Paris Hilton: Cultural Confusion Personified

Paris Hilton was placed on probation as an alternative to incarceration after her DWI arrest, given a list of terms and conditions to abide by while on probation, failed to live up to those terms and conditions, and was sent back before the judge for a revocation hearing where she was sentenced to 45 days incarceration. Typically, someone who has put such minimal effort into a misdemeanor probationary term stands virtually no chance before the judge. Case closed, right?

The cultural response has been extremely puzzling, varying from pointing and laughing to outrage over her mistreatment because of who she is. Why the mixed bag? Nothing with the sentence was completely out of bounds. It wasn’t even atypical. Perhaps, as a culture, we are completely at a loss as to how to respond when the very woman whose career sky-rocketed after an illicit sex-tape is on her way to jail for 45 days. The combination of wild and famous is suppose to be a sure bet to yield nothing but more fame and more money. The poster child of the eternal spring break is not suppose to go to jail, she needs a Sharpie, and a place to sign her name. Where’s the love?

No doubt, her career will not even miss a step when she is released. In fact, she may even be hoisted on the shoulders of pop culture and heralded as a martyr. This is our cultural elite, everybody, pluralism and relativity taken to the extreme. However, until there is no longer a man wearing a long black gown with a gavel in his hand, the worldview of the day is incapable of reaching fruition. The pluralists will remain in confusion as their promiscuous videos bring fame one day, while finding themselves on the wrong end of the gavel the next; no doubt, a mere shadow of the day in which the Judge who judges even the judges dons his own court room attire but bothers not with the gavel, choosing instead the sword.

tdg