In an age where Justin Bieber is routinely described as a "bad boy", who can blame Rolling Stone for feeling obliged to bung a bombing suspect on its cover? If outrage were left to the entertainers themselves, we'd have to be appalled that Gwyneth Paltrow allows herself one fag a week, or that Justin was a bit late on stage considering his tween fans' bedtimes. Hang on, a rifle through the archives indicates that people did somehow find it in themselves to be deeply appalled by the latter's lack of consideration and punctuality – two things I really value in a star – while news that Bieber had made a disparaging remark to a picture of Bill Clinton was considered so potentially damaging to the One Time auteur that his manager got him to call the 42nd president to apologise. "#greatguy" was Justin's obediently tweeted verdict.

The goody-goodies have such full-spectrum dominance of celebrity that I hesitate even to refer to the likes of Charlie Sheen or Liam Gallagher as a resistance. I can tell you that last week, apparently on a late-night whim, non-network star Sheen private-jetted himself and some friends all the way to Loch Ness, where they spent four days and nights hunting the monster. I can point out that the leakiest of US paternity suits currently alleges that Gallagher, formerly of popular 90s beat combo Oasis, has fathered a child with a New York hack.

What I cannot say is whether Charlie and Liam have even met, or whether their efforts to undermine the square-ocracy are linked. It could be that theirs is a non-traditional cell model, and that their misbehaviour is in effect autonomous, despite being carried out in the name of not eating fish or chicken with steamed vegetables every night. We simply don't yet understand the offending model.

But if wholesome stars don't speak out against it, then the misbehaviourists will have won. Fighting to crush those who mean to make war on our quotidian way of life are the likes of Robert Downey Jr – once a proper celebrity, with spells in the Betty Ford finishing school and various detention cells, who now craps money for the studios. Possibly even literally. Certainly, he is the star of the Iron Man franchise – which has already clocked up its third deathless iteration – and was this week named by Forbes as the year's highest-paid actor, having banked an estimated $75m.

The articles saluting Robert's achievement almost without exception made admiring reference to his gentrification, as though we civilians should be glad that one of Hollywood's formerly more interesting actors has come so dutifully to heel. Well, hurrah, because he's now a radioactive bore. Whatever you think of Ricky Gervais, the latter's turns as award-show host have attempted to deviate somewhat from the entertainment industry's stultifying self-veneration. A couple of years ago he did the Golden Globes, chucking in a few barbs about Downey Jr's well-spent youth along the way. In the cutaways to the audience, Robert De Niro could be seen convulsing with delighted laughter at the irreverence. But while some of those affecting disapproval of Gervais were later alleged to have been in on the gag, no one could make such a get-out clause stick to the sanctimonious Downey. On stage, he opined the turn was "hugely mean-spirited with mildly sinister undertones".

Naturally, should the paternity allegations about Liam Gallagher prove true, they won't mark him out as a #greatguy; but for us civilians, that should be positively the last of our concerns. We should be far more profoundly upset that celebrities have ridden roughshod over our contracts with them, which surely charge them with providing the sort of outlandish misbehaviour against which we can press our noses to divert us from our own dreary lives.

Once again, one can only lament that the era of Simon Cowell and the apotheosis of manufactured pop has not given rise to any sort of meaningful counterculture. There really has never been a better time to be an absolute bore of a "star", media-coached to spout soundbites that could make some footballers' post-match interviews sound like Oliver Reed's candidly outrageous outbursts.

Bieber dismissed one paternity suit, but that was obviously going to come to naught. In fact, I've always assumed the Karaoke Sauron and his ilk insist on the temporary sterilisation of their acts, so that they can put in the eight-day weeks required to "make it" in the modern game – whatever "it" now is. Only later might they be put out to stud, or at least be crossbred with another obedient starlet, enabling the next generation of entertain-o-bot to be grown in a petri dish at one of the industry's facilities, ready to have its pliant, money-crapping properties activated somewhere down the line.

So to watch that other Rolling Stone, Keith Richards, on stage the other day wasn't just to behold a stunningly battle-scarred warrior against quiet nights in. It was to have the sensation of the proverbial phantom limb. That sudden twitch was the remembrance of how things used to be – when paternity suits were the cost of doing business, when teenagers didn't shock the world with their lateness, and when gathering moss wasn't a business imperative.

Twitter: @MarinaHyde