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Read other letters about this article
1) As others have pointed out, this article is totally disingenuous. If the authors really want Hilton to go away, then they shouldn't write about her. Hilton is above all a media phenomenon. "Commentary" on the phenomenon is just the way more "upscale" publications pretend they're not tabloids. So either Hilton is relevant to out culture, which would justify writing about her, but not justify this article's position. Or Hilton is irrelevant and then this article is just as much shameless tabloid pap as the phenomenon it critiques. It would certainly be perfectly respectable for Salon to not cover Hilton at all (doesn't she get enough press elsewhere? what's not getting covered because its writers are spending time on Hilton?). Why not have some guts and opt out if they feel so strongly.
2) I also didn't pay much attention to Hilton until I got sucked into the whole jail debacle. But this article is just kind of vicious and mean. I don't want to say "go away" so vituperatively to anyone. It's really pretty easy to ignore this stuff, if the authors really aren't interested. It seems more like the authors have a very complicated guilty relationship to and lurid interest in the whole thing. Just look at the photo they lead with. Pure sensationalism. I also do not really want to glory in the possible suffering of another person in jail, like these authors do. Clearly Hilton was getting special treatment when she was released, but I still feel sorry for her. Maybe what this situation shows is not that she deserves to suffer, for her real crime (which of course she should be punished for in some way), but that American jails are a scary place and anyone is in their right mind to be freaked out about even a short stay in one. Just because a lot of other people get treated badly and don't get special treatment, doesn't mean that Hilton deserves it because she's rich and famous. I just can't get into the mean spirit of this article.
