Lindsay Lohan Lowers the Bar

There was time when people knew a once-promising starlet was about to disappear into obscurity, and that was when she made a last gasp for notoriety by posing nude or nearly so for a men’s magazine. This always seemed like a harsh judgment when I was an editor at Playboy (perhaps because it seemed like such an accurate observation), and we would always point to Kim Basinger as an example of a talented beauty who did indeed revive her career by posing, and who went on to win an Oscar. Others have followed her memorable example, although the results have not been duplicated. This, however, is not to say that things haven’t changed. Although the lovely and talented Lindsay Lohan has apparently run out of failures to foist on moviegoers, and although she has twice posed for magazines nude or nearly so, she nonetheless has managed to pioneered a new bottom in attention-getting behavior: filing a frivolous lawsuit. EW.com reports that Lohan has sued E*Trade for $100 million, arguing “that one of the online brokerage’s recent TV ads featuring a ditzy, “milkaholic” baby girl named Lindsay is modeled after her and improperly invoked her `likeness, name, characterization, and personality’ without permission, violating her right to privacy.” Of course the case is meaningless. One would have to be, well, Lindsay Lohan to think the use of the name “Lindsay” was meant to evoke the underachieving actress, and a mighty egocentric Lindsay Lohan you’d have to be at that. The fact is, the name Lindsay doesn’t make people think of Lindsay Lohan anymore, and the phrase “milkaholic Lindsay” doesn’t make people think of Lindsay Lohan anymore. You’d have to say something like “washed-up Lindsay” or “has-been Lindsay” or “the Lindsay who squandered her talent” to make people think of her. Why, even if you’d mention the name of her greatest triumph, Mean Girls, people would think of Tina Fey. Two questions emerge from this: where did Lohan find a lawyer unscrupulous enough to file this spurious claim (I know, I know: Long Island), and why doesn’t Lindsay just go and get herself cast in something worthwhile?