2006: The Unexpurgated Version

There's a finite amount of space in a print newspaper, which means that stories get cut up a lot. Such is not the case with the Internets, where people can be real windy gasbags. Hence, here's a vaguely more coherent version of today's year-end recap in the Daily News.

With a deteriorating war in Iraq, a do-nothing Congress and endless partisan political bickering, Americans needed distractions from the wearying realities of 2006 more than ever.
And celebrities were more than happy to oblige, bemusing us with all nature of bad and bizarre behavior during the year. Most of what we’ll remember about 2006 had little to do with celebrities’ actual work and instead had everything to do with their off-screen lives. Of course, their off-screen lives, thanks to camera phones and Internet uplinks, popped up nonetheless onscreen, albeit a slightly smaller one.
The new-media phenomenon failed to curb old-school bad behavior, though.

1) If They Did It

One of the biggest stories of 2006 ended up, gratifyingly, not happening. Judith Regan announced a book ghost-written for O.J. Simpson entitled “If I Did It,� a hypothetical confessional. As a bonus for the illiterate, she personally interviewed Simpson, to air – where else? – on Fox (which also owned her publishing house).
Fox was ill-prepared for the resulting firestorm. Regan didn’t help matters with her portentous explanation: “I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen.�
The project was quashed. Regan was eventually fired, ostensibly for responding, to an attorney informing her that yet another salacious book was unreleasable, with anti-Semitic invective. Which brings us to…

2) Celebrity Racism

Regan had to make do with the silver medal for 2006’s most-famous anti-Semitic rant. Mel Gibson took the gold with an apocalyptic outburst after Malibu police stopped him for driving nearly twice the Pacific Coast Highway’s speed limit. Mel blamed his harangue – which blamed the Jewish race for all wars (was Mel home-schooled?) – on alcohol, checking into rehab, a popular gambit amongst 2006’s notorious wrongdoers.
Unfortunately for Michael Richards, he couldn’t blame too much booze coursing through his veins for his shocking performance at the Laugh Factory, where he repeatedly dropped the N-bomb at hecklers. His subsequent apology on “Late Show with David Letterman� was so awkward that Jerry Seinfeld beseeched the crowd to quit laughing.
Virginia Senator George Allen more or less torpedoed his re-election campaign when he referred to a man of Indian descent as “Macaca,� a francophone African racial slur (Allen’s mother grew up French-colonial Tunisia).
Sadly, we’re just getting started discussing celebrity bad behavior.

3) Celebrity Breakups and Feuds

2006 was a bad year for celebrity couples. We’ll never again think of Paul McCartney as “the cute Beatle� after his ex, Heather Mills, talked smack about his uncute behavior. Reese Witherspoon had a “Star-is-Born� rollercoaster year, winning an Oscar then filing for divorce from philandering Ryan Phillippe.
At least she had an up moment. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown called it quits after years of foundering. Britney Spears dumped her gold-digging, late-night-show punchline. Funniest divorce of the year went to Pam Anderson and Kid Rock, splitting mere months after marrying because Kid went postal over Pam’s good-humored appearance in the “Borat� film.
But a spouse wasn’t required for an ugly run-in. Candy Spelling was so appalled with her depiction on a Tori Spelling TV series that she withheld scads of money when Tori’s dad, Aaron, one of Hollywood’s richest men, died. Rush Limbaugh taunted Michael J. Fox, accusing the Parkinson’s-afflicted actor of over-acting in a TV commercial advocating stem-cell research.
Billionaire boor Brandon Davis’s drunken tirade about Lindsay Lohan’s ladyparts (about which more later) wouldn’t’ve made this list were Paris Hilton not strolling alongside him, not trying very hard to conceal a smirk during his diatribe.
Then, out of nowhere, Rosie O’Donnell lashed out at Donald Trump for – well, we’re not quite sure. Trump pardoned a party-hardy Miss USA instead of rescinding her title, which offended Rosie, who also accused him of grandstanding (a funny charge coming from someone who once ran a magazine named after herself) and, naturally, having bad hair.
Trump did what any sane individual would have done and – no, wait, he did what he would’ve done: slagged O’Donnell recklessly, calling her “disgusting� and comparing her to those who plunged American into war with Iraq. What if he hadn’t toned it down?

