To me, what's so fascinating about the saga surrounding Paris Hilton's return to jail is that they thought they could get away with it. Sure, they knew there would be an outcry, protest and recrimination. Obviously they thought it was possible to hunker down in their luxurious spreads and weather the storm. Obvious too is that they clearly miscalculated.
News reports indicate a huge public outcry: the LA Times received hundreds of pages of protest e-mails and countless phone calls were made to public officials. Even the unionized officers of the sheriff's department (it was the LA county Sheriff who released her to house arrest) complained bitterly about their bosses decision.
What has happened?
The broad public is fed up with the preferential treatment given to the rich in Bush's America. The first sign of this was last Novemeber's election.
It was a huge groundswell of anger that returned Ms. Hilton to her jail cell.
Still, the crass arrogance of corporate ruling class elites is astounding. "It's not fair, Mom," Paris Hilton reported cried, while being led away by a deputy. Not fair? Well, from her point of view it's true. When one is accustomed to having and getting away with everything, anything limiting freedom of movement and capital is not fair.
Fairness it appears is a class affair. And the rules accorded to the rest of us simply don't apply. It was this attitude that led another super rich hotel magnate Lenora Helmsley to utter, "Taxes are for little people."
Hilton, who had just days before in a Marie Antoinette-like gesture, distributed cupcakes to the papazzi covering her prison mansion , is reported to be suffering from severe emotional distress and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a condition that her lawyer and psychiatrist argued required her immediate release. And in a certain sense, one can see why. An injustice was done, her world was turned upside down and she was treated to standards with which she was very unfamiliar.
What's the world coming to? Scooter Libby going to do time; Paul Wolfowitz lost his job; Attorney General Gonzles will face a vote of no confidence in the Senate on Monday and Paris is going back to jail.
Poor Paris!
joe sims
2 comments:
Well said.
While I agree totally with Joe's overall sentiments and his presentation of them, Paris Hilton, by being tossed in with Libby, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales, might be prompted to sue for defamation of character, if she had a character instead of being a character.
After all, she is a mere member of the "idle rich" endangering the lives of individual citizens with her antics. Libby, Wolfie, and Gonzo have theatened the civil rights and liberties, not to mention the very lives of people in the U.S. and through the world.
Norman Markowitz
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