Monday I ran into my neighbor Tony in the garden. It was an unexpected pleasure, since we rarely see each other during the week. I'm usually there long before he leaves work, and long gone by the time he arrives.

He was being extremely well-behaved...


...said he wasn't feeling himself, which is why he'd taken off from work early. So that somewhat explains his docile demeanor.

We toured each other's gardens to see what was new. He's got this amazing rose and clematis thing growing on his fence that's in bloom right now:


Then we had a cigarette in his garden, and got on the topic of—of all things—Paris Hilton.

I hadn't thought much about the spectacle of her getting thrown back in jail after being sprung by the Sheriff, but what I'd read about it I'd found pretty comical.

Tony, shockingly, had a serious, well-formed opinion about the whole affair.  And, more shocking still, it was that he actually felt sorry for her.  (To be perfectly clear, it's not so shocking that someone could feel sorry for Paris Hilton, but that Tony could is almost inconceivable.)

"Have you seen anyone about this?" I asked him.  I was fascinated, for sure, but concerned for his mental state.

"Tell me more," I said, taking out my moleskine and jotting down notes.

"Well, first of all," he said, "none of this was really about her."

My understanding was that everything was about her, so this was further cause for worry for me.

According to Tony, Paris has become a pawn in a political game—a "pissing contest" between the Sheriff and the Judge. And had I read her PR guy's statement? About how there were more important things to worry about than Paris Hilton's driving record? Like the war in Iraq?

Tony thinks maybe the seed of humanitarianism's been planted in Paris's desert soul, and given forty-five days—longer than Christ spent in the wilderness, he reminded me—watered by her tears, it may blossom into—who knows?—a solution for Darfur, or something.

I was not entirely convinced.

He went on to compare her, first, to Dorothy Parker, and suggested that the experience of jail might politicize her (or at least her PR guy) as the Sacco and Vanzetti trial did Parker.

Or like, more recently, Martha Stuart's jail time totally turned the domestic diva into a warrior for the poor and—oh, um, wait a minute...

Then he thought of what might be a slightly better fit: Lola Montez, the Irish-born exotic dancer who brought down King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and who, after her exotic dancing and courtesan days were over dedicated herself to Christian causes.

Hmm. Still not seeing it.

Tony's point, I gathered, was that Paris's struggles of late could conceivably result in some kind of personal evolution. But I don't know.

I kept picturing her in jail, writing her "De Profundis."

"...Suffering is, like, so not hot. And it's so not fair. Mo-o-o-o-om!"

I'm really trying, but it's just not working for me.

This afternoon I was reading Christopher Hitchens' Paris piece in Slate. Hitchens is obviously half-cracked, and while he always comes off as priggish, his high-flown rhetoric rarely disappoints. He's good for a belly laugh or two, anyway.

He, surprisingly as well, showers pity on Paris, comparing her to Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter and calling her a victim of a "lynching" (with the "palpably unfunny" Sarah Silverman as master of ceremonies).

Not content with seeing her undressed and variously penetrated, it seems to be assumed that we need to watch her being punished and humiliated as well.... Hilton is legally an adult but the treatment she is receiving stinks—indeed it reeks—of whatever horrible, buried, vicarious impulse
underlies kiddie porn and child abuse.

The only problem with all of this is that it is the adult Paris herself, who has chosen to undress and be variously penetrated. She has knowingly subjected herself to ridicule before—her career, such as it is, is based on the free exchange of ridicule—and the latest heap of it is for thinking she could play the press, which is now playing her. Celebrities and the media are symbiotic parasites. Parasites feeding on parasites. It ain't pretty. But hey, that's entertainment.

To lament that "to be a public figure is to risk double jeopardy in the courts," as Hitchens does doesn't really resonate with me, when it's far worse, and a far greater crisis to be poor and black, for example. It's like our penchant for feeling sorry for the super rich for the awful burden of their boredom. I empathize, I just don't sympathize.

So Paris will do her time. She'll be well looked after in jail. She may not be kept in the manner to which she's accustomed, but she won't suffer much, except maybe from an even more profound boredom than she already suffers from, and of course, there's the suffering of a child in "time-out" forced to sit in the corner and watch her playmates carry on without her.

But then, before you know it, she'll return, probably a little more svelte but triumphant to the social scene which she feeds off and which feeds off her. All the ridicule will be spun into PR gold. There'll be a made-for-TV movie.

Imagine that. A Hollywood ending.