THE PEOPLE VS. PARIS HILTON
A couple of years ago, I laid out my complicated thoughts about America's most celebrated debutante slut, Paris Hilton. I'd say that I did so in stunning prose, but I'm far too modest for that. Besides, I needn't toot my own literary horn when I get by quite nicely on my looks, thank you very much. This stupid blog only serves as a distraction from the demands of my career as a male model anyway. I'll bet you idiots have no idea how hard it is to stand around in your underwear all day.
Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
That original post was written the day before my 35th birthday and I can honestly report that the lives of both Ms. Hilton and myself and worsened dramatically in the ensuing two years. You know that you're well and truly fucked when someone as sober and sane as Britney Spears can get the same haircut I have with an almost mocking smile. When even someone that fat and out of work can belittle you with impunity, you know that all is lost.
And it seems that Paris had a little run-in with the law. Perhaps you've heard about it. You shouldn't feel badly if you haven't. The media really isn't covering it much. If you're anything like me, you're wondering "Where is the Fourth Estate when you really need them? Why isn't Bob Woodward all over this story? Where in god's name are his priorities? It isn't like America is at war or anything. What the fuck gives?"
If you're unfamiliar with Ms. Hilton's recent legal woes, here's the abridged version. Like most Americans, Paris likes to get really fucked up on various pills, powders and amber liquids and go for a drive. Like most things that are reckless, stupid and wrong, this phenomenon was seemingly invented in California and popularized by its celebrity landed gentry.
If you happen to be Mel Gibson, little comes of this other than popularlizing the use of the phrase "sugar-tits" as a means of addressing the women in your life. Gibson, I should note, also resisted arrest, verbally assaulted several L.A County Sheriffs deputies and destroyed public property. Oh, and there was that little misunderstanding about the role of Jews in international military conflicts. The legal ramifications of Gibson's conduct that night were precisely ... none. But he did get nominated for a Golden Globe.
As I write this, Paris Hilton is in the legal custody of the L.A County Sheriff's Department for the next 45 days. She is not being incarcerated for a DUI, which most people seem to think she is. She's doing time for a probation violation. Those are two very different things.
Last September, Hilton was popped for DUI and pleaded nolo contendre shortly thereafter. She was placed on 36 months probation and her driver's license was suspended. She was then stopped twice driving with a suspended license.
Was this a massively stupid and supremely arrogant way for her to act? Yes, it was. But this is Paris Hilton we're talking about. What in the fuck else should any halfway educated adult expect from her? Arrogance and stupidity are precisely the things that made her famous.
It is a Simple Life, to be sure, but one we support with our hard-earned dollars and one I'm not sure should be held against her. Look, if you met your wife in a bar and she fucked you in a bathroom stall on your first date, you really shouldn't be all that upset if you come home on your wedding anniversary to find her blowing the gardener with a fifth of Jack Daniels jammed in her cooter. Sure, you can punch her in the mouth for ruining perfectly good booze, but you can't can't fairly hold her sluttishness against her. You, my friend, bought the ticket and should be expected to take the ride. Life's like that.
If I heard that story from a random guy on the street, as I sometimes do, I'd smack him like bitch, tell him to grow the fuck up, put his Big Girl pants on and deal. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Besides, how bad can a girl who fucks herself with Jack Daniels bottles really be anyway?
(The last two paragraphs have me so tempted to post a few pictures I have of Janine Lindemulder taking the neck of a Jack Daniels bottle that it might actually kill me! But those pictures are so NSFW that your bosses would skip firing you entirely and go directly to public execution for having them on a shop computer. I suppose that it sucks to be both of us.)
American society is nothing more than the cuckolded husband who won't be enjoying a cocktail on his anniversary due to Hilton's hormanally-crazed whore of a wife. You made her a world famous star for being arrogant and stupid. How fucking dare you turn around and castigate her being just that? What's next? A canine Holocaust because dogs refuse to stop licking their balls?
Before I go any further, I should explain a few things about drunk driving. Firstly, I think the laws against it are way too lax. Drunk drivers kill thousands of people each and every year. I happen to think that if you get caught driving under the influence, you should automatically be charged with attempted manslaughter. If you get in an accident where someone dies, you should be charged with second-degree murder. The combination of Glenfiddich and car keys is no different than a smoking gun that "accidentally" went off when you were impressing a date with your William S. Burroughs-like devotion to her. That isn't to say that I don't think that you should play William Tell with the Love of Your Life, just that you had damn well be an exceptional shot if you do. I understand fun for its own sake, but I'm a pretty merciless juror.
