The End of Satire

“You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it.” -- Art Buchwald

Tomorrow is the birthday of hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

Recently, Miss Hilton was arrested for suspicion of petty theft in West Hollywood, California. “There was an incident, and she is alleged to have taken something,” sheriff's Deputy Steve Suzuki said immediately following the arrest.

A video posted on website of the television show “Celebrity Justice” shows Miss Hilton buying several magazines at a newsstand. After she received her change, she grabbed a video from the counter and walked off with it -- without paying. The video was the tape of Miss Hilton's famous sex tape, "One Night in Paris", the one showing her and paramour Rick Saloman, well, in flagrante delicto, so to speak.

Miss Hilton, who in 1999 received her GED, the high school equivalence diploma usually earned by adults who, through diligence and persistence, finally receive in middle age the diploma denied them in their youth by circumstances and misfortune, identifies herself as model, jewelry designer, recording artist, and actress, apparently based on her role in the reality TV show, The Simple Life. At the ripe age of 23, she has released an autobiography. She even has her own calendar. Paris and her family are reportedly worth $3.8 billion.

Besides the aforementioned Mr. Saloman, Hilton has dated, been engaged to, or otherwise spent extensive amounts of time with, actors Jason Shaw, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Furlong, Jared Leto, Simon Rex, Brandon Davis, Jamie Kennedy, musicians Rob Mills, Deryck Whibley, Nick Carter, and tennis player Mark Philippoussis and boxer Oscar De La Hoya. Miss Hilton turns 24 tomorrow.

Following her recent arrest, the newsstand employee, Gerry Castro, said that Hilton became enraged after spotting the sex video on sale at the newsstand. “She threw her 80 cents change at me and took the video and said, ‘I'm taking this and I'm not buying it,’” Castro told reporters. Castro then called police. “Nobody steals on my shift,” Castro said.

According to Paris' sister, Nicky, Castro overreacted. “She did something anyone would have done in this situation,” Nicky Hilton said. “It's not a big deal. Whatever - she doesn't care. I think this guy is trying to make it into a big deal, to get some publicity for his newsstand.”

Charges against Hilton were recently dropped for lack of evidence.

Originally posted by Palinurus.

Comments

[Remainderman]

We'll always have Paris.

[Gone Away]

Know what? I couldn't care less...

[Anonymous]

I think what matters is not whether you or I care, but that the age embraces such characters.

[Jodie]

Betcha if you did a poll here, the most likely word people would now associate with "Paris" is "Hilton"...yet one more reason for the French to dislike us.

[Gone Away]

Every age has its warts and deformities. If ours are more widely reported, we have only our more sophisticated form of gossip (called, euphemistically, the news media) to complain against.

And the French dislike everyone on principle, purely because they're not French... (admittedly, spoken as an Englishman)

[Anonymous]

Sorry, Gone, I don't quite agree. You are correct that every age has its warts, but that is not the same as saying that every age has this many warts, or this many warts this big. Unfortunately, by most indicia that matter, our age has many, big warts. I think the problem is that, while people always enjoyed gossip and wart-viewing, we now have a large percentage of people who find the warts very interesting, and even envy the warts.

[Ned]

I believe that the warts appear larger now, because they are not concealed so well. In fact, they are displayed with a haughty sense of pride. In the early days of Hollywood, the personal lives of celebrities were just as widely followed by an eager public but the moguls of the business were careful what information was distributed as they were quite aware the public would not put up with flawed stars. Would the public have paid to see a Joan Crawford movie if she had been portrayed as the man hungry alcoholic? The true lives of these celebrities hardly matched the glamorous image that the press maintained for them. Perhaps it is not the number or size of the warts that has changed, but the public's appetite for warts.

[Gone Away]

So what you're telling me is that we're a wart-ridden society in a world that hes specialized in the study of warts? I refuse to be a part of it and shall return to my navel-gazing.

[Ned]

Which returns us to your original position Gone, of "I don't care". Well, frankly, neither do I. Paris Hilton is an airhead, would probably be an airhead even if she were not rich but because she has the means she can be a famous airhead. Unless, you just turn off the set and do something useful, like reading blogs.

[Remainderman]

Folks

Our advertisers get nervous when anyone suggest turning off the TV. Please restrain your suggestions.

Having said that, the offense that the sleazeball vendor took at having his bootleg pornography stolen is only surpassed by the fact that the pornographic subject was the one stealing it, was only surpassed by the suggestion that the vendor was only seeking publicity, when the pornographic subject, herself, is the most shameless and undeserved seeker of publicity in the world for what amounts to nothing, which may be surpassed by the fact that the subject taking the bootleg, pornographic video of herself was caught on video, while, of course, she spends her time getting caught on video doing the contrived, inane, and pointless things she does, and, worst of all, people actual watch it.

I could go on.

[mr. kyle]

Gone away pointed me to your site and I just wanted to mention how I've enjoyed the suggestion.

I have a friend who travels in these celebrity circles and is a friend of the Hiltons (to be clear, I myself travel nowhere close to these circles). She maintains that Paris is one of the more polite and grounded celebrities with which the interacts.

Whether this is a compliment to Paris or an indictment of all other celebrities is not clear.

[Gone Away]

Surpassing strange...

[Ned]

When you have surpassed strange, you are indeed, Gone.
I have had the television off for nearly a year now and I have never felt freer in my life. The occasional tabloid shouts at me from the rack as I stand in line at the grocery store, but overall, I am free of worry about the lives of celebrities, or the whereabouts of missing women in Utah or which body parts were found where or the feigned tears of the husband/perpetrator as he pleads for her safe return. I choose my news on the net and I can never return to the glitz of CNN.

[palinurus]

Trenchant comments all, and welcome Mr. Kyle. Like Gone and Ned, I don't care about Paris either, as far as Paris is concerned. In fact, the last time I saw Paris, she was shilling jewelry on Amazon. Remainderman has well put the absurdity of the whole incident. If I had written the incident as fiction, you all, properly, would have shaken your heads and said: "Fffft -- that would never happen." There are some things you just cannot make up -- they are too unbelievable. But Ned is correct: we get the warts that we deserve, if we feed and nurture them.

[Hannah]

Who is Paris Hilton?

[Gone Away]

Ummmm....a hotel in France?