I just joined Salon because of the marvelous article written by Ms. Traister.

It should be on billboards everywhere.

Thank you, Ms. Traister

Ms Perry Lawrence

Paris embodies the Republican era - spoiled, ignorant and entitled. Just like George W Bush. My hope is that when Dubya goes, Paris will too.

Reminds me of that classic advice... never invite Jessica Fletcher to your house for the weekend.

Robert Anderson, censorship is perfectly acceptable and quite often necessary, so long as it is not perpetrated by the government against its own free citizens. I think you could have engaged in some yourself. I come to Salon for many reasons, not one of which is to have my psyche brutalized with this pointless vitriol. I am only just recovering from a very hostile and traumatic election season in which the very freedoms this country holds dear were at stake, and everyone left and right was hurling insults and accusations at each other. I could care less about unity, but civility means everything right now, and this article lacks any shred of it. It is beneath Salon to give voice to such hostility under any guise and I'm disappointed at the level of discourse following. I am entitled to my opinion, and my opinion is that Salon should hold itself to higher standards.

If you ask why I read the article in the first place, its because I was expecting it to talk about the popularity of Paris Hilton waning. I was shocked to see it was just hateful invective. I read to the end hoping that some great joke or revelation would occur, and instead found the author heaping on the hate like catsup on a hot dog. My hopes for some kind of redemption were dashed upon the rocks of my shock that I was, indeed, reading Salon and not some lunatic blog posting.

Best wishes to you and yours for a joyful holiday season.

I wouldn't fuck that skank with a stolen dick.

Thayt's all.

What is fascinating / troubling about this whole Paris discussion is that few people revile Paris for that which makes her most vile -- her sense of entitlement stemming from her inherited wealth and her relentless shilling for crass corporate interests. She shills while cackling at the state of the losers that were not born into a similar economic station.

And yet what she is most often criticized for is being a "slut".

As others have said in this post, she is the ultimate American -- with inherited wealth, she is gross consumer -- of any and all big ticket clothing, accessories, grooming and cosmetic surgery enhancements -- and a savvy manipulator of the corporate media and the public. What is the dollar value of the sectors that Paris Hilton promotes -- clothing, accessories, weight loss products, cosmetic surgery? Until Paris came along, how many women knew that they needed not only to remove their pubic hair, but to get cosmetic enhancement of their nether regions (a burgeoning field of plastic surgery)?

Too many people seem to be comfortable with the traditional anti-women rants when it comes to Paris. This is all the more surprising when there is so many other offensive aspects to take in.

What is this nonsense about women having to put on their pretty faces, smile, and pretend to like and love all women? Come on girls: paste on those smiles. Others of our sex are far too delicate to take any criticism or to stand up and defend themselves. Why, if we say anything bad about, say, Paris Hilton men might think bad things about us girls. Why, if we stand up and say, "I'm not like that. I am better than that," boys will think we're don't take ourselves seriously.

For the love of...

Come on! I have way to much self respect to stand around and pliantly accept what I find deplorable and harmful just because it comes from a woman. Frankly, it infantilizes all of us. The implication is that a woman can't *really* be bad, can't *really* be dangerous. No, she is too powerless for that. What a silly idea! Those of who critique women are the ones who are taking women and ourselves seriously. We're saying that what women do MATTERS. Assuming that any criticism of a woman is tantamount to a "witch hunt" implies the following: a) any woman who states what she doesn't like is the trouble making hysteric, and b) no woman is capable of committing a genuine crime. (That a and b contradict each other, we shall leave aside.)

And let's also get this straight. I have far more in common with the men I work with than I do with Paris Hilton. She's not part of my posse. We didn't go to school together. We don't come from the same place, nor do we have the same aspirations. The notion that I owe her some kind of allegance because she and I share the same gender as half of all humans is absurd on it's face.

Whether we like it or not (and I, for one, am not crazy about it), women in this society are still most powerful as arbiters of lifestyle. Think I'm kidding? Who are the two self-made gazillionaires in this country? Oprah and Martha. We pay attention to women because of what they tell us about social expectations. Women truly do control the social realm, just as men have traditionally controlled the public realm or market. We're as capable of fucking up our traditional jobs as men are of fucking up theirs.

Also, bottom line here: Paris Hilton does appear to be truly antisocial. Malignant narcissism, I believe they call it. I believe Traister's larger point was that women who do harm should not be tolerated. And, any of us who went to school know damn well that when under the influence of the wrong crowd, the more gullible or emotionally needy kids can do things they wouldn't otherwise.

But the bottom line is this: I do wish that people wouldn't be so vitriolic in their hatred of others, but to say that Traister, Fey, I, or anyone else shouldn't register our concern and disgust with particular women is offensive (and hypocritical) in the extreme. I can shout my opinions about Bush to the rafters. I can also shout my opinions about Hilton.