This was a well-written article that tries to examine the insane phenomenon that is the fame of Paris Hilton. I don't think she, herself, is as important as that fact that such a person can obtain such a level of fame. We sure are angry at Paris Hilton. Or are we angry at her fame?

Many of the letters, express such a strange misplaced rage. I have no sympathy for Paris Hilton. Drunk driving is right there at the top of my list of asshole things to do. However, it is my understanding that she is really in trouble more for driving with a suspended license resulting from the DUI rather than for the DUI itself.

But the rage in these letters! Why are you so angry? It's a rhetorical question. You resent that justice seems unfair and unequal; you hate her for her appearance of being above the law, and for her stubborn refusal to deal with the reality that you have to deal with every day. Life is hard; it hits hard and leaves a mark. And there she is, free floating blithely above itt all. She honestly seems to think that rules don't apply to her.

That is so damn frustrating. Doesn't that make you angry? She needs to go to prison. She is NOT better than anyone else. She needs to be brought down a peg or two.

But here's the thing I don't understand. The country is headed by an entire cabal of people, from the president down, who acknowledge no rule, no law, no moral consideration as applying to them. They do what they want, when they want, and how they want. One of them, known by the ridiculous name of "Scooter" now stands convicted and sentenced of a much greater crime than Hilton's, and was part of the cabal whose policies have been responsible for the actual deaths (versus the potential deaths of Hilton's driving drunk) of tens of thousands of innocent people. Insert the usual litany of other crimes here.

Yet as I write this — while we're all screaming for the blood of Paris Hilton, hoping her incarceration will somehow rectify the thousand injustices done to us everyday — this ridiculous convicted criminal "Scooter" is doing his best to stay out of prison, and efforts are being made by backers to make sure that he never spend a single second paying for his crimes.

Do I hear any rage? If Paris has you angry, Scooter should have you crippled with blind spitting fury.

But it doesn't.

I think Paris and her little dog and pony show is a sad subsitute for what's really going on. Lots of people in this society are clearly able to act above the law. Hilton is just stand-in for the perp walk we really want to see (hint: it's not Scooter). Realistically, we know that we are never going to see that perp walk, not ever, ever. Paris is the only perp walk available to us; the only leveling of the playing field we are ever likely to see. Sometimes in life, you take what you can get.

"Let's just pray that those bad prison sheets scratch her tender white ass enough to get her out of our faces for good. Because we certainly didn't ask for this, either. No matter how the talking heads and pundits have tried to convince us that Paris is a reflection of our shallowness and stupidity as a culture, most of us have never wanted her to be a symbol of anything."

Actually, Paris sells...page hits, magazines, etc. When people stop buying, that's when she'll fade. We buy what the media feeds us. People say they don't want war in Iraq, but they'd rather watch American Idol than protest in the streets. You can blame the media for making us stupid sheeple who "pay for Paris," but the fact is we get exactly what we "want": trendy glammer that we then go buy on the cheap at Walmart. And then we all say that we want to stop global warming.

Stop needless consumption, I say. Starting with Paris Hilton. The only way to change the media is to show the media we'd like to be fed a different diet.

Celebrity and wealth has something to do with it.

The reason she went to jail was a plea bargain -- she was pulled for drunk driving in September, and had her license suspended by the CA DMV as a result (or for some other drunk driving incident.) In any event her lawyers managed to get her to plead it down to reckless driving, for which she was paroled. Her parol had a number of conditions (14+ I think), including inter alia that she would not drive without a valid license and that she would attend an alcohol awareness course (for what that is worth.) now a plea is a deal with the court -- "judge I'm very sorry, I'll be good in future and I wont do this list a bad things and this one or two good things." When you make a plea deal you are supposed to keep it.

After the plea deal she did not attend over a period of 9 months the promised alcohol awareness class. one top of that she was pulled in by the police driving -- that time they warned her that she was not to drive and made a friend drive her home. Obviously, she though she was special because she went out, got a brand new Bentley (retail price say $250000-$500,000) and drove it at night, with the headlights off and was pulled in by the police doing 70 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Now any way you see it, this is an "up yours" three times to the court. And when someone effectively does that to a judge, they tend to get kinda peeved. So Paris was not in jail for drunk driving, she was in jail for violating the terms of her parol.

Is she in jail because she is a rich celebrity -- well yes, probably. First, because she is surrounded by sycophants who presumably were unwilling to say "nope, you can't do that" and "Ms. Hilton, you have to take the class and sit in the plastic seats at the unpleasant ed place." More to the point, she had a good lawyer who got her a deal that other DUIs probably would not have got, but it involved probation -- the deal with the court, and probably she had that lawyer because she was a rich celebrity.

But it is also because she is a rich celebrity that things went wrong. I would not be the least bit surprised to discover that what here lawyers managed to do -- spring her to home detention -- is something they pull off regularly, for those who can pay their fees (and since I am possibly more expensive I won't criticize that.) And usually it works because the judge does not find out, or is disinclined to get into a turf war with the Sheriff about it -- but because we are dealing with the celebrity trollop, the press saw what happened and it became public. Ensue the disaster.

But I suppose in the end a lot of this comes down to her and her family being so rich and spoiled that they simply lack any judgment or sense, and are unwilling to listen to people who had to learn and work for a living. I have no doubt that Ms. Hilton was repeatedly warned by her lawyers that she was going to get into trouble, but though it could not happen to her.

One last point on wealth -- this is a young woman who could easily have afforded a car service 24/7 while her license was suspended . . . why the hell did she drive. I would have more sympathy if this was someone who needed to drive to do their job and could not afford a car service or cab . . .