For America’s celebrity-watching media, 2007 was the Year of Spears, about which we should breathe a sigh of relief that Western civilization survived. The year began with increasingly erratic Britney Spears popping in and out of rehab stints. Then she shaved her head in the spring, a move that screamed that the pop star’s moves were more crazy than calculated by publicists. The year ended with the news that Britney’s 16-year-old sister Jamie Lynn Spears, a star of the children’s channel Nickelodeon, was pregnant.

Had the youngest Spears sister been cast as a tawdry teenage tramp on “Desperate Housewives,” her real-world behavior would be seen as less scandalous. But Jamie Lynn Spears has been a fairly wholesome star on Nickelodeon since she joined the kiddie sketch-comedy show “All That” at the tender age of 11. She’s currently the cool title character of the show “Zoey 101,” set at a boarding school, a show watched by millions of grade-schoolers. So much for role models.

At the center of this vortex is the mother, Lynne Spears, who had her publishing contract “delayed indefinitely” for a book on parenting celebrity children, now that it’s painfully apparent she doesn’t know diddly about parenting celebrity children. The Spears family and their long trail of tabloid embarrassments make them some of 2007’s biggest losers. Let’s review some other cultural winners and losers from the year just elapsed.

Losers: Barry Bonds and every other professional baseball player caught cheating with steroids, human growth hormone and other doping methods. Most baseball fans will forever put a huge asterisk on Bonds breaking the career home run record of Henry Aaron, and this is correct. Bonds “broke” the record in a new way. He took Aaron’s record and smashed its integrity like it was a priceless stolen vase.

Winners: The wider world of Major League Baseball, for finally publicly acknowledging the doping scandal that is ruining the national pastime. Add to this “winners” slot those modern superstars of baseball who never succumbed to the temptation of using artificial enhancements.

Losers: Jim Belushi and the makers of the ABC sitcom “According to Jim,” for a story plot taking us literally into the toilet, with Belushi defecating out his wedding ring (complete with a clank) while his wife and other relatives hid in the bathtub behind the shower curtain. But not before his sister-in-law unloaded an “earthy” story about how “last week, I was up on the roof throwing water balloons I filled with my own urine.”

Winners: Rep. Bobby Rush, for organizing a congressional hearing on the socially harmful impact of gangsta rap. Add to this slot the rapper Master P, who apologized for making gangsta rap and now says he doesn’t want even his own children to listen to his work in that genre.

Nickelodeon is considering a special for its young audience about sex and love following the news that 16-year-old “Zoey 101″ star Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant.

The television network has made no announcement about the future of “Zoey 101,” its popular program aimed primarily at youngsters aged 9-14. Filming for the show’s fourth and final season has finished, and episodes are scheduled to begin airing in February.

For the special, Nickelodeon said it’s talking with veteran newswoman Linda Ellerbee, the veteran newswoman who has stepped in frequently in the past with shows on talking to children about difficult issues in the news. She’s done shows about same-sex parents, AIDS, the Columbine shooting and President Clinton’s impeachment scandal.

“I think it’s important that something be done,” Ellerbee told The Associated Press on Thursday. “But I think it’s important that it be done in a measured way, and not just to feed the beast of news stories.

A Nickelodeon spokesman, Dan Martinsen, confirmed the discussions but said no decision had been made.

Spears, the younger sister of pop star Britney Spears, told the OK! celebrity magazine this week that she was pregnant. The father is her 19-year-old boyfriend, Casey Aldridge. She said she plans to raise the baby in her home state of Louisiana.

Nickelodeon has made no comment beyond a supportive statement for its star: “We respect Jamie Lynn’s decision to take responsibility in this sensitive and personal situation. We know this is a very difficult time for her and her family, and our primary concern right now is for Jamie Lynn’s well being.”

The company has received a mixed response so far from its viewers, and the news has launched a public discussion about how parents should deal with it.

“This is a great opportunity for parents at this moment to talk to their kids about this — more important, to listen to their kids about this,” Ellerbee said.

Rather than focus strictly on Spears, Ellerbee said she’s considering producing a broad discussion about how people know they’re in love, when is the right time to have sex and what are the value systems of their parents and friends. It could air as soon as next month.

“Right now what Nick is trying to do — and what I am trying to do — is figure out what is the best thing to do for kids,” she said.

One television critic, David Hinckley of the New York Daily News, wrote Thursday that to end “this sordid moment” with a lesson, Nickelodeon should pull the plug on “Zoey 101.”

“If Nickelodeon keeps Jamie Lynn Spears because her product sells, it runs the risk that a valuable message it has spent years crafting could shift from `trust us’ to `whatever,’” Hinckley wrote.

Although Nick executives are still discussing the future of “Zoey 101,” it’s considered unlikely that it would shelve the final season. The third season ends Jan. 4 with a cliffhanger episode about whether Spears’ character continues to attend a boarding school in California or moves to London with her parents.

Executives at Nick’s rival Disney Channel public relations crisis this summer when Vanessa Hudgens, the 18-year-old star of its “High School Musical” franchise, posed for nude photos that were leaked to the Internet. Hudgens apologized, Disney stuck by her and the issue quickly faded.