Britney backs down: Backing off from her all-Paris, no-underwear stance a bit, Britney Spears tries to justify (and apologize for) her recent high-profile nightlife in a new post on her Web site. “It’s been so long since I’ve been out on the town with friends,” she writes. “Every move I make at this point has been magnified more than I expected, and I probably did take my new found freedom a bit too far. Anyway, thank God for Victoria Secrets’ new underwear line! I look forward to a new year, new music and a new me.” (People, BritneySpears.com)

“Kramer” story dupes news station: WJZ, a CBS affiliate in Baltimore, ran a story on Monday on Michael “Kramer” Richards showing up in blackface to a celebrity roast of Whoopi Goldberg over the weekend. If it sounds far-fetched, it is — the story, broadcast twice during the afternoon in what the Baltimore Sun calls “breaking-news style,” originally came from satirical celeb news site Dateline Hollywood. (Another recent story there: “Britney Spears’ Vagina Asks Press for Privacy.”) A close reading of the story would have made it pretty clear it was a sendup — details like Richards pouring Aunt Jemima syrup over Whoopi’s head should make even the most credulous reader pause. The station’s news director says, “It should not have aired,” and a correction was aired during the 11 o’clock news. (Baltimore Sun, Dateline Hollywood)

Also:
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are throwing a cocktail party over the weekend in Los Angeles to again celebrate their wedding. A rep says, “The party is for friends who were not able to attend the wedding in Italy” — but Oprah hasn’t been invited to this one, either. (Monsters and Critics) … Lance Bass says the breakup rumors about him and his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl, are premature, writing on his MySpace page, “Reichen and I have gone through a few rough days … I have no doubt things will work out.” (TMZ) … A recent Kevin Federline sighting: He showed up, posse in tow, at the New York book party for David Matalon and Chris Woolsey’s new release, “The Concise Guide to Sounding Smart at Parties.” (Page Six) … Will he “make it work”? Heidi Klum and judges Nina Garcia and Michael Kors are all locked in for the fourth season of “Project Runway,” but Tim Gunn has yet to sign on. (N.Y. Daily News) … Fans of Ringo Starr have started a petition to get the Fab Four drummer knighted. (Times Online via Pop Candy)

Money Quote:
Cameron Diaz on how to keep your looks as you age: “I guess what it comes down to ultimately is it’s how you wear your skin that makes you beautiful. Empower yourself, however that may be. And I do believe in tummy tucks and boob lifts. Just for the record.” (From the upcoming issue of Harper’s Bazaar)

Kate Winslet, on the same topic: “I don’t really go in much for surgery to be honest, certainly it’s not something for me. Personally I would like to grow old with my face being able to move.” (Daily Mail via Oh No They Didn’t)

Turn On:
“My Name Is Earl” (NBC, 8 p.m. EST) has back-to-back new episodes on Thursday night, Danny Bonaduce guest-stars on “CSI” (CBS, 9 p.m. EST), and Summer goes missing from college on “The OC” (Fox, 9 p.m. EST).

On the Talk Shows:
Charlie Rose (PBS, check local listings): James Baker and Lee Hamilton
David Letterman (CBS, 11:30 p.m. EST): Sacha Baron Cohen, Tiki Barber, Beck (repeat)
Jay Leno (NBC, 11:35 p.m. EST): Mel Gibson, Bill Dwyer, Ludacris
Conan O’Brien (NBC, 12:35 a.m. EST): Mike Lupica
Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35 a.m. EST): Chris Kattan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ciara
Jimmy Kimmel (ABC, 12:05 a.m. EST): Tom Arnold, Jo Frost, Corinne Bailey Rae
Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EST): Ed Viesturs
Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. EST): Dr. Francis S. Collins

Get more of the Fix here.
To send a hot tip to the Fix, click here.

The resounding, unavoidable answer: A whole lot of people. And they care for a whole lot of different reasons. There are the disillusioned fans who feel betrayed and the more loyal fans who rush to the defense of their beleaguered idols. (“Everybody lip-syncs!”) There are the people who heap scorn on those same fans for having been “duped” by these “frauds,” and suggest that the hapless tweens seek out some “real” music (usually Wilco). And there are the people, thousands upon thousands of them, who eagerly watch the embarrassing clips and soak up the delicious schadenfreude of it all.

All of those responses are, to varying degrees, silly, but none of them is as hard to take as the combination of self-righteousness, condescension and misplaced activist zeal displayed by those who feel that just laughing and moving on aren’t good enough. Take H.O.P.E. (Horrified Observers of Pedestrian Entertainment), which has gone so far as to set up an Ashlee Simpson CD Exchange, “offering the good people of America who have been duped into buying Ashlee Simpson’s CD” an opportunity to trade it in for “one of higher entertainment quality,” by artists like Elvis Costello, Neil Hamburger and Mr. Bungle. (The group’s Web site also includes this gem: “When one looks at the actual sales figures, Ashlee Simpson’s triple platinum-selling debut album sold to — at best — 1 percent of the population. No matter how much the publicists spin it, the fact is that 99% of the population is not particularly interested in Ashlee.”) These people need a sense of humor, a sense of perspective and, perhaps most important, a better name.

