Britney Spears: The Barack Obama Of Pop Music?

“Yes, She Can”? What, exactly, “can” Britney Spears do, Rolling Stone? According to your reporter, the answer to that question is not “talk to reporters without another person around”:

Interviewing the star is a “rigorously micromanaged process,” according to Rolling Stone.

“We were never left alone together, and my questions had to be submitted ahead of time for approval,” reporter Jenny Eliscu writes.

Or “have a normal life at all”:

“I feel like an old person now,” she says in Rolling Stone’s next issue, out Friday. “I do! I go to bed at, like, 9:30 every night, and I don’t go out or anything.”

And it’s definitely not “be trusted to make decisions about her personal life”:

Rudolph says, “Her job is to be Britney Spears, and unfortunately, that job bleeds into her personal life and creates this odd situation where she needs to have security people around her all the time.”

That goes for dates, too. Recently, Spears was accompanied by her assistant, Brett, and Rudolph’s colleague, Adam Leber. “Right when we got there, we just knew it was just bad,” Spears says. “He looked like an older version of Harry Potter, but skinnier. … So I had to get dessert first. And the other date I had, the guy was really, really tall and a lot older. … We’re trying to ask him questions, like, ‘OK, you’re into martial arts, so what kind of martial arts are you into?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, all kinds.’ … But you know how silly we are, so we were just cracking up.”

So, then, what can she do? Hmm. It doesn’t seem like any of those bits of the story would indicate that her life is happy…

Oh, right! Obviously, the answer is, “yes, she can… show off her midriff on the cover of a magazine again.” Yay America!

Britney tells “Rolling Stone” that she has picked up the pieces [USA Today]