Forget the brawl that involved Indiana Pacers forward Ron Artest. If you didn’t notice it over your Thanksgiving break, he tried to take on about 10,000 Detroit Pistons fans at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich.

Forget the fact that he put a bad face on the entire league that he plays for, and forget the ugliness that ensued from his obviously scary twist on fan and player interaction at a sporting event.

Forget all that and … buy the album that he is publicizing everywhere he goes. Just remember that the group Allure and their album will be dropping in stores soon, so go buy it to support their musical career and Artest’s new found career as a hip-hop producer.

Take two.

Forget that Martha Stewart has built herself a fortune in questionable ways. Ways that were so questionable that she now has found herself in the pen.

But forget that she is in prison, and certainly forget about the reasons that put her in the position she is in now.

Forget all that and … buy the book she most likely will publish on her time in prison once she is out and back to making dinner tables out of pine cones and pumpkins.

Amazing how these celebrities who have found their way into the forefront of American interest can capitalize on what should be the worst possible events that could happen to those in the public eye.

Artest can now build a music career in the time off he so richly deserves and desired at the beginning of the NBA season. An entire NBA season’s worth of time if the league’s commissioner David Stern’s ruling sticks.

So what should have been a black eye for Artest and the NBA has turned into a moneymaking possibility for the player/producer. That title proves the ever-changing definition of multi-dimensional when one is speaking of an athlete.

But what could be an even more sure-thing is the possibility of a book release from Martha Stewart, who has apparently enhanced her chances of making money with every day she has spent in jail.

No longer will her writing be about making ear muffs out of grapefruits, but instead it will be about what cafeteria dinners were like with her women counterparts that she shared so much time with.

It will be interesting to see if Artest’s album sells just because of the attention he has garnered for it over the past month – a month in which he has spent more face time on ESPN than he has with the player he should be defending as the NBA’s reigning defensive player of the year.

Artest, Stewart and many more celebrities, always seem to see the silver lining in the clouds before paying close attention to reality. To them it may just make the old saying that all publicity is good publicity come true.

What might be the most disgusting part of all of this is that the celebrities who fall into trouble might not be learning the lessons that the rest of society has to learn when put in the same position.

Instead, they would much rather have you forget about it and purchase whatever they plan to release next.