Paris Hilton Rant from Salon.com
A Pox
For years we've been paralyzed in the tractor beam of her brainless
celebrity. Now it's time to kiss the creepy dollie goodbye.
By Rebecca Traister
Dec. 11, 2006 | You know that point in a Stephen King novel when you've
sort of figured out that the creepy dollie -- the one with the plastic
hair and serenely stupid eyes that roll in two different directions --
is actually an animate object wreaking havoc and destroying people and
you wonder why the townspeople haven't cottoned on and crushed the damn
thing under a truck or something?
I think it's safe to say we've reached that point with Paris Hilton. We
need to acknowledge that Hilton is not simply a tabloid diversion but a
malevolent blight on the pop culture landscape.
For too many years we have sat, paralyzed in the tractor beam of her
wall-eyed celebrity, watching mutely as bad things happened to her band
of D-list compatriots. We have witnessed the declining personal fortunes
and liver health of her rotating cast of skuzzball BFFs, boyfriends and
frenemies -- Bijou Phillips, Nicole Richie, Kimberly Stewart, Lindsay
Lohan, Brandon Davis, Stavros Niarchos, Tara Reid -- because, really,
who the hell were those people, anyway?
But then, a couple of weeks ago, Hilton started messing with Britney
Spears, weighing down Spears' Phoenix-flight from her crapola marriage
to grody Kevin Federline by dressing her up in tutus, taking her
partying till all hours, and encouraging her to flash her whiskerless
nether regions to paparazzi. Now, we all know that Spears is perfectly
capable of attracting the interest of Child Protective Services all on
her own. But this most recent visit from the state, as reported by Page
Six last Wednesday, cuts deeper than any baby-dropping seat-belt
infractions ever did. That's because we suspect that it has not been
prompted simply by Spears' legendarily poor judgment or naiveté. No.
Those unfortunate qualities just made her an easier mark for the
pernicious influence of the world's most famous succubutante, and the
rope line of gaunt, twitching bodies in Hilton's wake tips us off that
it's unlikely to end well for her latest victim.
It's time to admit that Paris Hilton, that creepy dollie, must be
destroyed. Metaphorically, of course.
Frankly, the time could not be more ripe for a recognition of Hilton's
"Bad Seed" villainy. Even before her tabloid molestation of Spears, eyes
were beginning to spring wide with comprehension. Three weeks ago,
former "Saturday Night Live" head writer Tina Fey told Howard Stern
about her antipathy for Hilton, calling the heiress a selfish,
untalented, brainless "piece of shit" "SNL" guest host who is
"unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is," and left "nasty
wads of Barbie hair" on the floor of the studio. Meanwhile, conservative
Manhattan Institute writer Kay S. Hymowitz wrote a piece in City Journal
about the pervasive loathing of Hilton, summing up quite neatly Hilton's
role as a "synonym for American materialism, bad manners, greed ...
parochialism, arrogance, promiscuity, antifeminism, exposed roots and
navels, entitlement, cell-phone addiction, anorexia and bulimia,
predilection for gas-guzzling private transportation, pornified
womanhood, exhibitionism, [and] narcissism." Hymowitz argued that while
she "may be a composite of contemporary American sins," the act of
hating Hilton is "a sign of lingering cultural sanity."
When Paris tore into Britney -- who, whatever inane decisions she has
made, or been pushed into, during her decade in our pop culture
consciousness, has retained an aura of pink-cheeked, creamy-bellied
vulnerability -- she crossed a line. Spears fans, more frantic about the
deleterious effects of Hilton than of the ghoulish Kevin Federline,
swamped Spears' MySpace page with pleas, including one begging the
singer to "please get away from the Parasite." On "The View," Rosie
O'Donnell called Hilton an "idiot" and offered to adopt Spears, saying,
"We don't want Britney hanging out with Paris." Hilton's face even
appeared on the front of the New York Times "Week in Review" section,
next to William Hamilton's headline "The Bar for Bad Behavior Keeps
Getting Lower, Until It Doesn't." Hamilton's piece, about Michael
Richards' racist tirade, O.J.'s canceled confession, and Spears' snatch
shots, didn't even mention Hilton by name. But her image on the front
was a tip of the hat to Hilton's role as devil on the shoulder, a
bloodless specter of bad influence, a nipped and plucked incarnation of
the kind of dark figures supposedly encountered by young girls in the
Salem woods in 1692.
Hilton first came to national attention eight years ago, the teenage
heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune. She was a wealthy party girl who
liked to pose for photos and dance on banquettes at the tail end of '90s
New York's boom days. And why not? The sun had risen and set on many a
wifty socialite with no discernible skills, talents or opinions. What
grated particularly, perhaps, even in those early days, was Hilton's
open vapidity -- the unapologetic blankness of her stare, her affected
Valley Girl upspeak, the fact that she didn't even bother to try to
disguise her own lack of intellectual or moral ambition. But still --
another decade, another spoiled child pictured in the papers and in the
pages of Vogue.
