Exposed

  She seems to be everywhere.  If there’s a Hollywood party, she’s there.  If there’s a red carpet rolled out somewhere, she’s on it.  If a single starlet should be chosen as the poster child of the jet-set crowd, it should be her.  She is famous because of her last name; she is famous because of her extravagant lifestyle.  And sadly, she personifies success and fuels the aspirations of today’s youth.

  This week, a new website made headlines by exposing the most private details of Paris Hilton’s personal life.  And it’s not pretty.

  How does a person like Paris end up in a situation like this, with so much of her private life posted online for the world to see?  Well, according to legal documents filed by the heiress this week, it was all because of a misunderstanding.  It started two years ago, after a burglary caused Paris and her sister, Nicky, to move from one L.A. mansion to another.  Paris and Nicky put a lot of their belonging in a storage unit—a storage unit that Paris claims the moving company was supposed to pay for.  When the storage company didn’t receive payment, they tried, unsuccessfully, to contact the heiress to collect the $208 she owed.  Eventually, the contents of the unit were put up for auction and sold for $2,775.  The buyers, realizing whose stuff they had purchased, turned around and sold it stuff to an Internet entrepreneur for $10 million—for a profit of $9,997,225.

  The man who paid $10 million for Paris’ property—6,000 square feet of it, to be precise—catalogued, itemized, digitized and uploaded every last piece of it, and for about $40, looky-loos can peruse every morsel for 60 days.  Or until the Hilton lawyers get their way and the site is taken down. 

  The items are shocking, even by Paris Hilton standards, and are not suitable for young eyes or the easily offended.  Paris seems to enjoy being naked, judging from the abundance of photos and video.  She likes doing drugs, too.  One video shows her and her “billionaire-buddies” snorting cocaine—and A LOT of it—off of a friend’s chest.  Another shows her smoking a pipe while extolling the virtues of marijuana.  Paris’ passport, driver’s license, medical records, address book, love letters, and journals are also available.  In essence, her life just became an open book.

  And so much for denying a relationship with Girls-Gone-Wild-creator Joe Francis.  Video footage of the two, as well as footage, captured by Francis, of Paris in a bubble bath, is available for all to see on the new website. 

  As I took the site’s free tour, I began to analyze my own curiosity.  Truth be told, I began psychoanalyzing myself.  What drives our curiosity about people like Paris?  It’s more than voyeurism.  There’s something about seeing these filthy rich pop-culture icons living dangerously and carelessly, compromising their own integrity, and self-destructing.  I don’t get any gratification from it, but it’s interesting.  It’s baffling, almost incomprehensible.  People like Paris seem to have it all, but lack responsibility, integrity, and accountability.

  I guess it makes me appreciate the life I have a little bit more. 

 -From Pulse
   February 1, 2007

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Celebrity Scandal

  For the past two or three months, the nation has been caught in the throes of a scandal so salacious, a trial so tumultuous, a rumor mill so gristly we can hardly go about our daily lives.  It has animated our slothful culture and has impassioned us on a single, dividing issue.  Did he or didn’t he?  Molester or martyr?

  Of course I’m talking about the Michael Jackson trial.  Unfortunately, this trial has rooted itself so deeply in our national psyche that, in 2005, it’s impossible to write a column about Jacko without offending (or, at the very least, irritating) half of one’s readers.  But such is the nature of controversy, I suppose, and so we press on.

  Michael has always been a caricature, and a badly-drawn one at that.  His larger than life persona, his worldwide star power, his amusement park ranch, his coterie of exotic jungle animals, and his incessant experimentation with plastic surgery have made him every tabloid’s dream.  His life is surreal, ethereal and scandalous, like a twisted scene from “Dennis Rodman in Wonderland.”  And we have bought and babbled about every one of his eccentricities.

  Like it or not, Michael Jackson is a victim.  He’s a victim of his deranged father, a victim of our greedy press, and—here’s the kicker—he’s a victim of America’s star-culture.

  We love to watch as stars rise to fame.  It gives us hope that someday we might escape our own mundane lives.  But we also love to watch as they burn out, or fade away, or come crashing down in a flaming streak of humiliation and ridicule, because that makes them human again.  We actively perpetuate this cycle.  We buy their CD’s or watch their movies, and then we buy the tabloids. 

  Even before the molestation trial, none of us would have taken any responsibility for turning Michael Jackson into the “freak” that we labeled him.  And the same goes for the cast of “Diff’rent Strokes,” and McCauley Culkin and scores of other child stars.  We chalk it up as coincidence, and never acknowledge our own participation in the whole sordid cycle. 

  I don’t know whether Michael Jackson molested those children or not.  I don’t even have an opinion.  But I do know that Michael broke a lot of rules.  Rule number one: grown men don’t act that way.  They don’t make a spectacle of themselves, and they don’t befriend little kids, sick or well.  That seems to be the one fact we can’t get our head around.  And for that he will hang.

  Set aside your bias for a moment and consider this: whether he molested the kids or not, his life is ruined.  It’s over.  If he’s guilty, well, he did it to himself.  If not, though, that’s a high price to pay for being misunderstood.

-From Pulse
  March 31, 2005

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