage pole-dancing and the image of our national icons teetering on edge of self-immolation, now they demurely stand to the side, giving us space to pity them while hip hops stars try in vain to steal their thunder.

After years of seeing Parish Hilton and her set push our culture to the brink of armageddon, can it be that we have really stepped back from the precipice?

Some evidence that the tide has truly turned:

• It has been nearly a year since we've had any big crazy mega-story on the level of Paris' arrest, Britney's hair cropping or Lindsay's initial lurch into insanity.
• Paris Hilton has been in a quiet tabloid-free relationship for months, and her biggest play for the media spotlight has been releasing a new shampoo line.
• Britney seems to have turned away from the brink of literal, not metaphoric, suicide and has released a not-at-all-a-trainwrecky album and gone a world tour from which the biggest controversy has been her onstage lip syncing.
• While Lindsay continues to rage, Twitter seems to have been the right amount of rope for her to hang herself; her outbursts are now so common and so plainly on view for the world to see that they barely attract much notice.
• Selling millions upon millions of albums, sweeping up every award American music has to offer, dorky, sweet, actually-scarily-talented, only-a-monster could hate, Jonas Brother-dating Taylor Swift's star has eclipsed even Miley's.
• The biggest tabloid event of the season has been been Khloé Kardashian's after-all-the-fireworks, heartwarming, in-the-end-drama-free commitment to lifelong love with Lamar Odom.
• The most read about actress of our times, Kristen Stewart, may indulge in a fair amount of public sulking and foster ambiguity about her relationship with her co-star, but to date she has yet to release a sex tape, openly steal a friend's boyfriend, get arrested or publicly lash out in an insane hate-filled rant. Her moods and snits are well within the bounds of pre-apocalypse young starlet divadom.
• The absence of public misbehavior has been so marked that the paparazzi are having trouble even surviving.
• Even the high priest of the mean girls era, Perez Hilton has been forced to start a bitchy-lite offshoot.
• And the era's leading enabler, Joe Francis, is finally so deep in legal troubles that he seems on the brink of being buried by his own wretched world.

The upside of this are clear: our national solvency can't but be helped by young girls actually having positive role-models and not being encouraged to grow up into out-of-contol, drunk-on-narcissism, half-witted tabloid fodder striving desperately for negative attention.

Still, on the other hand, so many have wished Paris and Lindsay to be gone for so long, that shouldn't we be just a little bit worried that on the brink of getting our wish, we may be walking into a trap; that standing on a hill somewhere Mr. Roarke is watching our sea plane taking off and saying, mysteriously, "Yes, Tattoo, America got its fantasy of a world with no Paris, but, my friend, but at what price?"

Is a world where stars comport themselves with dignity, remember to thank their parents, refrain from swearing, never tape themselves having sex, don't steal their friends' husbands and don't Twitter in the middle of the night on meth, really what we want? Nice, earnest, stars devoted to their craft and wanting to do good for their community...you wanted it and now we've all got it. Unfasten your seat belts...the Ferrari is coming to a halt.

1.) Jon Gosselin
I know it's nearly impossible that anyone in America managed to miss him since he was all over TV talking about how he doesn't want to be on TV anymore. On Monday on The Insider, Jon faced off with Nancy Grace. Later in the week, The Insider tried to propel that insanity by airing "footage you didn't see" from the event. Here, Jon admits that his earrings are CZs.


Jon also ran back and forth between The Insider and Entertainment Tonight, showing "bank statements" proving that he did not steal money from Kate.










However, even the correspondent on The Insider recognized that this one transaction receipt proves absolutely nothing.




2.) "I'm showing America how it works."
God, he's like the fountain of spoof.


3.) In other grossness: Tamerlane Phillips.
Remember two weeks ago when people didn't care about the Gosselins for four days because Mackenzie Phillips' rape and incest bombshell stole the show? Tamerlane Phillips misses those days.


4.) The best intervention ever, courtesy of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.





5.) Kaity Tong Drunk?
Speaking of interventions…sheesh.


This man-on-the-street from the story she was introducing is awesome.


