- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Once again I find myself brain-raped by the readership's responses to a Salon article. This isn't about hating some poor, lost soul (a la that infernal commercial in which a certain model/actress begs "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"). It is a question of our sanity as a society, embodied in a person (Paris Hilton) and the justice to be dispensed.
First, one wonders, how did justice, even LA style, ever become the province of the public, let alone the Sheriff's office? Sheriff's provide law enforcement. They arrest offenders, breachers of the peace and worse. That includes drunk drivers, the most under-prosecuted class of criminal extant, and one of the most destructive. But it is the judiciary which dispenses justice.
There is whining here that Paris Hilton may kill herself in jail (it happens every so often, but not to those who are so utterly self-absorbed). There is beefing here about staph germs in jails. We really need to clean up da joint before we put any really clean and decent white folks in there. There is caterwauling about "fairness", which is nothing but the last sanctuary of those who cannot bring themselves to deal with love. Love? Yes, that's what I said. Love. No one is doing Ms. Hilton any favor by getting her a soft ride for having been DUI. "But other people are routinely released early in LA county in order to relieve overcrowding!" Yes, it's deplorable but it's true, and there is a process by which that happens and it is not because the Sheriff decides to interpret the law for the judges.
Will Paris Hilton benefit from this horrendous experience? Will she off herself? Will she go on a hunger strike? But I am being redundant. Will society recieve equitable treatment under the law and equal protection? Yes. If she gets a regular early out then she'll have been treated like the majority of pains-in-the-ass who jam the system with their idiot behavior anyway. If not, well hell, she may actually gain a tiny bit of insight into what it's like to be a real person.
Will she "go away"? Unlikely, so long as this society avoids intense psychotherapy and continues to feast on the voyeuristic pleasure of feeling somehow morally superior to the Rich and Famous. But the rest of us can look away. Having read the incredibly warped sentiments here, I will certainly be looking in some other direction the next time Ms. Hilton is beamoaning her truly sad state in life. If only she could know how sad it really is...
