Notwithstanding that she is a woman currently engaged in courtroom activities, we have refrained from mentioning that very tall, very thin, very pink blonde who shares her prénom with the City of Lights and her surnom with a certain société hôtelière. Yet we cannot deny her international status. Her latest hijinks -- checking out after day 5 of a 45-day jail sentence on account of psychological stress (from what? scarcity of cell phones? deprivation of dermatologist? failure to be fawned upon?) -- made instanews in Le Figaro of, yes, Paris, in the Sydney Morning Herald, in Milan's Corriere della Sera, in Hamburg's Der Spiegel, in Dublin's Irish Times, in London's Guardian, in Hong Kong's Standard, in Madrid's El Pais, in Beijing's People's Daily, and in other publications worldwide.Her stunt affronts all who've truly suffered in custody. For my part, I cannot shake images of 2 working-class clients. One lost 10 years of her own and her teenaged children's lives to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons because she would not turn in a good-for-nothing husband; another died from cancer because prison authorities ignored her alert that she had found a breast lump that demanded immediate attention.
Keep these genuine injustices well in mind. Then, in the spirit of la vie absurde, and in a nod to this latest evidence of the celebrizarrity of global culture, have a look at our colleague Bill Hing's seriocomic commentary, titled, simply, "Deport Paris Hilton?"
