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• Friday, June 8, 2007 07:44 PM

  I almost feel sorry for Ms. Hilton

  Almost. She is being used by the media to symbolize all the national angst that makes so many bucks for those who charge to see it on TV. In print, otherwise so called respectable journalists write long diatribes, dialogues, dissertations, dismissils, dish, dirt, deliberate falsehoods and sensationalisms, to cash in on that gravy train like the guy who jumped into the market to make accessories for the Pet Rock.

  I can't feel totally sorry for her, in the way Elton John sang dirges for Norma Jean. Unlike Marilyn, Paris chose to be a celebrity for the attention. Norma Jean actually chose a career. Unlike Norma/Marilyn, Paris knew what she was getting into.

  The great thing about all of this is that if we the people are going to use her and her foibles it could not have come at a better time or under better circumstances. This week, I suffered listening to the far right pundit talking to the moderately far right pundit on Dian Rehm's show about the abject unfairness of Scooter Libby's punishment. If anyone wanted to teach a class in how a normally sentient and sane being could hold so many contradictory beliefs simultaneously and not yet cross the line to being exposed as an obvious fraud and shill, that was the radio program to teach.

  Yet, just when the neocon spin machine was pulling out all stops and puting up its best faux logic to garner sympathy for such an unsympathetic man, Paris Hilton had to go and get special treatment.

  To the masses, and even, or especially, the base the Libby supporters hoped to appeal to, it was the legal equivalent of "Hey! Look at the shiny object over here!"

  Hilton's sad tragedy was 9/11 to Scooter Libby's Intifada II. And like Yassir Arafat said on 9/12 "Nobody gives a shit about us now."

  I can only imagine that Scooter, watching FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Spike, The Food Channel, and whatever station was showing the Stanley Cup, came to the same conclusion: "Scooter who?"

  Scooter might have hoped for some last minute reprieve the day he is scheduled to walk into the graybar hotel, but I suspect that only his lawyer will be their to see him off as everyone else will be filming or watching Paris walking out of the same type of facilities.

  It's ragtime, Scooter and its not your time, but time you will serve.

  —Ijon Tichy Read Ijon Tichy's other letters
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