4) Plain Old Bad Behavior

Surprise: Paris Hilton turns up here, too, sashaying through the social scene with very little under her party dresses (current partner in partying Britney Spears recently unveiled the same fashion statement). And if you see her behind the wheel, run: She was seen hitting a car in a parking lot and sped away. Later, she was arrested for DUI.
Hilton’s former BFF, Nicole Richie, did Paris one better, not only getting tagged for a DUI but doing so while driving east in the westbound lanes of the 134 in Burbank. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant and actor Rip Torn also clocked DUI’s; Torn won the coveted trophy for Funniest Mug Shot.
Perhaps no one, however, knocked back more magical elixir than Lindsay Lohan, who received a very public crackback when her after-hours misadventures interfered with her work on the film “Georgia Rule;� producer James G. Robinson sent her a widely leaked memo sternly addressing her misbehavior. Lohan’s bewildering manifestos issued from her Blackberry, which could use a spell-check function, didn’t help.
Denise Richards threw laptops at paparazzi but instead injured some elderly women. Jessica Simpson had a bizarre meltdown before President Bush and a star-studded crowd while trying to perform Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5;� she was excised from the event’s televised version.
And Anna Nicole Smith’s reaction to losing her 20-year-old son only days after giving birth
to a daughter was to stage a fake wedding and then sell the last photos of him, as well as video of her C-section, to gossip shows and a tabloid. Do not expect to find her image in any dictionary alongside the definition of “classy.�

5) YouTube, MySpace Conquer the World

Just about all of the aforementioned bad behavior could be found online at sites such as YouTube and TMZ.com. In fact, most of this would never have become news in the first place were it not for the proliferation of websites where short films can easily be uploaded for the bemusement of others, as well as websites trucking in scandal and gossip.
Had a Laugh Factory patron not whipped out a cell-phone camera, Richards’ career wouldn’t likely have been considered finished. Absent YouTube, George Allen would still be in the Senate. But once Internet viewers saw the offending viral videos, both men’s lives were transformed.
TMZ revealed Gibson’s arrest and Davis trashing Lohan. TheSmokingGun.com gained further notoriety for providing celebrity mugshots, embarrassing legal documents and Lohan’s boss’s scolding; it also exposed James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces� as a fraud, resulting in Oprah Winfrey’s dressing the author down.
But such sites can also improve careers: Pop band OK Go achieved stardom after charming fans with quirkily choreographed MySpace videos. Jessica Rose became a sensation thanks to films carrying her YouTube moniker, lonelygirl15.
Other stars exploded exploiting the Internet. Stephen Colbert ingeniously turned his Comedy Central series “The Colbert Report� into an interactive funhouse, inviting fans to manipulate online footage of his antics, imploring them to vandalize Wikipedia and cajoling them into voting for him in an online contest to name a bridge in Hungary (he won in a landslide). When footage of his turn at the White House Correspondents Dinner appeared online, his TV ratings soared 37 percent in a week.
Similarly, online offerings of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments� criticizing the Bush Administration caused ratings for his MSNBC show “Countdown� jump 45 percent in the last three months.
Movies, however, had mixed success using the web as a launching pad. Sacha Baron Cohen’s MySpace site for “Borat,� alongside Borat clips on YouTube, helped transform the comedy into a $100-million blockbuster. “Snakes on a Plane,� not so much.
And when a stingray killed “Croc Hunter� Steve Irwin in September, scores of fans posted films which were viewed by thousands of other fans, offering their emotional responses to his death on YouTube. YouTube’s impact was underscored in October, when Google bought it for $1.65 billion.

