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Poor poor Paris. Okay. Admittedly, she's as likable as fingernails on a blackboard. Fingernails that have never been chipped in the normal pursuit of an actual day's work AND brandishing an exclusive not-for-sale Chanel sparkle enamel sheathing a recent and impeccable French manicure. But holy moley. People have jumped on the Kick Paris When She's Down train like there were free stacks of 100 dollar bills secreted in the seatback pockets.
Oh sure, I get the whole schadenfreude as a spectator sport. Our fascination with the train wreck of supercilious celebrity. Build them up to tear them down. It was cumulative. Year after year of exposure to her pirouetting down the runways of the world collecting obscene amounts of cash for supplying a face to smug. Perfecting the art of being famous for being famous.
My theory is part of this gleeful piling on can be traced to our built up frustration with Dubyah. We've got blue balls for accountability and are kicking this poor poodle of a person as a Presidential proxy.
Last September she blew the illegal minimum of .08 after being caught driving erratically on what she described as a midnight burger run. Yeah. Right. Burger run. Redeeming her maxed out frequent burger card at the Fatburger on La Cienega I'm sure.
She was fined fifteen hundred bucks, given 36 months probation and had her license suspended. Then in January, she was caught driving on that suspended license ... twice. The second time clocked doing 70 in a 35. Should have been enough right there.
The 26-year-old wannabee pop star or spoiled heiress or fledgling actress or whatever the hell she is, pleaded ignorance about the whole driving with a suspended license being illegal, apparently unfamiliar with the definition of suspension or like Leona Helmsley, convinced the law only applies to we little people.
Either she wasn't a good enough actress to sell the stupidity defense or ran into a judge who just didn't like her attitude. Probably not the first time, but quite possibly the first time anybody was in a position to do something about it.
Forty-five days in prison. Reduced to 23 days which she surrendered to serve but then the sheriff released her after 3 days due to an undisclosed medical condition. Which remains undisclosed.
General consensus is she suffers from an allergy to icky coupled with a severe aversion to yuck. Whereupon all kinds of Hollywood hell broke out. The judge flipped out. Sent her back to jail. And much doubling over with undisguised merriment ensued. News anchors couldn't hide their delight: "Ha ha, rich girl. Welcome to the real world." Which they are familiar with how? Oh that's right; by regularly reading stories based in it.
We're guilty as well, of pasting George Bush's face onto her emaciated frame. He is the Paris Hilton of Presidents. The two of them share the smirk and the obliviousness and the trust funders' undying belief in their eternal impunity from culpability.
If you were asked who better fit the definition -- "clueless upper class twit marinated in an overwhelming sense of entitlement and never held accountable for a single thing they ever did," would you pick Paris or George or both? Payback is a bitch. Especially proxy payback. Pardon Scooter Libby? Hell with that, Bush should pardon Paris. After all, she's paying for his sins.
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Will Durst is a political comic, syndicated columnist, AM radio talk show host and defense liability.
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