But Hilton's fame mysteriously increased as her coming-of-age coincided
with a booming Internet gossip culture and an explosion of weekly
magazines in need of trashy characters to keep their serialized
narratives chugging along. Hilton saw an opening and took it, gaining
enough steam for simply being rich and divertingly dumb that she landed
a feature profile in Vanity Fair and a snail trail of photographs
tracing her moves from nightclub to movie premiere. She became the star
of a night-vision sex tape in which she left an impression not by
showcasing one smidgen of eroticism, but by answering her cellphone mid-
act.
She starred in a reality show, "The Simple Life," with her friend Nicole
Richie, in which she got to showcase her rich-girl indifference and
rock-bottom stupidity about class. She created a mini news cycle by
losing her Chihuahua, only to later discover she had forgotten she left
it at her grandparents' house. She has trademarked her catchphrase,
"That's hot," and been unashamed to admit that despite all the
educational advantages her family's vast fortune could provide her, she
is not aware that London is in the United Kingdom. This has been
Hilton's whole shtick: I'm dumb and badly behaved, but it doesn't matter
because I'm rich.
And that's really it. That's what she's famous for. The press, often at
a loss for words as to how to explain what, exactly, Hilton is or does,
describe her as an "It" girl. But given that even her fashion sense is
abysmal by every possible standard, it's impossible to argue that Hilton
has "It" unless "It" means a hairless hooch and the willingness to
expose it.
In some ways, Hilton's presence on the celebrity scene is troubling
because of the suspicion that she is a straw woman for all those who
like to think of young women as dumb floozies. We keep her there, as a
mortifying symbol of American womanhood -- yes, she is famous overseas
-- in part because she is a satisfying punching bag for anyone with
women issues. This year Keith Olbermann felt free to call Hilton a slut
on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her
face. One of her former conquests, Elijah Blue Allman, has said that he
used Tilex to clean his genitalia after their unprotected encounter. As
Hymowitz observed in her piece, "slurs like 'tramp,' 'tart,' 'slut,'
'skank,' and 'skanktron' have suddenly become acceptable again, as long
as Paris is their target." Indeed. Unable to choose between politically
incorrect punch lines, the New York Post recently ran a photo of Hilton,
Spears, and Lindsay Lohan under the cover headline "Bimbo Summit" and
the inside headline "3 Bimbos of the Apocalypse"; the piece concluded
with the sentence, "Skanks for the memories!" And it was funny! Which is
part of what is so dangerous about our attentions to Hilton. It's easy
to suspect that it is because she offers gratifyingly inappropriate
opportunities to lash out against femininity and sexuality (outbursts to
which few object, because there is literally no one who wants to defend
her) that she has remained famous at all.
But aside from the creepiness of what she says about a not-so-latent
American desire to have a stupid and sexualized woman around to degrade
and humiliate, what makes Hilton horror-movie scary is the evil that she
spreads. It's the poisonous effect she has on people and how long it's
taken anyone to really catch on. Look at the trail of consumptive,
addled, brokenhearted, humiliated bodies she's left behind her: Hilton's
most famous friend Nicole Richie has suffered from an "inability to gain
weight" so severe that the 25-year-old woman has recently appeared on
the verge of death. Kimberly Stewart, Rod Stewart's daughter and an
early Hilton home-girl, was recently revealed to be suffering from some
sort of liver disease precipitated by partying too hard. Paris' younger
sibling Nicky was inspired to get into a quickie -- and quickly annulled
-- marriage while partying with her sister in Vegas. Oil-heir Brandon
Davis, egged on by Hilton, was moved to go on a Looney-Tunes tirade
about actress Lindsay Lohan, in which he was videotaped calling her
"firecrotch"; his grandmother soon packed him off to rehab. While he was
dating Hilton, shipping heir Stavros Niarchos insulted a homeless man by
offering him money to pour a drink over his head while Hilton and their
other friends laughed. And Lohan, an arguably talented young actress who
keeps on-and-off company with Hilton, appears closer to serious, party-
ravaged collapse every day.
As for Spears, it took less than two weeks of exposure to Hilton before
her vagina -- and C-section scar -- was hanging out all over the
Internet, before she became the thinly disguised object of a gossip
column blind item about drug use, and before she was back on Page Six
for having Child Services breathing down her neck.
It is surely fair to say that Hilton is not sticking her own finger down
anyone's throat, or blowing drugs up their nasal passages, or pouring
drinks down their gullets. She's certainly not the word-wizard behind
the offensive and troubling -- but oddly poetic -- "firecrotch" epithet.
But her proximity to the scene of every misfortune is enough to send
frissons of exquisite terror down a spine.
