The CollegeBound Network’s 1st Annual Celebrity Hall of Shame

December 30th, 2009

This past year was chock-full of bad boys and girls making headlines. (Then again, isn’t every year that way?) We here at CollegeBound enjoy some juicy celebrity gossip just as much as you, but the scandal makers of 2009 made us a bit sad. Why? Because with the right amount of guidance, these folks could have mended their ways—or avoided their behavior altogether.

Check out our 2009 Celebrity Hall of Shame honorees and see if you don’t agree that all of these notables could have done better with a little—um—class.

Tiger Woods: Oh, Tiger. You made us love a sport as boring as golf. You have more money than you can spend in a lifetime, and you are married to a former swimsuit model. But noooo—you had to go seek out greener courses, didn’t you? By last count, there were more than a dozen “ladies” coming forward from around the globe with reports of dalliances. Just revolting.

Had Tiger taken a class in physics at one of the nearby campuses of University of Central Florida, he would have learned that for every cause, there is an effect. For example, cheating on his wife would make her upset, and she may or may not chase after him with one of his golf clubs. Or that his affairs would cause PGA sponsors to lose billions of dollars this year. Or that his hiatus from golf would make people once again realize what a snoozer golf can be.

Jon Gosselin: To be completely fair, those who followed “Jon and Kate Plus 8” know that Kate Gosselin wasn’t always the easiest person to live with. But her mood swings are forgiven now that we’ve been treated to the train wreck that is her ex-husband. From cavorting on boats with a friend’s 20-something daughter and staging paparazzi shoots with Michael Lohan to the most recent debacle of a reported break-in at his New York City apartment, this guy is a mess. Our hearts break eight times over for each his children.

We suggest that Jon immediately enroll in some online courses in the Human Studies program at Marylhurst College in Oregon. There, according to the program’s description, he will obtain “an intellectual awareness of relationships with the self and with others” and “explore what it means to be ‘human.’” Because clearly, Jon needs a refresher course in living life outside of “reality” television.

Serena Williams: It hurts to add Williams to the list, since she has always been a great athlete and fashion trendsetter. But her temper tantrum after a foot fault during this year’s U.S. Open, in which she threatened to slam a tennis ball down the umpire’s throat, surprised tennis fans and even Williams herself, who admits to being caught up in the moment. The result? A $10,000 fine and countless videos on YouTube of William’s colorful rant.

Avoidable? Completely, says Josh Salcam, president and co-founder of Virtual Nerd, an online math and science tutoring service. “Being a star tennis player, she probably wouldn’t need Wikipedia to know a tennis ball’s diameter is 2.7 inches,” says Salcam. He suggests that had Williams taken a class in anatomy and physiology, she would have held her tongue and avoided a forfeit. “It turns out that the average diameter of the trachea is just around 1 inch, and even a world-class athlete can’t fit a 2.7 inch diameter ball into a 1 inch diameter pipe,” advises Salcam.

Lindsay Lohan: It’s hard to figure out where to begin with this starlet, who was just adorable as a preteen and is now, as Perez Hilton eloquently refers to her, complete “Lindsanity.”

Back when she was still a fresh-faced child star (remember Mean Girls?), CBN interviewed Lohan for its now-defunct CollegeBound Teen magazine. She mentioned having a really great history teacher in high school who helped her view the subject in a way that really spoke to her. We think that Lindsay could get back on track if she began studying history—any kind of history—and understand that while everyone makes mistakes, the only way we can move forward is by learning from them. Otherwise, history is doomed to repeat itself—and the world does not need repeats of her DUI, her unladylike dressing habits, or the fashion tragedy that was the Ungaro collection.

Richard and Mayumi Heene, a.k.a. The Balloon Boy’s parents: As the nation continues to wag its collective finger at these wannabe-reality TV stars—Richard will serve a short jail sentence in 2010—we can’t help but wonder how they thought they could actually pull their balloon hoax off. Clearly, “conscience” is not part of their vocabulary, but we’d be willing to wager that should they enroll in a media ethics course, it’s a word that they might eventually learn.

Or would they? Ethics expert Jeffrey Seglin, author of “The Right Thing” for the New York Times Syndicate and a professor at Emerson College, says that some people will never learn their lesson, even in his own Professional Ethics class.

“But alas, my feeling has always been that while I can try to teach people about ethical decision-making and to give them some necessary tools to making such ethical choices, I can’t change the personal values they bring into the class,” he wrote in an email to CBN. “Sadly, Richard and Mayumi Heene’s values may have been such that no class could have kept them from adhering to whatever values that drove them to fake the “Balloon Boy” incident that, among other things, resulted in having their children lie in public.”

The CollegeBound Network wishes you and yours a happy, healthy, and ethical new year. See you in 2010!

~Barbara Bellesi

Entry Filed under: Celebrities and college,College Craziness,Just for Fun