As a parent, dishing out the tough-love is hard. We hate to see our children cry, we hate to say "no" even when we know we should. The alternative, unfortunately, is that sooner or later someone else has to do the job - in this case the court. Paris will survive - there's a silver lining for her in here somewhere, and I don't mean a new reality TV series. I'm thinking more in the "real-life reality" category. Best wishes to you Paris - sincerely.

The only way that Paris Hilton will go away is if the media stops writing about her. The reason I have subscribed to Salon for all these years is because I want to read about things that matter. I want to read about people who matter. I don't subscribe in order to read the same crap that I can find on Perez Hilton's blog or TMZ or one of the seemingly thousands of websites devoted to the worship of empty celebrities.

Unfortunately, like every other third rate blog, tabloid, entertainment news show and all the other tools out there that work so hard at distracting people from issues that are actually important, Salon can't resist jumping on the slowest moving bandwagon and devoting an article a day to this totally irrelevent person. The bulk of the American population has turned into junkies, Paris Hilton is the most powerful drug since crack cocaine and the Catholic church, and the media has become nothing more than the archetypical drug dealer hanging out in front of elementary schools.

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.

I think the writers don't need to be so pessimistic. Our culture has never been conquered by Paris. Have we? I believe that majority of the sane people, just like you and me, have never paid serious attention on Paris. It is all media generated noise for some profit-driven motive (viewership, eyeballs, etc.). I have long decided that not to take media seriously.

If the writers, as they said in this article, really want Paris to go away, then why they bothered to join the bandwagon, writing this article--which is all about Paris.

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...