Top Five Celebrity Career Meltdown Moments Of The Decade

A celebrity career meltdown moment is defined as an incident, lasting three minutes or less, which instantaneously makes you forget about everything else that particular celebrity had done up in his career up until that point. Since these lists tend to suffer from recent history bias anyway, I've decided to limit it to the the current decade.

1. Tom Cruise Jumps The Couch (2005)
We all knew Tom Cruise was a little bit nuts once he started to espouse Scientology and denounce the use of psychiatric drugs. However, Cruise went off the deep end when he appeared on Oprah and proclaimed his love for new girlfriend Katie Holmes by jumping up and down on her couch. Boy, Nicole Kidman sure picked the right time to call things off.

2. Connie Chung Bids Farewell (2006)
On the final episode of Weekends With Maury and Connie, the co-host did her worst impression of a cabaret singer with an embarassing, poorly-conceived off-key rendition of "Thanks For The Memories." She tried to pass it off by saying it was meant as a self-parody and people who take it too seriously should get a life. I do not begrudge her the right to have fun, but it was nonetheless a train wreck that unfolded in front of the nation's eyes (well, at least the six people who watch MSNBC). Check it out here, and brace yourself.

3. Whitney Houston Tells Diane Sawyer Everything (2002)
In an interview on Primetime Live, Whitney Houston confesses to having used just about every drug on the planet. But when Diane Sawyer suggests that Whitney had used crack, it produced this gem: "First of all, let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. Okay? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is whack."

And just for the heck of it, "Kiss my ass!"

4. Joe Namath's Drunken Interview With Suzy Kolber (2003)
"I want to kiss you!"

5. Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction (2004)
In the matter of half a second, Janet Jackson's jewelry-clad right nipple made sure that nobody would ever remember her twenty-year career as a recording artist.

Honorable Mention (2001)
At the height of her mental and physical breakdown from exhaustion, a seemingly-intoxicated Mariah Carey made a bizarre walk-on appearance on MTV's Total Request Live, handing out popsicles to the audience, performing a striptease on stage, and constantly interrupting Carson Daly with rambling nonsense. Watch it here.