Reply #25: This new article in Salon.com says it better than I can:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2007/06/09/paris/

Even after years of watching Hilton direct the media like her own obedient little phalanx of winged monkeys, it would take a coldhearted cynic to doubt that Hilton was experiencing real pain and anguish upon returning to prison. At the very least, we were witnessing a coddled child having a severe allergic reaction to the real world. Hilton could certainly be losing her doughnuts in a medically authentic way, since by all appearances, she's never been punished, never been forced to eat anything she doesn't like, never had to sleep anywhere uncomfortable or wear anything unflattering. While the rest of us are more than passingly familiar with deprivations and things not going our way, Hilton could actually blow a fuse from what would look, to an outsider, like a mildly unpleasant experience. That pea under a stack of mattresses might not bruise you. but you don't sleep on 5 million thread-count sheets, now, do you?

And when you consider the fact that she's protected by relatives who talk openly to the press about throwing a party to celebrate their insipid child being released from prison early after having driven drunk? It makes simple sense to assume that not only is she unapologetic for her crime, she's absolutely indignant about her punishment. The Associated Press reported that, "As Ms. Hilton was led away to await her trip back to jail, she turned to her parents and said, 'It's not right!'" You almost have to feel empathy for the girl, dragged off to endure flavorless food and sleepless nights on scratchy sheets, all the while fancying herself a pretty blond Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Let's just pray that those bad prison sheets scratch her tender white ass enough to get her out of our faces for good. Because we certainly didn't ask for this, either. No matter how the talking heads and pundits have tried to convince us that Paris is a reflection of our shallowness and stupidity as a culture, most of us have never wanted her to be a symbol of anything. Is the crotch flash an act of subversion, in which Hilton channels the paparazzi to put her image on every cover, from tabloids to respected newspapers alike? Is Hilton, like her understudies Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, just a frightened child, overwhelmed and intoxicated by all of the attention the media gives her?

We don't care anymore. And now she's become a symbol of something that bestrides her like a colossus, the inherent inequality and corruptibility of the criminal justice system -- which only means that the insanity will never, ever end. Paris Hilton's image will appear everywhere, across the globe, her every word will be broadcast to millions, this person who never did anything, who never had a marketable skill or talent to show for any of it, and who's never, in her short life, had a single interesting thing to say.