6) In the Family Way

When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted an Ethiopian baby to join Jolie’s Cambodian child (she’s said to be eying an imminent Indian adoption), Madonna, not to be outdone, snatched herself a Malawian son. Just one problem: The kid’s father wavered on whether he wanted his boy in Madonna’s mitts.
Pitt and Jolie also expanded their family the old-fashioned way this year: Shiloh was born in May. The most hysterically received celebrity birth of 2006 was, of course, Suri Cruise, the mysterious progeny of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, kept under wraps for weeks until appearing in Vanity Fair in September.
Pop icons got in on the procreating craze, too. Before Britney Spears kicked Kevin Federline to the curb, she had their second child, a boy, in September. Sean Combs – currently known as Diddy; what he’ll call himself next week is anyone’s guess – had twin daughters with girlfriend Kim Porter earlier this month.

7) Death of the Album

The music industry continued to crater in 2006, as MySpace, YouTube and iTunes conspired to further their irrelevance. Fans could download music at their favorite bands’ MySpace sites, and while downloads of individual songs (usually hits) continued apace, sales of entire albums sagged.
The year’s bestselling album was Disney Channel’s movie soundtrack, “High School Musical;� other 2006 bestsellers included more Disney Channel product, soundtracks for “The Cheetah Girls� and “Hannah Montana.� Slate.com wondered, “What does it mean for popular music when 7-year-olds are the most reliable record buyers?�

8) Anchor Musical Chairs

Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Rosie O’Donnell all changed jobs in 2006; it worked out for two of them.
Replacing Vieira on “The View,� O’Donnell transformed it from coffee klatch into tag-team trash talk. O’Donnell offended Christians and, later, Chinese-Americans, bickered with Bill O’Reilly and, in accusing Kelly Ripa of homophobia, inadvertently outed Clay Aiken. Still, ratings rose.
Vieira moved to NBC’s “Today� show with nary a blip despite Couric’s exit: It’s still the top morning-news show.
Couric, of course, made news, not always in a good way. She became the first female solo anchor of a broadcast network’s evening newscast; viewership for her first week on “The CBS Evening News� was phenomenal. Since then, her numbers recently plunged below those of interim anchor Bob Schieffer.

9) Serialized Dramas Tank

Perhaps viewers in this attention-deficit disorder society prefer trolling YouTube short films: Despite critics’ claims that the 2006-07 season boasted the best programming in years, ratings tumbled. Network axes were quickly sharpened.
Hardest hit were serialized dramas. Capitalizing off previous successes “Grey’s Anatomy,� “Desperate Housewives� and “Lost,� over a dozen new serialized shows hit primetime. Viewers lacked the time or the wherewithal to attend to so many complicated narratives; many were quickly cancelled. Only “Heroes� and “Ugly Betty� emerged as bona fide hits.
As for those cancelled? Viewers seeking resolution could find it – you guessed it – online.

10) Mind-Bending Movies

Like Hiro, Masi Oka’s breakout character on “Heroes,� numerous films bent the time-space continuum. “Babel,� “Flags of Our Fathers,� “The Prestige,� “The Illusionist� “The Science of Sleep� featured storylines leaping back and forth in time, keeping audiences on their toes.
Hollywood seemed to enjoy messing with moviegoers’ minds this year. Other mind-blowing films include “Children of Men,� exploring a dystopic future on the verge of extinction, “Pan’s Labyrinth,� illuminating a young girl’s retreat into a fantasy world to escape the brutal reality of Franco’s Spain, and “A Scanner Darkly,� about a narcotics cop’s paranoid immersion into the very culture he’s supposed to be policing.
Still, “Borat� perhaps screwed with viewers’ minds most: Virtually every frame forced audiences to ask, is this real, or fake? Kid Rock couldn’t keep up; it cost him his marriage.
“Borat� most resembled the online revolution of viral videos, where it was likewise difficult to discern the real (Richards’ collapse) from the counterfeit (lonelygirl15). Which is appropriate for a year whose realities prompted us to immerse ourselves in fantasy.