Dad Jamie’s control over Britney Spears too much?

A new story notes that while Britney Spears is climbing back to the top of the pop charts, is it only due to her father’s tough love? And is she ready yet or only being pushed?

Sharon Churcher, of The UK’s Daily Mail, has an interesting account of some time she spent with Jamie Spears back in 2002 in Kentwood, LA. This was at a time when Britney had become a pop sensation and her dad was not really involved in her career much. Among other things, during a four hour encounter, the DM reporter claims Jamie “had been drinking heavily and was chewing Kodiak tobacco,” gave her a “hostile drunken monologue while refusing to let her leave” and, finally, “picked up a large carving knife and theatrically stabbed it into the wooden table” every time she got up to leave.

The story in many ways is less then pointed but it seems to build toward wondering if Jamie being totally in control of Britney’s life make sense.  With his own past drinking problems and failures running his own business, should he be running his daughter’s life.  The reporter doesn’t question his earnest intentions and the success it’s brought his daughter in her comeback bid so far, but wonders if the stifling control of Britney’s life is perhaps driving her crazy, and pushing her forward before she is really ready.

Insiders on her mini-tour of Germany, France and Britain revealed that the star lives in a bubble designed to maximise her potential as a money-making machine as well as physically separate her from all temptation — whether that be drugs, alcohol, junk food or men. Even Rolling Stone was quoted saying Britney has about as many rights “as when she was a teenager.”

This is all Deja Vu to her younger days when she rose to the top but her emotional maturity didn’t grow with her fame.  It seems like maybe not much has changed?