Lee-Anne Goodman — Two weeks ago, the latest fad among young Hollywood trendsetters was to flash their panty-less crotches to the paparazzi. This week, it's coming up with wildly creative excuses to explain bad behaviour.

Nicole Richie was roundly ridiculed on Thursday for her insistence that she takes the opiate-based painkiller Vicodin for menstrual cramps. The revelation came after the skeletal celebrity was arrested for drunk driving while going the wrong way on a busy Los Angeles freeway after a night of clubbing.

Richie, with a well-documented history of heroin abuse, had no immediate explanation for why she had also ingested marijuana.

But her "Aunt Flow'' excuse to Us Weekly has been met with mockery and ridicule by celebrity bloggers and websites who point out that no doctor would prescribe an opiate to someone with a history of heroin addiction, while others question whether, at 85 pounds, Richie menstruates at all.

"Now if memory serves, from all those women's health seminars, isn't it true that one stops getting her period when she's grossly underweight?'' asks Elaine Lui, an ETalk Daily correspondent, on her blog Lainey's Entertainment Update (www.laineygossip.com).

Lisa Timmons, the editor of the gossip blog A Socialite's Life, (www.socialitelife.com) says stars from Richie to Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson seem to believe that the general public is profoundly stupid.

"With all of the shenanigans going on with celebrities these days and the low calibre of excuses they seem to be throwing at the public, it's easy to think they assume the rest of us are pretty gullible,'' says Timmons.

"I'm guessing that the permissive lifestyle in which the young and powerful in Hollywood have been reared has led them to believe that it's OK to lie about their mistakes, lest they actually learn from them.''

But the stars have high-powered publicists, and some wonder what kind of advice they're getting when they come up with fish stories to explain their transgressions.

Bob Reid, chief media strategist for Veritas Communications in Toronto, says publicists in Tinseltown aren't concerned with truth and integrity. Damage control isn't as important as ensuring their client is talked about.

"Hollywood is a whole other planet when it comes to communications,'' Reid says. "There is a strata of the pop culture universe where the adage that any publicity is good publicity is actually true. Currency, water-cooler buzz -- there's a premium placed on that when it comes to Hollywood-style publicity.''

Reid says there are even rumours that publicists and tabloids have conspired to get negative stories out about their clients -- and he suspects that might be at play in some recent Hollywood scandals.

"You look at the deliberate lack-of-underwear incidents lately,'' he said. "At the end of the day, good or bad, people were talking about Britney Spears, and that seemed to be the primary objective.''

Richie is just the latest in a long line of celebrities to come up with inventive explanations for bad behaviour or to stretch credibility with claims about the chasteness of their personal lives.

Paris Hilton famously -- and hilariously -- told the media earlier this year that she's only slept with two men in her life, planned to be celibate for a year, and didn't like the taste of alcohol so rarely drank. Within weeks of uttering those words, she too had been pulled over and charged with drunk driving.

Lohan is a more troubling case. Widely said to be struggling with serious drug and alcohol problems, the 20-year-old actress made more rambling statements to the media this week, telling People magazine she hasn't had a drink in a week while in the same breath saying she's been attending Alcoholic Anonymous for a year, yet seldom drinks because she's underage.

"I haven't had a drink in seven days. Or anything. I'm not even legal to, so why would I?'' she said. "I don't drink when I go to clubs. I drink with my friends at home, but there's no need to. I feel better not drinking. It's more fun. I have Red Bull.''

The weirdness isn't restricted to young Hollywood celebrities. Mel Gibson was roundly mocked when he blamed his alcoholism for spewing anti-Semitic slurs in a notorious incident with L.A. police this summer. And Michael Richards, of Seinfeld fame, didn't have many believers when he claimed his racial outburst at a Los Angeles club stemmed from anger, not bigotry.

"This is Hollywood, so it's totally possible that they've been lying so long to so many people that they wouldn't know how to tell the truth to save their lives,'' Timmons says.