They should also check out Simpson’s CD, which isn’t half bad. Can she sing? Of course not! But only a fool would listen to her (or Britney, Lindsay, Hilary, etc.) for vocal prowess. We’re talking about glossy Top-40 pop music, at a time in its history when nearly all recorded vocals are so thoroughly sonically airbrushed and autotuned as to bear almost no relation to the original performance. A bad singer just means more work for the engineer (and, mercifully, fewer of the obnoxious melismatic flourishes compulsively used by “good” singers like Christina Aguilera; Ashlee’s big sis, Jessica Simpson; and assorted “American Idol” contestants).

It’s hard to feel as if it’s worth spending too much time defending Simpson and Lohan, who have handled their respective fiascoes so gracelessly and arrogantly — Lohan by publicly vowing never to lip-sync and then denying that she had even after she was caught; Simpson, classy as always, by blaming it on her drummer and then on acid reflux. But it’s also hard to feel as if they’ve done anything all that bad or shameful, or that the furor of the response they’ve received is in any way commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.

In the end, the whole thing strikes me as very much like — but even more trivial than — baseball’s recent doping scandals. It seems clear that a significant percentage of top athletes use performance-enhancing drugs, just as it’s obvious that most pop stars lip-sync, or at the very least use prerecorded vocals to bolster their live performances. But whenever an athlete or musician is caught in the act, he or she is met with reactions of shock, outrage and betrayal.

Even if this were all that important, even if it were a major artistic travesty worthy of our attention and outrage, it seems to me that the focus of that outrage is being seriously misplaced. Ashlee, Britney, Christina, etc. are not artists, they are just faces being used to sell these products, these songs. The products can be good (Ashlee’s “Pieces of Me,” Christina’s “Beautiful”) or even great (Britney’s “Toxic”), but the “artists” have very little to do with how they turn out. Any scorn or appreciation you feel for them should rightfully be distributed among the teams of producers, songwriters and managers who have steered these women to stardom. Whether you love or hate Linda Perry, Joe Simpson and production team the Matrix, don’t waste any adoration or loathing on Ashlee or Britney.

Why do people care so much? Jealousy might seem like too easy an answer, but in this case I think it’s the right one. We want our celebrities to be famous for a reason, to be especially beautiful, especially talented, especially special, and it rankles when they’re not. That’s why Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton, two unattractive, untalented women who happen to have become very, very famous, are so widely loathed.

It is, of course, absurd to think that fame is based on merit any more often than it is based on ambition, connections and dumb luck. But it would be nice to be able to pretend.

Mark Waters’ “Mean Girls” doesn’t have as much depth or resonance as “Fast Times” or “American Pie.” But there’s a sly intelligence at work here — in the writing, the filmmaking and the acting — that makes it deeply pleasurable to watch. “Saturday Night Live’s” Tina Fey, the screenwriter, may have been inspired to write “Mean Girls” after reading Rosalind Wiseman’s “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence,” but the movie doesn’t scan like a grad student’s sociology project. (If that’s what you’re after, check out last year’s parentsploitation fest “Thirteen,” which suggested, “Reefer Madness”-style, that it’s a short road from belly-button piercing to prostitution.)

And yet “Mean Girls,” even as it keeps us laughing, treads into some painfully realistic territory, perhaps because the teenage turf it’s treading hasn’t changed all that much in the past 50 years. There have always been, and probably always will be, social hierarchies in high school. “Mean Girls” reminds us, mischievously, how little those anthill social divisions mean in the grand scheme of adult life, even as it brings back how much “fitting in” matters when you’re a teenager.

Lindsay Lohan is Cady, who has been home-schooled for years not because her parents are religious freaks but because they’re zoologists (they’re played, with generous dollops of good-liberal-parent earnestness, by Anna Gasteyer and Neil Flynn). For the first 15 years of her life, Cady has lived with her parents in Africa, which means that in her case, the notion of high school as intimidating foreign territory isn’t just a metaphor — it’s piercingly literal. Friendly, open and trusting, Cady is lost in a place where neither the administrative rules nor the unwritten social ones make any sense. She doesn’t realize, for example, that she needs a hall pass to use the bathroom; she has no idea where to sit in the cafeteria at mealtime, which means she eats her lunch crouched in a lavatory stall, alone.

