I used to enjoy celebrity culture when it starred the likes of Angie'n'Brad, Jen, Reese ... talented, attractive people making choices that I either deplored or admired or sympathised with. My friends and I would hash their lives over as though they were starring in a long running soap that we were addicted to, and it didn't hurt that we also loved their work.

All that's over now. Those celebrities are getting to lead their lives in a whole lot more peace than they would have if it weren't for these incredibly boring, tragic nobodies hogging all the magazine covers. SOMEONE must be buying them but it certainly isn't me. They're depressing and irrelevant. I assume there are little mini-Parises all over the place and I agree with the poster who said she obviously hasn't been adquately parented.

I don't think she is destructible though because she's the ultimate gossip/fashion machine. Unlike other celebrities (see above) she's willing to go out, have sex with someone in some kind of scandalous way, and be photographed in a new outfit everyday.

Don't blame Paris. She only has power because the public is apparently so fascinated with her that it buys up all the trashy gossip. If no one ever watched "The Simple Life," this article would never have been written. If no one bought all the "Us Weekly" and "People" magazines featuring Paris's latest escapades, no one would even know who she is.

Hitler would never have risen to power without the public that allowed him to dupe them. Paris, while hardly the next Fuhrer, is essentially the same. If only we could get over our morbid fascination with people whose lives are apparently more interesting than our own, Paris Hilton would never have risen to her present iconic status.

Anorexia is not empowering. Puking on stage is not empowering. Pissing yourself drunk is not empowering. Neglecting your children is not empowering. Abusing the homeless is not empowering. All of these things have been done by Paris Hilton or at her prompting.

Did you ever watch "The Simple Life"? I did, one episode, just to see what the heck people were talking about. In that episode Paris used her host family's work credit card to go on a shopping spree for "presents" for her host family, getting her host family in trouble, potentially fired, potentially with their entire lives ruined forever. She's not just a rich girl with no troubles out to have fun; she's not just a maladjusted girl who needs a therapist; she is evil. Well. Maybe I shouldn't say that; evil is a human quality. Paris is inimical, not evil, like a tiger eating villagers. She seems to have no moral sense whatsoever. And she does real harm, as far as her reach extends.

One thing I've never seen, in all the tabloids, is an article about Paris's parents. She seems to have been raised by wolves - what went on there? I know daddy is The Hilton Fortune, but what sort of person is he and how did the spawn of his loins turn out like this? Now, that would be an article I'd like to see.

That is all.

Oh, and I enjoyed this piece ... while I'm as ashamededly addicted to Paris-hating as the next person, I hadn't put the pieces together enough to realize how creepily, insidiously Rasputin-like she actually is

you didn't have to watch "helplessly," to buy the magazines and watch the television that pretends people with plastic surgery are more important than people who teach school children.

i never bought it, so this declaration that paris hilton must be stopped seems just pretty sad, especially coming from someone as bright as rebecca traister. consumer culture has really got its hooks in deep.

Are you kidding? How can you possibly take her this seriously? And to blame her for the weaknesses of others is absurd. Every generation has it's man eating, marriage breaking, headline grabbing, 'sluts'. In the my space, internet age, Paris is just more widely seen.

She too shall pass. Relax.

Maybe the type of person who wants to hang around this piece of meaningless crap are pre-disposed to act like aholes to begin with.

It's not like they show up at her house like Dakota Fanning and leave like Courtney Love. They show up there like the clueless entitled faux celebs or hangers on or "ready to party after KFed" imbeciles they are.

She doesn't corrupt them. She attracts corrupted people.

Britney doesn't need Paris to help her fuck up. She's demonstrated a keen ability to do that on her own.

...why, exactly?

Yes, we know who they are.

They are children. Little girls, mostly. Around 8 to 14.

We don't care. We put TVs in their bedrooms, and computers.

Just as was probably done to Paris, who seems to not have parents.

Want hope for girls? Stop using the term whore.

Unless you have an equivalent for young men who have sex every chance they get.

Slut and whore have no place...except to perpetuate the bleakness.

