BY ROCHELLE RILEY

If you see a building on fire in the distance, do you call the fire department, or do you keep on driving and hope that someone else has called?

If we aren't connected to the building, if we don't have a vested interest in it, how much should we care?

I consider that hypothetical every time there's another news flash about pop tart Britney Spears, who seems to be on a nonstop, out-of-control train to utter despair.

Before you say it, I'm with you: The world could use a little less Britney Spears. In the past two years, a talented girl took the pop music world by storm and showed that former Mickey Mouse dancers can have entertainment careers. She became a superstar and a woman. But then she lost her way.

Now, at 22, she owns the tabloids, fueling sales with endless tales of hanging out with married back-up dancers, kissing fading pop stars and feuding with other former Disney Mice who also have become pop icons.

But her reputation has become that of a hard-partying, broken-hearted young woman who's losing her center as the entire world watches.

Topless, bottomless, aimless?

Why should we care? What is expected from an audience that can only watch? What, if anything, could we do?

Well, one thing we can do is make clear to our young girls, our Britney wanna-bes, that not all star behavior is the behavior of stars.

Britney's decisions to appear topless on the October cover of Rolling Stone and bottomless on the November cover of Esquire may have been more cries for help than demands for attention.

Then comes her recent two-day marriage to a childhood chum, annulled after the pair realized that they didn't "know each other's likes and dislikes, each other's desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to state of residency," according to a People magazine report on the formal annulment request.

For every girl who wants to dress like Britney, dance like Britney and -- because they don't know any better -- sing like Britney, it's important to at least acknowledge the public meltdown of a young woman who either gets no guidance or is ignoring it as she seeks to find her own way.

It is so important for girls to know that Britney's poor decisions are not the results of success. There are successful young entertainers who don't raise metaphorical comparisons to burning buildings. There are successful entertainers who entertain with their clothes on and find better things to do in their time off than get married for a couple of days.

Time for a vacation

So, here's another thing we can do to help Britney Spears. We can just say no.

If the singer cannot trust her management team, or her parents or her friends to bring her back from the brink, then maybe we can help her by resisting the urge to buy her material. We can send her back home to Louisiana for a break from the madness.

Sometimes when you see a burning building, you can't just watch it burn, hoping that someone has called the fire department.

Sometimes you have to do something.

Let's send Britney home for a break. And if it saves her life, then it's the least we could do.