She’s about the biggest jerk to hit TV since we don’t know when.Lauren Cleri, the wife of a New York City cop, admitted to cheating on him and wanting to be married to another man this week on trashy Fox’s “The Moment of Truth”. She says she did it for fame and fortune.OK, that’s classy.

According to the New York Post:

Cleri, 26, and her husband, Frank, 24, came away from the show with no prize money, no immediate job offers for her and a possible divorce in the future after being eliminated when a polygraph detected a “fib.”

Proof, finally, that there is a God.

“We’re kind of up in the air right now — I want to [get back together], but I don’t think he does,” Lauren Cleri told the Post.

“It’s not very easy to overcome,” Frank Cleri, a cop with the 48th Precinct in The Bronx, told the Post.

Of course this kind of “show” says something about its participants, but it also says something about us, too.

There’s always a new low, isn’t there?

[CR Note: Rae left this comment today. It brings up a really great point. Don't you feel that the Main Stream Media's wall to wall coverage adds up to nothing at all? Think about it. Let's chat. No bitchslapping, please.]

The publicity around Heath Ledger’s death is a perfect example of just how really poor reporting has become in this country.

I mean, look at the last two days:

First, ‘they’ said it appeared that Ledger had committed suicide, and his body was surrounded by ’scattered’ pills in his apartment.

A few hours later, and Ledger’s family issued a statement that he had pneumonia, and was not battling addictions or depression, and ‘they’ immediately adapted their rhetoric into an accidental overdose, and, while there were prescription drugs in the house, they were in their proper bottles, in close proximity to Ledger’s body.

Out of all that – five or six hours of constant news coverage – only one solid, provable fact emerged: he had pneumonia.

In contradiction of all of the speculation above, the coroner’s office has said today that they are unable to determine the cause of death immediately, and it may take a few days, and the NYPD spokesman has said that a) it was a ‘possible’ overdose, and b) there was ONE bottle of prescription sleep aids on Ledger’s nightstand, and other prescription meds in the medicine cabinet. (Those of you who stick unused prescription bottles in your medicine cabinets, raise your hands.)

So, at this point, the police don’t even know what drugs, if any, Ledger might have had in his bloodstream, or to what extent…and this is what? some 12 hours AFTER the talking heads were yammering about definite suicide. And we’ve had almost 24 hours now of ‘investigative’ reporting, and, still, the only provable fact on the table is that he had pneumonia.

And then we get people like Brenda, who accept what the talking heads and the tabloids say as the gospel truth…and then perpetuate the inaccuracies by repeating them as facts.

I mean, shoot – one site says he and Michelle had a sad but amicable breakup, were happily co-parenting and moving on, and another site says she kicked him out and he was devastated. One site says he was taking anti-depressants, another says anti-anxiety pills (which are significantly different.) And how many of these ‘witnesses’ and ‘friends’ were paid for their revelations? For enough money, a tabloid could get someone to say they saw Heath Ledger chugging pills, but that doesn’t make it true.

It used to be that reporters took pride in the accuracy of their reporting. I would gladly give up the 24/7 news accessibility if it meant that I wouldn’t have to wade through all the garbage ‘news’ to get to the truthful facts.

Ambulance chasing for ratings.

That’s sure what it seemed like to your Crime Rant guys when we heard that TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw visited Britney Spears at the hospital. He wasn’t invited. He wasn’t her doctor. He had no staff privileges.

He basically ambushed a very troubled young woman in the middle of her very public meltdown.

Here’s what our pals at TMZ are saying:

TMZ has learned Britney had no idea Dr. Phil was coming to her room and indeed when he walked in she became agitated and walked out. She eventually came back in and he pretty much did all the talking for around 15 minutes.

One psychiatrist called it “intrusive and inappropriate.” Another shrink told us the hospital “is supposed to be a safe place. If the patient doesn’t want to see someone, that person doesn’t get in — period.”

Another shrink, who said he was “outraged and disgusted,” added, “It is incredible that the hospital allowed Dr. Phil in her room. It’s a total violation of her rights.”

Make no mistake. None of this was about reaching out to help Britney. It was all about a TV show he wants to air this week. Yup, a TV show! Britney’s parents, in another example of pimping their daughters (remember Jamie Lynn, Brit’s little sister, is pregnant and has sold the rights to baby pictures already) for attention and bucks.

Shame on all of them.

This award almost went to us here at Crime Rant, in a tie for running “The Cynthia Sommer’s Fan Club” story and anything about Melanie McGuire. This brought out the ugly in people, as we received more e-mail from Sommer supporters than any other story we ever covered. The other story that drew almost as much e-mail—most of which claiming she is innocent—was “Melanie McGuire Guilty” and Matt’s initial interest in doing a book about the case (he’s not!).

But then, just when you think you’ve heard it all, and people come up with all sorts of reasons to believe in someone who is obviously guilty, guilty, guilty, in comes an e-mail that makes it all worthwhile: She did it and that is all there is to it. I watched the entire trial. She forged a prescription to knock out her husband and was untruthful about the affair. And of all lawyers, she gets Joe Tacopina, who is very magnetic. Give us a break!

We love this. Direct. Focused. Right to the point.

But the real winner here in this category has to go to the senior producer of NBC’s “Saturday Early Show” who wrote a letter to Broward Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin, who presided over Anna Nicole’s probate case in February, and asked if the Judge Judy wannabe was interested in hosting a new segment on the program called “Morning Justice,” in which he would tackle viewers’ legal problems.

A perfect fit.

Judge Seidlin presided over the Anna Nicole probate case like he was auditioning for his own show –Shameless Larry. The media sucked up his antics with a straw.