Friday, May 04, 2007

Female Trouble

That's the title of a classic John Waters movie, but I'm referring to a particular young woman who likes making the news, only maybe not this way, poor little rich girl Paris Hilton:
A shocked Paris Hilton was ordered on Friday to spend 45 days in jail after a Los Angeles judge ruled the hotel heiress and socialite violated her probation for alcohol-related reckless driving.

Superior Court judge Michael Sauer said he believed the 26-year-old reality TV star knowingly disobeyed the law by driving while her license was suspended and ordered her to report to jail on June 5.

Boo-to-the-hoo-hoo-hoo.

A friend of mine lost a leg to a drunk driver. Another had their license suspended for a year for drunk driving and claims to have learned his lesson. The singer Eve crashed her car last week under the influence of alcohol and got a DUI. Brandy killed a man with her car and is about to pay for it. Driving drunk has consequences, and if you don't accept them, you deserve the punishment. God keep it from happening to me or any of my readers, but if it does, I'll bet the law will make us pay.

What makes Paris Hilton any less of a menace, especially when she violates parole? Does she think it's because she was driving a $195,000 Bentley?

And just in case you think she's some aberration of classlessness in her family:
After sentence was imposed, Hilton's mother Kathy yelled at a prosecutor "you're pathetic.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of his young, wealthy characters in The Great Gatsby:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

Not incidentally, an auto accident figures into the story in a rather meaningful (emphasizing meaninglessness?) way.

Yes, the rich are different, at least the Hiltons. They don't think the rules apply to them. Maybe if Paris had actually killed an innocent civilian in her accident they'd have felt the pain. You know, a wrongful death award or settlement.

Maybe 10 or 100 Bentleys worth.

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