PREACH IT! Celebrities, if you're not blogging your breakup, you are SO 2009

Celebrities are all supposedly very private people. That’s what they love to tell us, anyway, in between interviews about where they like to have sex. Even so, public breakups are rare in Hollywood. While it’s considered more than OK to share the happy days of a relationship, airing the details of the bitter end is considered poor form. Or, rather, it was. Thanks, Jake Pavelka and Vienna Girardi. Way to keep it classy.

But, by focusing so much on the scorched-earth tactics of the onetime “winners” of "The Bachelor," we’re missing out on other fine contenders in the public-breakup department. Yes, there’s Mel Gibson, whose leaked abuses to baby mama Oksana Grigorieva fall far beyond the pale of the typical he said-she said. But there’s also Tammy Lynn Michaels, soon-to-be ex of singer Melissa Etheridge, who has taken to blogging about her breakup in free-form verse.

"SMACK!!!!!!!!!!!!/FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!!!!/even though we both promised/agreed/
handshook/pinkyswore/no filing until after tour/in the fall/her broken promises/told to me/by headlines"

Couple that with Jesse James, who flapped his yap to "Nightline" while Sandra Bullock wisely stayed silent; Demi Lovato, who took to Twitter to tell her side of her breakup with Joe Jonas; and Levi Johnston -- no real explanation necessary -- and you have yourself a mini-trend.

A very tacky, very entertaining one too.

None of us asked these stars to comment on their breakups. They took to the Internet or the airwaves and volunteered the information. It just goes to prove: Yes, America may be obsessed with celebrities, but there are plenty of stars who are desperate for that obsession and will do anything to keep it alive.

Speaking of tacky: Which couple is next to implode and take their dirty laundry public? You tell us, in the comments section below.

-- Leslie Gornstein

Top photo: Melissa Etheridge, left, and Tammy Lynn Michaels in February 2007. Credit: Amy Sancetta / Associated Press

Bottom photo: Oksana Grigorieva and Mel Gibson in April 2009. Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images

More dispatches from the Ministry of Gossip's Preach It! archives:

PREACH IT! Gary Coleman: The Cremated Remains Tour 2010

PREACH IT! Prince declares Internet 'completely over,' Web somehow continues to function

PREACH IT! Mel Gibson isn’t sorry, never was, end of story

PREACH IT: Naomi Campbell coming to the Hague; body armor sells out across the Netherlands

PREACH IT! Dear Prince: You are beautiful. Love, Prince.