With my ratings taking a nosedive and my poll numbers slipping dramatically, I can't decide whether to dye my hair green, commit a felony or announce that I engage in various forms of sexual deviance. I'm also considering having coffee with the president and buying some land in Arkansas, and I don't want to tell you what my plans are for the intern.

Instead of harming careers, scandal has become the chief way for celebrities and politicians to gain attention. Erase the deficit, arrange peace in the Middle East or find homes for the homeless and the papers put you on page 37 below "Sheinwold on Bridge." Lie to Congress, take illegal campaign contributions or rent out the Lincoln bedroom and it's a banner headline on page one for you.

So many scandals have been uncovered in recent years that nothing can shock the American public. Revelations that once would have ended careers have become publicity that makes them stronger.

It no longer matters why you're in the news, only that you're there. As a society, we've become willing to separate character from actions. As long as our representatives vote with us on our pet issues, we're willing to forgive any behavior short of the mass murder of schoolchildren.

Had Watergate occurred during the Clinton or Bush administrations, it would merely be an entry on a list of scandals. Nixon's mistake was in keeping his scope too narrow.

Commit one heinous action and all the attention gets focused on it. Commit many, and people only have so many fingers to point.

While using scandal to further your career has become a political tool only recently, celebrities have always used negative attention to revive a flagging career or to garner attention on the way up. But now, instead of established stars posing in Playboy or leaving their wives for their teenage mistresses, we have a whole new category of fame, stars who become famous because of ancillary participation in a scandal.

Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Kato Kaelin and even the elder statesman of scandal celebrities, G. Gordon Liddy, have profited from their roles in somebody else's scandal. Book deals, talk show appearances, endorsements and even their own radio shows have been showered upon these people, whose only marketable talent appears to be their proximity to scandal.

To combat these pseudo-celebrities, the actual stars have had to create their own scandals. But with real life offering such outrageous competition, it takes a lot more to get noticed than it used to. Ellen Degeneres' sexuality, Dennis Rodman's wedding dress, Michael Jackson's child, Pamela Anderson's breast implants and every other star revelation or oddball move comes not out of honest disclosure, but from a desire to achieve more fame and money. With increased competition, it becomes harder to get noticed, and each new scandal brings ratings points, endorsement deals, or at least keeps your name in the spotlight.

But with every scandal our capacity for outrage lessens, meaning that to garner headlines stars must keep pushing the bar higher. Will the next star to announce her same-sex affinity get the cover of Time? To answer that, you merely have to think about whether you remember the second man on the moon, the black baseball player who came after Jackie Robinson or for that matter, whether you can name the second president of the United States.

Every time something happens, it becomes less newsworthy. We're rapidly heading toward a society in which people confess to the worst forms of depravity merely to get a few minutes on a talk show. I don't know if you can turn back from here, and I haven't decided whether to watch or if I should call Jerry Springer and confess to something.