6.) Shut up, Joy!


7.) People are still getting "The Rachel"?


8.) Does Kim know that wig hair doesn't grow back?


9.) Khloe Kardashian's 9 Carats


10.) WWWWD?
She would think WWJJD.

Watch the video, after the jump:

• Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad [Funny or Die]

Reality star Khloe Kardashian – who served 173 minutes in jail last week for a 2007 DUI charge – has some advice for actor Shia LaBeouf, who was arrested for DUI after getting into a car accident on Sunday.

"Just be smarter," she told Usmagazine.com at the Annual Style L.A. Runway show benefitting the Facial Paralysis Foundation & Stop the Violence/Face the Music benefit, which she co-hosted with sisters Kim and Kourtney at the The Viceroy Hotel, Santa Monica, CA on Monday.

"Think about your actions and get a driver!" the 24-year-old counseled. "It's so much cheaper in the long run!"

What is this unfamiliar feeling? Could a reality TV star actually be right about something? What next, Elisabeth Hasselbeck deftly parsing Newtonian physics on The View? David Hasselhoff interrupting America's Got Talent to read aloud from Kierkegaard? Rene Fris speaking coherently on the set of Shear Genius?

• Khloe Kardashian to Shia LaBeouf: "Be Smarter" [Us Magazine]

The Accused: TMZ
The Crime: Mocking pregnant women for their changing bodies.
The Evidence: "The newest accessory in Hollywood is a baby bump. Let's just hope these don't come with stretch marks. It's all about the cocoa butter ladies!" Because when a woman brings a new life into the world, the first thing on her mind should be taking care of those unseemly stretch marks!
The Sentence: three months of Harlow Richie-Madden diaper duty and a kick in the nuts from mum-to-be Nicole Kidman.

The Accused: Drunken Stepfather
The Crime: Ageism; heightism; general assholery.
The Evidence: "If I was on the beach, which I am not and haven't been on in years because I don't live the celebrity life of luxury, I wouldn't mind lookin' at [Denise Richards] in hopes of a vagina lip hangin' out but the second a younger, tighter body walks by this hag, I'll be getting my creep on elsewhere. It's one of those better than nothing situations like the time you jerked off to your sister on a family camping trip because it was between her and your mom and jerking off to your mom just felt too wrong..." Wow, there is just so much wrong here. In Drunken Stepfather's world apparently a "tighter body" means a "better person" and it's cool to jerk off to your female family members, because all women — even the ones who are related to you — are only useful as sexual fantasies.
Additional Evidence : "Here are some pictures of Brooke Shields Leaving the hospital on crutches, I guess her legs finally gave-out from the weight of her testicles." Uh, why is Brooke Shields a man? Because she's tall? I don't even understand this one.
The Sentence: Dysentery. Drunken Stepfather can spend all that time on the toilet thinking about what he's done.

The Accused: Egotastic
The Crime: Critiquing a woman's weight; kicking someone when they're down
The Evidence:"Star Magazine is going all crazy over these Britney Spears bikini pictures, claiming she looks great after losing 20 pounds, and she's still losing more. But if you ask me, Britney Spears losing 20 pounds is like Rosie O'Donnell dropping 200: You just wouldn't notice. Regardless, no matter what Britney does, she'll never be attractive again, so I say she should just keep on stuffing her face with Cheetos. At least that way you'll be able to smell the cheesey flavour coming before she crashes her car into your ass." You know, Britney's "attractiveness" to idiots like you is sort of the least of her problems right now. Also, you're a dick.
The Sentence: A lifetime of indentured servitude at the Cheeto factory.

The Accused: The Superficial
The Crime: Implying women are men because they are not waifs.
The Evidence: "So, when I say these two rumbled, I mean, literally, the ground shook. Khloe is one solid woman. She could probably give Brooke Hogan a run for her money. Then afterwards they'd swap tips on shaving their testicles. BFFs with balls 4 life!" Jesus — just because a woman has muscles, does not mean she's a man.
The Sentence: A large dose of Nair straight to the ball sack, natch.