Is Paris Burning? Tears and woe in the Gilded Ghetto

Paris Hilton is famous for nothing. She has, in fact, elevated being nothing to an art form. A frenzied media surrounds this over-indulged, self-centered rich white gal like a pack of hungry hyenas after a prime carcass on the savannas of southern Africa. It’s an ugly picture of American values. The press and the public can’t seem to get enough.
Neither can she. Paris prances and preens for the cameras, every outing for every conceivable reason a trip down the models’ runway. When she’s not showing off a little cleavage or her navel or a tanatlizing length of very white leg, she has other things to do. Places to go, people to see, partying to do. She gets paid for nothing more important than showing up. A lofty profession.
Ms Hilton takes her career seriously. She is one very busy gal. Too busy to sober up before driving her car. Already on 36 months probation after a DUI conviction, she was stopped twice more for traffic violations. Her driver’s license was suspended.
In February she was stopped again for speeding down Sunset Boulevard-- with a suspended license. That time she didn’t get probation. She was sentenced to serve 45 days in jail.
Poor Paris. She’s so sorry she broke the law, she says, but it wasn’t her fault. The blame lies with her publicist, Elliot Mintz. She asked him if she could drive and he said she could. So she did. She was further badly served by the police officer who stopped her for speeding. He made her sign a document stating her license was suspended and she signed it because he told her to. She never looked at what she was signing. Maybe she was looking in the rearview mirror at the time, checking her make-up, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear. Getting pulled over for violating the law is such a tacky business; we want to look our very best in the event someone has a camera handy.
Like so many Americans with time to play, Paris has her own MySpace page. She’s putting it to good use these days, posting a petition intended for California Governor Schwartzenegger. Paris doesn’t want to go to jail. The decor is lousy, the food stinks and the people--well, it’s simply unthinkable. Paris is demanding a pardon. She is eloquent in her own defense:
“I urge all fans and supporters and all that are outraged by injustice to sign this petition,” she says. She deserves a pardon because she provides “beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.”
This woman is a patriot, a defender of justice and the American way of life. With all the problems we face as a nation, the last thing we need right now is a 45 day stretch without beauty and excitement Paris Hilton style.
Is Paris Burning? You bet she is. She’s an angry victim of the same sick syndrome we see in Washington. She did the wrong things based on faulty intelligence, ignored the law and blames her publicist for telling her driving whenever she wanted to would be a slam dunk.

Linda Hansen has been a published working writer and poet for over twenty years. She has a love/hate relationship with politics.