The other almost-supernatural aspect of Hilton's reign of harebrained
horror is the way that she herself remains intact while those around her
wither. Hilton is like some kind of Dorian Gray cockroach. While her
buddies waste away and collapse and see their careers flushed down the
celebrity toilet after having been in her presence, she grows stronger:
appearing on more magazine covers, getting bigger record contracts,
attracting more attention, sleeping with more of her fading friends'
boyfriends. Even her Plasticine exterior seems unravaged by her
excessive behaviors.
She is, frustratingly, indestructible. Hilton has been caught on tape
referring to two black friends as "dumb niggers." She has been arrested
for drunk driving. She has peed herself in a taxicab in Hawaii. She has
vomited onstage while singing her own songs. She has laughed like a
retarded hyena as boyfriends like Davis and Niarchos have embarrassed
themselves and ruined their own reputations. And yet, she has never had
to go on Letterman to apologize; she has never had to meet with leaders
of a community to make amends; she never even had to clean the taxi that
she befouled. As a completely non-achieving celebrity, there are no
higher moral, spiritual or intellectual expectations burdening the
heiress. So she's a moronic, racist, boyfriend-stealing, talentless
twit? Surprise. We never thought her anything better.
There is no question that we are culpable, as readers and writers and
photographers and Web surfers and consumers -- addicted to the empty
calories and steady buzz of hating on Hilton. And though, like
cigarettes or smack, most of us wish in our heart of hearts that we knew
how to quit her, there's no realistic way to make that happen. Some have
tried. Lloyd Grove even banned the heiress from his gossip column, but
it didn't make her go away, not one little bit. So instead of
unrealistic exhortations that we put down the crack pipe, perhaps it is
more practical to push for simple recognition of what she is: Bad News.
Paris Hilton is more than a punch-line-rich pest. She is poisonous and
culty and insidiously evil, and her tyranny must end. Last week, as she
spread like a rash to Spears, the scariest image was not Spears' nude
lady-parts or the weird fishnet-trading Toulouse Lautrec get-up that
Hilton arranged for the pair. It was a picture of the young women
walking hand-in-hand, Hilton in a T-shirt that read "I'm Paris Hilton, I
can do whatever I want." Next to her, Spears wore a shirt reading, "I'm
Paris Hilton, I can do whatever I want."
She must be stopped. Before she kills.
Kris Baker
"A Pox" <p...@pox.pox.pox> wrote in message
news:Xns989674...@208.49.80.253...
>
> Dorian Gray cockroach.
Perfect description.
Agent Smith
@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net:
I liked "succubutante" myself, but it's quite refreshing to see such
literate writing in what is normally a subcuture (succubuculture) of
journalistic hacks. If only she had found a way to cut it down to a
thousand words.
Messalina
She peed herself in a taxi in Hawaii? Gross.
Mez
Zaven
souls or something and wreck havoc on those around them like some kind
of mind stealing vampire.
A relative had a theory that magician David Copperfield had sold his
soul for one trick, that's making anything disappear.
I found myself applying that same concept to magician Criss Angel who
can levitate anything.
Can this be applied to Paris Hilton that she can be the "celebretard"
focus of so many people and somehow the price is the destruction of
those around her?
Kris Baker
"Zaven" <Za...@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:QOOdnSoImJw0O-DY...@adelphia.com...
>
> I don't think she can be stopped. There are people who have sold their
> souls or something and wreck havoc on those around them like some kind of
> mind stealing vampire.
> A relative had a theory that magician David Copperfield had sold his soul
> for one trick, that's making anything disappear.
> I found myself applying that same concept to magician Criss Angel who can
> levitate anything.
> Can this be applied to Paris Hilton that she can be the "celebretard"
> focus of so many people and somehow the price is the destruction of those
> around her?
No, because Criss Angel really *does not* levitate, and David
Copperfield really *does not* make things disappear.
Wait, maybe you ARE right.
WHAT IF her BFFs are trying to keep up with someone who
isn't even injesting as many drinks and drugs as it appears
she's doing? How else can she have no physical conse-
quences while everyone around her self-destructs?
Now we learn that Nicole Ritchie was full of Vicodin and
marijuana in her last night when she was arrested.
People suck up to Paris Hilton because it gets THEM publicity.
Meanwhile, being only a partial heiress, she charges hundreds
of thousands of dollars as "appearance fees". She's like a
billboard.
Kris
agcbli...@yahoo.com
understand the first sentence, let along the whole article...but then
again, she could care less. Great article.
Billie
Kris Baker
<agcbli...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1165863412....@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
Except they should have spelled it "Parisite" ;)
Kris
CliffB
It was a fun read, but it went a little overboard. She's not quite THAT
bad! And it was the Titney Spears flashing that finally set the author
over the edge? I didn't know that the Paris Hilton malaise was
responsible for the Nicole Simpson murder either. Case solved I guess.