I don't drive for the simple reason that I'm drinking 92.3% of the time that I'm not either sleeping or at work. And I'm working on the sleeping part. I should have a working Johnny Walker IV in about six weeks. As I write this, I'm devouring my eigth tasty Guinness. I made a conscious decision when I was five years old, that I want to drink more than I need to drive. And I won't let that decision kill or maim anyone else. I happen to believe that if you make a different lifestyle choice, you should serve a lot more time than your average drug offender - including dealers. After all, few people not involved with drugs actually die from them. Sober people are killed by drunk drivers with alarming regularity.
But the law doesn't work that way. I suspect that this is because any number of politicians, cops, lawyers and judges enjoy their drinkee-drinkees too much to get too rash on folks who have the same enthusiams that Paris and I do. I grew up around cops and lawyers and I could tell you stories about them getting stopped for drunk driving without consequence that would chill your fucking blood.
I know a couple of people, who because they were friends of cops, were listed in something called CPIC (Canadian Police Information Center - or the fancy laptops you see in police cruisers) as "good guys", stopped for DUI and were made to do nothing more severe than promise to drive directly home. How do I know that? My dad was one of them.
I know, or know of, any number of people in any number of North American jurisdictions who have been convicted of DUI. Not a one suffered anything more than a suspended license on their first conviction. One guy served 30 days in California for his second conviction - less time than Paris was sentenced to for a simple probation violation that didn't involve drunk driving. Another did a few months, but was allowed to leave jail every day to go to work - at least until he came back drunk one night. And this guy had multiple convictions on his record, both misdeamenor and felony. Did violating his work release result in extra time? No. In fact, I think he still got out early for "good behavior."
Most bloggers have been bitching and moaning about the "easy treatment" Paris Hilton has been getting of late. This proves only that most bloggers are incredibly whiny and phenomonally ignorant about almost everything. At a minimum, they should have each of their fingers broken in multiple places for some of the drivel they've written. And these are often people that I like and admire.
The party line in the blogosphere is that Hilton is receiving "special treatment." My understanding of California criminal procedure is that she is - but not in the way that you think.
You see, the L.A County jail system has been chronically overcrowded for several years now. Courts at the state and federal level have held this to be a Constitutional issue, specifically in regards to a prisoner's Eighth Amendment rights. L.A County happens to be the most overcrowded jail in the entire United States. And here's another neat fact that most bloggers don't know - "jail" happens to be someplace where you are while awaiting trial. "Prison" is where you go upon conviction. Only those convicts serving the most minimal sentences - usually under six months, depending on where you live - serve them in jails. Everybody else there hasn't been convicted of a fucking thing and is therefore, amazingly, presumed innocent.
It seems to me that if you're presumed innocent, you should be free of the things that are a common result of jail over-crowding. These things frequently include being forcibly sodomized. I know, I don't know when I happened to be such a bleeding heart liberal, either. But the Clinton administration - which saw more American citizens jailed than any other - and the successor Bush regime saw fit to have the Department of Justice regularly review the L.A County Jail because of Constitutional concerns.
Although, I'm highly reluctant to cite him as an authority on anything because he appears to be the worst criminal defense attorney on the planet, Mark Geragos commented on this Thursday night on Larry King Live
KING: Mark Geragos, before we ask you, you were on this program last month, after Paris got a 45-day sentence. And here's what you said about how long she might serve. Watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LARRY KING LIVE," MAY 11, 2007) KING: Are you saying you think if she goes she'll do 45 days? MARK GERAGOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think -- no, because with credits, the most they can keep her is 30. She -- if they're going to be fair about it -- and this sheriff is, you know, Sheriff Baca is a pretty fair guy. KING: Yes, he is. GERAGOS: But if they're going to be fair, she shouldn't do more than two or three days, because nobody else is doing more than two the president three days on something like this. (END VIDEO CLIP) KING: So, Mr. Geragos, you were on the money. Therefore, you are not surprised. GERAGOS: Well, thanks. I -- well, I was a little worried that I said two weeks. Thank you, Larry. I appreciate that. KING: You were not surprised? GERAGOS: No, I was -- I not only was not surprised. In fact, she did about double to triple what anybody else would have done. Normally what happens -- and I've got three clients and I think I told you last time, similarly situated clients. I've had one within the last week who literally turned themselves in, took the bus ride and were released right from county jail onto the electronic monitoring and then was released from that in six days. If you do what Paris did, where you turn yourself into the jail, then they will not -- they'll just turn you around and release you immediately. So when people say was Paris getting special treatment, I say, yes. She got double or triple what everybody else in L.A. County gets. As I mentioned earlier, Geragos might just be the worst lawyer ever, so I suspect that he has a working knowledge of how the jail and prison systems work in California, if only because his clients invariably wind up in them. I will give him that.
