I think she's hot

started WAY before Paris came along.

So why all the sympathy for Britney? I'd say she and Paris belong together.

Pity about Britney's kids, but they never had a chance.

By focusing on Paris Hilton's gender, Ms. Traister misses the point. Paris is Paris because she is rich. She is a prominent member of a growing aristocracy, the new Marie Antoinette, a symbol of everything that is wrong with our society. Simply ignoring her won't do.

If you don't want more Paris Hiltons (and more George W. Bushes), then don't vote Republican, and don't buy into the Republican propaganda on taxes, particularly the estate tax. Because it is not the "Death Tax", it is the "Paris Hilton" tax and we need it!

It's not always in the writings of Chomsky or on the pages of The Guardian that you will find our society's darkest libido. Sometimes you have to look deep into our shallowest behaviors.

Our interest in Paris represents our worst compulsion, which is NOT to know about more relevant news stories. When we read about her we dream about money, fashion, wretched excess, the blindingly superficial. We know that all of this is the flipside to the awful world that Americans have created. Our love of cheap labor, cheap clothes, cheap oil -- We don't want to look at what we have wrought just by being blind consumers. We just want to keep on consuming and keep reading the tabloids. Paris Hilton is not that different from us. She's just our gold-plated Barbie, the symbol and scapegoat for our own excesses. If she didn't trigger something, some guilt or perverse desire in us it wouldn't be an issue. No, she is the perfect icon for the Bush era and we can't bring ourselves to acknowledge that that is how bad it's gotten.

Here are the choices:

Prescription OD

Extreme OD/Hotshot

Car Crash

Murder at the hands of drug addled partner

Accidental/Suicide (who knew the 3rd rail was dangerous)

AIDS/Hep/Other unpronounceable illness

Drowning

Death through misadventure during group sex

Say what you will about Paris Hilton, it is inappropriate even in jest to put a picture of a person with a shooting target superimposed. What would salon readers think if that were Hillary or Barrack or Jesse Jackson?

Disgusting.

I'm all for expanding my vocabulary, so would someone please explain what this word is supposed to mean? Horny? Diseased?

I don't have to wish anything on her, as she'll end up with it on her own. She won't be 25 forever, but from what I've seen (little interested in PH as I was, she became hard for anyone reading newspapers to ignore, I'm afraid) she is not likely to learn how to be older.

She's already too old for herself. Being 35, 35, 65... and still trying to be 25 is a bad fate. If she deserves this fate, she'll get it.

For everyone out there attacking Rebecca because they are too intellectually, morally and culturally superior to give a "flying fuck" about Paris Hilton:

You simply don't get it. Sara Evans once wrote a lovely little tome about how the personal is political. Every choice you make should be reflective of who and what you are. When you ignore the havoc brainless twits like Hilton and her ilk are raining on our culture and the impact her bizarre celebrity is having then you are ignoring something that is dangerous culturally and yes, politically. The author of this article is correct in noting - and unfortunately understating - that Hilton's continued fame points to a desire in our culture to celebrate, demean and stupid, unaccomplished, sexualized girls rather than herald the women who are actually making a difference.

The reason creatures like Hilton flourish is that people who should know better - like a good portion of these letter-writers - simply turn their backs to the underlying issues behind the fame of something like Paris Hilton rather than writing letters to magazines that feature her and manaufacturers that promote her products (which actually is effective; hundreds of readers,including Mother Partridge Shirley Jones, complained to Vanity Fair after the magazine featured her on the cover; the magazine has a nary a mention of Hilton in over a year and even made a point of noted a "no Hiltons allowed" policy at the annual VF Oscar party).

Closing our eyes doesn't make the monster go away.

firecrotch is simply a natural redhead

It has exposed the masses, whom read Salon, to the numerous letter writers whom profess to have no clue as to whom she is and haven't energized a brain-cell to ever think of her

...all while hypnotized by Paris to write a letter stating such... such...hajhahahahahahahahahahah

hahahahahahaah

hahahahha

o' my golly

Many of us ignore Paris Hilton not because we see her as evidence of how stupid our culture is, but because we don't want to extrapolate theories about our WHOLE CULTURE from the existence of one person!

I have no problem with Ms. Hilton and her behavior. She's out there, doing her thing, but I simply don't think that she, one person, has that big of an influence on our culture. So she's out there partying and people hate her. Maybe people hate her because she's naturally pretty (thoug RT is quite pretty herself), or maybe people hate her because, unlike the overwhelming majority of the rest of us, she ostensibly didn't have to work one day of her life to get the alleged power and money she has (though i think that she actually does work at least somewhat). The reasons are probably varied.

What i do have a problem with is lazy cultural analysis like this article. It's a formulaic essay, and most of all, it's cheap. You don't need to interview anyone, you don't even need to read any books or cite any sources -- it's just spouting analysis from the hip. It's okay in a letters section like this, but to be published on a website like Salon.com...

Bingo!