Doomella
Weren't vapid/bratty heiresses always in the public eye? She's merely
today's version of Stephanie and Caroline -- or Patty Hearst minus the
hideous beret. I find her antics no more boring than Britney Spears'
or Lindsay Lohan's, and I don't really care about somebody's work ethic
or pedigree when it comes to bimbo gossip.
Rhee
Kris Baker wrote:
>
> People suck up to Paris Hilton because it gets THEM publicity.
>
She eggs them on but they concede.
Ultimately, it's *their* responsibility.
A bunch of brainless idiots esp.
Britney Spears. Has she learned *anything*
from the whole K-Fed fiasco. No.
But everyone wants to "rescue" her
from the evil Paris Hilton.
Look. I don't like Hilton but Hilton only encourages & reveals
what's inside them all along. That or they
want to kiss her butt. Whatever.
Reminds me of high school & the reigning in-crowd
queen bee surrounded by her minions going around doing
her bidding in hopes of basking in her glow & being accepted.
And if they get burned, they're only getting what they deserved.
What did they expect? Perhaps one of them will eventually wise up,
grow up and move on.
downriver rat
"Agent Smith" <agent...@two-blocks-on-your-left.com> wrote in message
<snipped> If only she had found a way to cut it down to a
> thousand words.
Fuck, no! Not one word!
agcbli...@yahoo.com
emulate her and her bimbo crew. I actually remember a friend telling me
that one of her daughter's friend wanted to be a stripper when she grew
up...and from seeing the girl as she grew up...she probably made it. I
don't recall young women wanting to be like the Monaco brood. It's
nearly impossible to find little girl clothing anymore unless you shop
at a high end store...everything else is made for mini-pole
dancers...jmo.
Billie
moor...@yahoo.com
Quoth Doomella...
>
>
> Weren't vapid/bratty heiresses always in the public eye? She's merely
> today's version of Stephanie and Caroline -- or Patty Hearst minus the
> hideous beret. I find her antics no more boring than Britney Spears'
> or Lindsay Lohan's, and I don't really care about somebody's work ethic
> or pedigree when it comes to bimbo gossip.
Oh, I think she's way different from the princesses and certainly
Patty. It's one thing to be periodically get caught partying
recklessly and getting pg pre marriage--another thing to do get
involved in one tremendously bizarre escapade that seems to come out of
nowhere--and altogether another to literally make a career out of being
everyone's worst nightmare for womankind.
I don't think the article was overwritten at all. I actually think it
understresses the most demonic part--this act is her career.
Many people assume that since her name is "Hilton" she's not in it for
the money. They're wrong. If more realized she was earning a living
this way and not just amusing herself, they would put the same kind of
pressure on the people who write her paychecks that has ultimately
fallen on people like Hugh Grant, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, et al.
Maybe she wouldn't be smart enough to care (because I don't think the
dumb part is an act), but the people might stop writing her checks, and
then she'd go away.
Eliza
Doomella
moor4...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Many people assume that since her name is "Hilton" she's not in it for
> the money. They're wrong. If more realized she was earning a living
> this way and not just amusing herself, they would put the same kind of
> pressure on the people who write her paychecks that has ultimately
> fallen on people like Hugh Grant, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, et al.
What makes you think that? Mel Gibson's crying all the way to the bank
with his latest cinematic gore orgy; Michael Richards couldn't have
been making very much of late anyway, and Hugh Grant's disheveled bit
of British schoolboy adorableness was bound to expire anyway. I don't
think that the exceedingly undiscriminating public is out to punish the
morally vulgar by witholding funds;enough seem to worship Paris and buy
her perfumes and book and watch her TV shows to prove that.
Besides, Jessica Simpson gets paid plenty as well. That's way more
offensive to me. At least Paris is kind enough to keep her singing to a
minimum.
moor...@yahoo.com
Doomella wrote:
> moor4...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>>
> What makes you think that? Mel Gibson's crying all the way to the bank
> with his latest cinematic gore orgy; Michael Richards couldn't have
> been making very much of late anyway, and Hugh Grant's disheveled bit
> of British schoolboy adorableness was bound to expire anyway. I don't
> think that the exceedingly undiscriminating public is out to punish the
> morally vulgar by witholding funds;enough seem to worship Paris and buy
> her perfumes and book and watch her TV shows to prove that.
> Besides, Jessica Simpson gets paid plenty as well. That's way more
> offensive to me. At least Paris is kind enough to keep her singing to a
> minimum.
I'm not talking anyone suffering actual financial repercussions--the
pressure I'm talking about was from fear. All of them obviously felt
it and responded with terrified apologies right and left. And they
sure didn't follow up with another episode of showing their asses
(metaphorically or actually).
Eliza