USA Today lists the five entertainers who they say had the worst 2002:
- Whitney Houston
Defining moment: ''Crack is whack.''
Recap: When Whitney Houston said those words to Diane Sawyer on national television, it became one of the next day's most repeated phrases. Houston was saying she didn't use crack, but she admitted that she and her husband, Bobby Brown, did use alcohol, cocaine and marijuana.
....Michael Jackson
Defining moment: The dangling baby.
Recap: The pop singer has become synonymous with strange, but this year he seemed to reach a new level. Midyear, Jackson accused Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola of racism. Then there were the shocking close-ups of his nose taken in court, where he's fighting a breach-of-contract lawsuit. A few days later, he showed up on crutches, saying he had been bitten by a spider. But the final straw was when he dangled his infant son over a hotel balcony in Germany as he showed him off to fans below.
....Rosie O'Donnell
Defining moment: The Queen of Nice became the self-proclaimed ''bitch who ain't so nice and (who's) just a big-mouthed fat lesbian.''
Recap: She came out of the closet, ended her TV talk show and shut down her magazine.
....Britney Spears
Defining moment: A snowballing of events that ended in her walking away from it all for a while.
Recap: The pop princess broke up early in the year with Justin Timberlake. ''I cried a lot, and it wasn't fun,'' she told People magazine. Sales of her most recent album, Britney, were less than half of the album before it. She made her film debut in Crossroads, which did OK but didn't break any box office records. She made headlines by making an obscene gesture to photographers who surrounded her car in Mexico. She opened a restaurant in New York in June, Nyla, and by the end of the year pulled out of it as it struggled financially. Her parents divorced. And most recently, her Pepsi gig ended; the soft-drink company signed Beyonce Knowles.
....Winona Ryder
Defining moment: A guilty verdict for shoplifting at the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue store.
Recap: She waited through 11 months of delays before going on trial for shoplifting more than $5,000 of merchandise.
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious if indelicate fact that at least these five entertainers are still alive, so they have a leg up on some of their peers, so to speak.
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