Tatum O'Neal, who in December said Britney Spears needed to "get her disease of addiction together," was arrested in Manhattan's hip Lower East Side Sunday after buying crack from a homeless man.

A stunned O'Neal initially told cops she was "doing research for a part," a police source said. When cops searched her and found two bags of drugs - one with crack, one with regular cocaine - and an unused crack pipe, she changed her story, sources said.

"I've been clean for a long time," the teary-eyed actress pleaded as she asked cops to give her a break, sources said. "Today was the first time I was relapsing, but you guys saved me! Can you let me go?"

Alas, the cops could not let her go.

Do you do drugs? If so, you probably also like rap music. How did I know that? Because, according to new research, all rap musicians do is glamorize drugs!

Rap music has increasingly glamorized the use of illegal drugs, portraying marijuana, crack and cocaine as symbols of wealth and status, according to a new study by the journal Addiction Research & Theory.
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After sampling 341 lyrics from rap music's most popular hits between 1979 and 1997, the researchers found references to drugs had increased six-fold over that period.

Um, OK: Besides being useless, old news, this study is also wrong, as anyone who has listened to rap between 1979 and 1997 can tell you. If those researchers can show me a verse in any of the study's 341 "popular hits" that glamorizes the use of crack, I will gladly relinquish my Hip Hop Head card. (Selling crack, yes — which, admittedly, is reprehensibly selfish — but using?) And then there's this: "'Fat sacks' and 'strapped horns' refer to cocaine smoking pipes, according to the study." Ha! "Fat sacks" means crack pipe!!??!?!?!?! What kind of rap are these people listening to, and why the hell are they allowed to be authorities on hip hop culture? Is it any wonder worried parents in the suburbs can't understand "these kids and their rap hop"?