LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- There's a climactic scene in "Chinatown" in which Jack Nicholson tries to slap the truth out of Faye Dunaway about her relationship to a young woman and gets a paradoxical reply: "My sister! My daughter!"

Nicholson's confusion pales next to how I feel about media images of women. At a time when females have ascended to new levels of power and prominence, a bevy of hapless, even tragic figures serves as jarring counterpoint.

The trailblazers include Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's first female president; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, first female House Speaker, and Katie Couric, first solo female news anchor. Facing off against them: Lindsay, Britney, Nicole, Paris, Anna Nicole.

The former are disciplined, accomplished and show up for work on a regular basis. The latter have a wobbly grip on reality or talent and drop in occasionally for rehab or photo ops, such as mug shots. Or, in the final sad chapter for Smith, they keep a date with premature death.

Add be-diapered astronaut Lisa Nowak to the list for a real head-spinner: A woman of achievement who cast herself in a darkly comic, allegedly criminal soap opera.

One group is channeling their energy and ambition into shaping the world. The other is focused on whether panties are necessary apparel for a night on the town or if Depends is a road-trip must.

It's a mind-boggling split between the levelheaded and girls gone wild: Women are powerful! Women are unraveling!

The answer in "Chinatown" (an incestuous father) is simple compared with this conundrum.

Age partly explains the wackiness. Most of the high-living "girls" in question are adults but have found a loophole in the baby-boomer credo that 60 is the new 50, 50 is the new 40 -- and rationalization without end, amen. So for Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, 20-something is the new adolescence. And their warm blanket of fame permits any madcap actions as long as they're made available for public consumption.

Women, of course, are no more likely to run amok than men, as the track records of Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Isaiah Washington and a series of fallen politicians and business executives demonstrate.

But the current examples of female waywardness are perfectly designed for a media feast. Anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and Capitol or corporate misdeeds generally lack the sizzle for real staying power; pretty girls in trouble are something altogether juicier.

Their escapades become first our amusement and then our punishment, with endless hours of TV quasi-news reports about Spears or Lohan in and out of rehab; Spears shaving her head; Paris Hilton's sex videos or DUI arrest; Nicole Richie's DUI arrest.

The 24-hour cable news channels and entertainment magazine shows are gorging on the stories for -- what else? -- ratings.

" 'Extra's' been on Britwatch all weekend long," one of the show's hosts trumpeted recently, so we knew we were getting everything needed to function in the modern world.

Is the bad overtaking the good?

To explain the obsessive audience attention to Anna Nicole Smith's death and the bizarre aftermath would probably require national psychoanalysis. Court TV was an enabler with its nonstop coverage of the battle over Smith's body, the custom-crafted, voluptuous form that proved a media delight to the bitter end and beyond.

The nice young man who delivers packages to my office couldn't take it anymore and launched into a rant: "President Gerald Ford dies, OK, there's coverage. James Brown dies, OK, some attention. Anna Nicole dies -- watch out! And there's a war on!" he wailed. He suggested veteran TV journalists like Walter Cronkite must be weeping.

What constitutes news and how it's covered is of critical national importance, but it can also be a personal issue.

The antics of wayward stars can make a sensible woman want a gender choice other than "Female" to check on forms. For mothers of young girls, the exaggerated value of celebrities and their wild-child escapades are a worrisome trend.

But for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, making the most serious bid yet by a woman for the White House, it could be far worse. She may be vulnerable to damage from a "bimbo eruption" and this one, ironically, not of her husband's making.

That's what comedian Bill Maher (HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher") suggested on his TV show and in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece illustrated with headline-maker photos: Spears, Lohan, Hilton, Courtney Love and Mariah Carey.

"Hillary Clinton will never be president as long as women keep acting crazy," Maher wrote. "I know it's not fair, but there are too many misogynists out there who are looking for any excuse to not vote for a woman, such as 'women are ruled by their hormones,' as opposed to what a president should be ruled by -- the oil and gas lobby."

For safety's sake, Maher said, he'd like to see the "usual suspects" among frisky females in custody through November 2008.

Some kidder, that guy. Or perhaps he has a point. Is Britney the future of America in ways we never could have imagined? A kingmaker? A queenbreaker?