Miss USA has just made one of the most inadvertently profound statements in recent memory.

Having been pressed into rehab by no less bizarre a figure than Donald Trump, 21-year-old Tara Conner told reporters earlier this week, "Anytime anyone gives you free anything, like therapy or rehab, you take it."

As the New York Daily News noted, "She seemed to equate rehab with the luxury gift bags given out at the flashy parties she attended."

But why should she not? After all, many public figures before Conner have behaved as if a stint in rehab is just an accessory of fame - and an especially useful one for its capacity to absolve them of culpability for other misdeeds.

This year, everyone from Mel Gibson to disgraced Republican congressman Mark Foley has trodden the well-worn path to treatment immediately after moments of public embarrassment.

Conner is different from them in at least one, rather admirable respect. She does not appear especially keen to play up the scale of her own penitence.

"I wouldn't say that I'm an alcoholic. I'd think that would be pushing the envelope," she told a press conference on Tuesday. ("I don't think she's denying she's an alcoholic," Trump speedily interjected.)

It is not clear whether Conner really has a problem at all, beyond a tendency to indulge in the kind of antics that sit uneasily with the sentimental, ultra-wholesome image American beauty queens are expected to project.

Controversy erupted around her when it became apparent that she was prone to popping up in bars while underage. There were also allegations that she enjoyed the occasional toot of cocaine and - shock, horror - sometimes may have had sex with men she did not know especially well.

Evidence that Conner is actually addicted to any of these activities is in rather short supply. But in America, where puritanism erupts at the oddest moments - remember the Crisis Of Janet Jackson's Nipple? - the notion that Conner might, just possibly, have nothing to apologise for has gone largely unmentioned.

Conner won the Miss USA title in April, but the tales surrounding her only blew up in recent weeks. Trump, whose organisation owns the rights to the Miss USA pageant and who knows how to milk every last drop of publicity from any given situation, seemed to indicate she would be stripped of her crown. But - hallelujah! - she instead accepted his rehab offer earlier this week and won herself a reprieve.

"I've always been a believer in second chances," Trump moistly announced. "Tara is going to be given a second chance."

A spell in rehab has become an integral part of the "second chance" process for people guilty of much more distasteful infractions than Tara Conner.

As Dr Marc Graff of the American Psychiatric Association told Reuters this week, "There are plenty of people who are under the gun from attorneys or spouses or employers, and they join a programme almost like copping a plea."

Mel Gibson announced he would seek help after he set off a firestorm of controversy in July. Stopped by police under suspicion of drinking and driving, Gibson launched into an anti-Semitic rant, apparently including the assertion that "the Jews" were to blame for "all the wars in the world."

Off he toddled to rehab. On his re-emergence, Gibson gave the predictable faux-revelatory TV interview, during which he insisted, "Alcohol loosens your tongue and makes you act, say and behave in a way that is not you."

In early October, then-congressman Mark Foley was discovered to have sent sexually explicit emails to boys who had worked as pages on Capitol Hill. Foley resigned almost immediately. But he also announced he would seek treatment for alcoholism and "other behavioural problems."

Another Republican congressman, Bob Ney, pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in a lobbying scandal in September. Rehab was next. A statement from his attorneys pointed out, rather absurdly, that "Congressman Ney's alcohol dependency has affected his judgment in this mattter, but he is not offering excuses."

At least Seinfeld's Michael Richards had the originality not to offer alcoholism as a rationale for his racist outburst in a comedy club in November. But he did very publicly announce that he would seek counselling for "anger issues".

Of course, celebrities and politicians are as vulnerable to addiction as anyone else. And those who are genuinely in its grip deserve sympathy and support. But what is now going on is quite different: it involves finding a quasi-medical excuse for offensive behaviour and, in so doing, dodging responsibility for the behaviour itself.

Gibson and Foley provide two especially powerful examples. How many people, even the chronically alcoholic, launch into anti-Semitic lunacy or begin firing off lurid emails to young boys? As for Richards, there are plenty of people with an irascible temperament but very few who howl racist slurs at black people as a consequence.

The point, of course, is that it is a lot more socially acceptable to admit to alcoholism or "anger issues" than to anti-Jewish bigotry, sexual desire for adolescent boys or racism.

In our care to be respectful towards anyone trying to recover from addiction, we risk forgetting that there are things like these for which people should suffer blame and shame.

"The booze made me do it," is the oldest excuse in the book. And, in many cases, the most pathetic. Must we always pretend to fall for it?