This leads into the cute procedural question that has been driving idiot bloggers insane all week "How in the fuck does a judge not get a say in a prisoner's sentence?"
KING: Mark, doesn't the judge have control of the prisoner, not the sheriff? GERAGOS: No. KING: No? GERAGOS: Actually, in L.A. County this weird dance has gone on now for about 12 years. What used to happen was the sheriff, in order to alleviate overcrowding, would say anybody whose bail is less than $10,000, I'm going to let -- I'm going to release. So the judges said, OK, we'll raise the minimum bail to $12,000. Then the sheriff would say OK, anybody who is under $15,000, I'm going to release. And that game went on until we got to about $25,000. Then the sheriff decided -- and this was before Sheriff Baca -- so the sheriff says, OK, when it's post-conviction, after you've pled, I'm going to just release the least threatening or the least violent prisoners. Obviously, Paris Hilton on a probation violation for driving on a suspended license is A-number-one in terms of the least violent. KING: Right. GERAGOS: And that's how he alleviates the crowding. KING: Got you. GERAGOS: Remember, this prison system in California and the jail system in California are both periodically under federal review for overcrowding. That's what the fundamental problem is here that nobody wants to talk about. That's what made the hearing that sent Paris back to the hoosegow on Friday morning such a fucking sham. Judge Michael T. Sauer, every shithead blogger's new superhero, has rejected - if not the law - over a decade of accepted practice in the handling of prisoners in the local jail system. I somehow doubt that he does this routinely in probation violation cases.
I think that maybe, just maybe - and I might be out of fucking control, batshit crazy for suggesting this - that Judge Sauer might have a political future planned. Always remember, that in an act of monumental stupidity, judges are elected in most American jurisdictions, including California. If I know anything about elective politics, I know that "I Gave The Drunken Slut A Get Out Jail Free Card" is perhaps the least effective platform on which to run. Christ, even Mayor Quimby isn't ballsy enough to try that.
But wait a second here! As it happens, sheriff's are also elected in California. And Lee Baca actually did give the drunken slut a get out of jail free card, which, as we know, doesn't exactly look good on a bumper sticker. As someone who I presume plans to run for re-election, why would Baca do something so contrary to his political interest unless it was the right thing to do?
I think that more bloggers should use their fucking heads before they start lining up to pin a cape on Judge Sauer and start asking whose interests are best served by their actions. I also think that most "conservative" bloggers should shut the fuck up about silly shit like Paris Hilton, who was convicted of a probation violation, going to jail if they insist on championing the cause of mercy for Scooter Libby, who was convicted of four federal felonies! Walking both sides of that particular street not only makes look like a hypocrite, it leads any halfway honest person to think you might actually be retarded.
I know that this post is going to piss everyone off. I know that I'll get any number of comments from shithead liberals and duplicitous conservatives alike screaming at my logic and questioning my sanity. Some of you might think that I'm taking this position simply because I want to fuck Paris Hilton.
Frankly, I'm offended by the very suggestion of that. In my essay of two and a half years ago, I said that I wanted to "denude Paris of her pubic hair using nothing more than candle wax." And that remains true. At the time, I may have fucked her, but who can say for sure? Some things should stay between me, Paris and a night-vision camcorder.
Besides, I'm told that Paris has a particularly nasty case of herpes and I'd like to give that an especially wide berth, if I can. That's not to say that I'd completely rule out getting a nasty case of herpes; just that I'd have to get it from someone much hotter than her. Someone like Lindsay Lohan perhaps.
Paris, to my knowledge, only drinks, drives and fucks amatuer pornographers and Greek-shipping hiers on night-vision cameras. I'm a little too adventerous for that, particularly where disfiguring my beautiful, beautiful putz is concerned.
Oh no, if I'm getting the clap, I'm getting from a girl who's on all the drugs, plays with knives, has big tits and has other girls play with big knives and those bigs tits. My penis is just too important to play rookie ball with. There are times when you've gotta go big or go home. And Paris just isn't ready for the big leagues. And Lindsay has all of that and a pending drunk-driving case before her. You tell me who the perfect woman is.
That's why I'm a sexual super-hero on top of being a legal scholar. But you knew that already, didn't you?
Now where's my fucking cape?
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Hey By: Pixies From: Doolittle
PermalinkLabels: Celebrity Skin, I Fought The Law, Journalists Are Swine
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