But two fellow misfits, the gentle, lumbering, almost-openly-gay Damien (Daniel Franzese) and tough-but-sensitive Janis Ian (played by Lizzy Caplan — her character’s name is the picture’s most obvious acknowledgment that grown-ups are actually the ideal audience for teen movies), quickly take Cady under their wing. Their first act of kindness is to present her with a map of the lunchroom, so she’ll know which tables have been staked out by which cliques, among them the Preps, the JV Jocks, the Asian Nerds, the Cool Asians and the Sexually Active Band Geeks (the last of whom are shown pawing, groping and sucking at one another with oblivious abandon).

But the most elite table is the one presided over by the school’s royalty, also known as the Plastics: Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) is the one who gleans the juiciest gossip about her classmates and wields it like a pink-fur-covered club; Karen (Amanda Seyfried) is the ditzy one who looks adorable and follows the group’s rules unquestioningly; and Regina (Rachel McAdams) is the group’s (and the school’s) Queen Bee, the blond bitch-goddess whom everyone looks up to, emulates and fears.

The Plastics express curiosity about Cady early on, only because she seems like a good target for their cruel scrutiny. (Regina gushingly “admires,” with unvarnished disgust, the handmade leather-and-shell bracelet Cady wears.) But Cady amuses and intrigues them, and they decide to initiate her into the fold, but only after they’ve laid out some very specific rules: On Wednesdays all the Plastics wear pink, and no one must wear a tank top two days in a row. Cady doesn’t really want to be a Plastic, but Janis and Damien urge her to infiltrate the group’s inner sanctum and report her findings back to them; they hope to sabotage the Plastics by finding out what makes them tick.

That should be simple enough, but then, in high school, nothing is ever simple: Cady falls for the boyfriend Regina has dumped earlier (Jonathan Bennett), not realizing that he’s off limits because Regina still considers him her property. Worse yet, Cady drifts all too easily into the rhythm of being a Plastic: The group’s power is intoxicating. Worst of all, even though Cady is a good student who’s brilliant in math, she dumbs herself down — refusing, for instance, to join “the Mathletes,” an elite group of numbers geeks — all the better to fit in.

As canny as “Mean Girls” is about the hidden minefields of high-school hierarchies, it’s only glancingly homiletic: Cady and her classmates ultimately learn how damaging it is to spread rumors and talk about people behind their backs, but Waters (who directed last year’s smart, sprightly “Freaky Friday”) and Fey don’t deny us the biting pleasure of watching the girls engage in all this nastiness in the first place. “Mean Girls” doesn’t turn a blind eye toward the suffering that gossipy girls (or boys) can inflict. But the cruelties inflicted by the Plastics are intelligently stylized: These girls are immediately recognizable as archetypes, which frees us to enjoy the Tilt-a-Whirl of their bad behavior. “Mean Girls” is at its heart a moral movie, even though, for the most part, it keeps a lid on the uppity moralizing. Waters and Fey trust us to grasp the movie’s subtexts on our own; they realize that the best way to get the movie’s meaning across is to concentrate on keeping the action fleet and funny.

It doesn’t hurt that all the actors seem to be having a great time. Lohan pulls off the tricky job of playing the straightforward nice girl without ever seeming stiff or bland. Fey appears as a likably no-nonsense math teacher — it’s a good example of how a performer can shape a small comic role into a character rather than a mere caricature. She’s joined by some of her “Saturday Night Live” colleagues, including a few who haven’t gotten the exposure they deserve: In addition to Gasteyer, Amy Poehler shows off her trademark comic dementia as Regina’s silicone-inflated, valium-addled mom. And Tim Meadows plays a dry-as-dust school principal who’s funny precisely because you can’t imagine anything ever shocking him.

But the most marvelous performer of all may be Seyfried, as the loopy, innocent Karen. Seyfried (in her movie debut) carries on the proud and unfairly maligned comic tradition of the dumb blond. She acknowledges to Cady that, yes, she may not be all that bright, but she does have her special gifts: She taps her forehead, opens her blinking-doll’s eyes wide, and asserts in her wispy voice, “I have a fifth sense!” In case she hasn’t made her point, she elaborates: “It’s like I have ESPN or something.” Seyfried makes playing dumb seem easy, even though it requires an especially meticulous sense of timing: The space between lines is wavier, and it’s measured not in beats, or even half-beats, but eighths and sixteenths. Hit the wrong one, and you can make a joke thuddingly obvious. Seyfried gets every note right, riding the dippy waves of her role like an expert surfer.

“Mean Girls” isn’t a particularly deep picture, but it does have some weight and ballast: Unlike many contemporary comedies, it doesn’t just glide by like a forgettable, overdecorated parade float. It has an appealing prickliness, a quality that intensifies, subtly, both its good humor and its innate sense of right and wrong.

“Mean Girls” may do well with teenagers, but I think grown-ups are its truest audience. Getting through high school is rough for most of us. By the time we’ve made it through the battle zone, we deserve a lifetime’s worth of good movies on the subject. We’ve earned the right to look back on it all and laugh — even if that laughter comes with a sting.