Busted

 Someone who is expert in the field of crime, or geriatrics, can you please help me with this question?  Why does it seem that aging celebrities are always getting caught pulling petty crimes?

One glance through the old-timers crime blotter shows these interesting cases:

• Rex Reed, the film critic, was arrested in 2000 for walking out of a music store with three CDs in his pocket. He was stopped by authorities at the store, and  charged with larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. 
• Lynn Anderson, one-time Queen of Country Music, was pinched for trying to rip off a $10 Harry Potter DVD in 2004, and also refused to accept the criminal citation the police wrote for her. That might be the saddest sentence I ever wrote.
• Back before cell phones and cheap long-distance access, the first hackers invented "blue boxes"... little doodads you could attach to your phone to make free long-distance calls.  Bob Cummings, an actor from the 50s, got caught blue-handed with one of these things in the 70s, in an apparent effort to steal from the phone company. He avoided prosecution on some sort of double-jeopardy legal maneuver.
  
  
  
• Al Martino, singer ("Painted Tainted Rose") and actor (Johnny Fontane in "The Godfather") got hauled in by Massachusetts cops in 1981 for stealing two shirts and some socks from a department store.
• In 1988, former Miss America and television panelist Bess Myerson pled guilty to charges of shoplifting jewelry, cosmetics and other items from a discount store in South Williamsport, PA. Her amusing alibi, a claim that she was only going to the parking lot to lock her car, and planned to come back in and pay for the loot, would have drawn hoots of derision in any Baltimore County district court, believe you me.

And don't think for a minute that it's only the over-60 celebrities who shop at Five Finger Discount. Amanda Bynes, Kim Richards, Winona Ryder, Lindsay Lohan, UCLA Basketball players, Megan Fox, Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett...all of them were caught with items they didn't pay for secreted on their persons.

We have to think that entertainment celebrities have been pampered and coddled since they were babies, told that the world was a better place for their presence, and led to believe that they were entitled to take anything that struck their fancy. 

It was revealed, the same year that Bess Myerson pulled her caper, that she had a net worth of $16 million. Surely she could have paid for what she ripped off, and then the police wouldn't have to throw the book at her.

Bess Myerson under arrest

Speaking of which, I can find no evidence of any of these notables stealing a book.