Salon is picking vapid topics and dressing them up with clever writers, hence the frustration of readers.

I too would be very grateful to read about the Nobel Laureate.

Would be Hiltons and Starvos Nacho-whatevers are just expressing unrequited media crush and cooch envy.

Paris deserves credit for being refreshingly willing to publicly enjoy her wealth and access to drugs and sex in an America starving for a break from the puritanical mores of, I don't know, the Democrats. I find it a joy to finally see images of young women in the U.S. showing some skin and pink after so many years of...so many years of...anyway, this place rocks. It's hot!

I agree with RT's conclusion that its time to kiss the creepy dollie goodbye. It would have been great if the Executive Editor of Salon had interrupted the article to say "From this point forward there will be no coverage of anything Paris Hilton - not her picture, not her name, not her family, not her friends." It'd be great if ALL the pubs and networks blackballed her, but they won't. Viewership means ad sales and in order to amp the latter the former is whored out to whatever is easiest - and what could be easier than Paris Hilton?

I disagree with RT's theme that Paris has 'brought down' any one. Britney Spears went from a skank-in-the-making to an all-out skank. She was a poser from the get go - parading her faux virginity around and doing the whole smutty schoolgirl routine. It's doubtful her career would have kept rising like her moore talented contempories Aguilera and Timberlake - she's just too talentless and dumb. She isn't a 'victim' of K Federline, either - she was his perfect match. It's not like, post-kevin, she is proving ditching her husband after 2 short years of marriage is signaling a new maturity - she traded in her Queen of the Cheetos-munching Barefoot Bathroom Romp Queen title for the new young Moms who Party Crotchless crown. Way to go. Britney is trash, just like Paris - the only difference is the source of their money.

Rod Stewart's daughter is a bitchy entitled princess who slams other celebrities in public - which is funny considering the people she slams are actually working actors who have, in that regard, 'earned' their fame while she's famous for...being famous for having famous parents. She whines "I thought I could get drunk all I wanted because I'm half Scottish" as her liver rots out of her body.

Nicole Ritchie was a chubby loser famous-for-being-famous drug addict who became super skinny and found out she liked the attention.

Linday Lohan is a trainwreck. She can't even be properly called an actress - she's not even out of her Disney diapers. She's a former child actress who looks like she's going to go the Danny Bondaduce route (another firecrotch) rather than the Jodi Foster route. She has lots of money and opportunity and she's choosing to drink and snort and Blackberry it all away.

As for PH "stealing" anyone's boyfriend. Ew. I would think any woman would consider herself well rid of a guy who wants to be with the likes of PH. I used to think she was reasonably attractive in that predictable, highly shellacked bored rich girl way. But now she's the epitome of what my ex hilariously dubbed 'chancre babe' - you know, the kind of girl that you make out with (or have sex with) and the next day you have a red crusty chancre at the corner of your lower lip (or on your wee wee).

For the record I don't think people are addicted to Paris Hilton at all. I think the *media* are addicted to her - she's photogenic, she's always doing something that is 'newsworthy' for the gossip rags (newsworthy meaning it involves expensive clothing, late night partying, hair extensions and another famous face), she's rich and some think, pretty.....they figure if they put her in a magazine, it will, if not sell more copies, at least not sell *less* than the other guys. Her very ubiquity has made it as difficult to parse if she's selling the rags as they are selling her as trying to figure out where the snake eating its own tail begins or ends.

The thing is, eople who buy these magazines don't tend to think that hard about what they're buying - Paris is just a twinkie on a shelf of junkfood they sweep mindlessly into their cart as they walk by. It's not like they are doing any serious reconnoitering for 'good' gossip rags, and will choose not to buy one if there aren't any Paris articles. If Paris chokes to death on her own puke tonight she will, briefly, sell more copies of People and US Weekly and other rags...and then she'll disappear from the pages of our magazines and our consciousness and the rags will find some new vapid photogenic face for people to project their schaudenfreude onto, and life and journalistic commerce will continue.