spacetropic

saturnine, center-right, sometimes neighborly

June 8, 2007

We'll Always Have Paris

My wife surprised me. She thinks people should leave Miss Hilton alone.

She's creature given to charity and compassion, my wife, which is part of the reason I married her. And despite my salty disposition I am not so misanthropic that I relish the misfortune of others - my default setting is simply, increasingly, a matter of stoicism. With three daughters and a jumpy golden retriever in the house, somebody needs to be habitually nonplussed. I volunteer.

But Paris Hilton - all over the news, this girl famous for nothing - it's hard not to pleased to see her in jail, one way or another.

Is it surprising that she, we're told, had a nervous breakdown a few days into the ordeal? This may be the first seriously unpleasant outcome she has ever faced, as a result of her own actions, in her entire life. A life without structure, all flouncing around, impossibly wealthy - and so complete system shock when an encounter with the law and subsequent disregard becomes accommodations booked at a correctional facility. Cluelessness has consequences? What a surprise. It must have seemed to her, like these things could always be taken care of, like somebody on her staff could write a check, or talk to some people. Or something.

House arrest seems fair enough. Her parents, though? They should be buried under the jail indefinitely. Anyone who has ever had children (and quite a few who haven't) can recognize a mile away the deadly mix of soft indifference and lavish overindulgence that makes Paris Hilton possible in the first place. Whatever distant role they may have played during her upbringing it certainly wasn't parenting.

Sooner or later one of these young Hollywood types - Hilton, Spears, or Lohan - is going to kill themselves, or worse, somebody else. There will be a red "Breaking News" headline on CNN, and everyone will ask "Did you hear ...?" and phenomenal stupidity and excess will have finally turned deadly. About five days of media soul-searching will ensue, and it remains to be seen if anyone will have learned anything - lessons in responsibility and character that could be learned now, if anyone were paying attention - or if we will merely, reflexively become more cynical yet.

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