The Simple Life in Jail

Paris Hilton, the reigning queen of the tabloids and gossip columns is making the headlines again and this time it isn't for anything like who she's going out with or what she wore to the latest party, but rather the fact that she's going to prison for 45 days. By June 5th, Hilton is expected to report to the county jail to serve out her sentence. Hilton is being charged with violating the terms of her probation for previous alcohol-related reckless driving charges. However, the astute among us will likely remember that this is certainly not the first time that she's been charged with a crime in terms of vehicular law. She's run her Bentley into parked tractor trailers, she's driven under the influence and she continues to push the limits of the law about as far as I've ever seen anyone do it.

Hilton claims that she's being made an example of due to her celebrity and the fact that so many cops pull her over just to hit on her. Her claim is that this is a false charge and that she's being treated unfairly. According to the reports, Hilton claims that she was unaware that she couldn't drive at all. She assumed that the probation allowed her to drive for work related reasons however in Hilton's case, I guess that meant attending the next party or filming her 'reality show' (which exists in anything but reality). Perhaps Hilton honestly thought that she was not violating the law by driving to work but why take a chance like that. When you've already been to court on reckless driving charges, the last thing you want to do is tempt someone to pull you over and check out your status.

Hilton can't claim innocence in thinking that way either. She claims that there are so many times that she's pulled over by cops simply because of who she is and the fact that they want to hit on her. That being said, that's all the more reason for her not to want to drive. Though it may not be an option for the majority of us out there, I think Hilton is financially stable enough to be able to afford a limo for a few weeks to shuttle her around. Why deal with LA traffic when you can sit in comfort and continue your socializing from the back seat of the car? While her family is standing behind her in this case and all of her fans are petitioning Governor Schwarzenegger to pardon her (boy... that's something I never thought I'd hear), I can't help but think that to pardon her is to set a different standard for celebrity.

As it is, I think celebrities are operating on a different level than the rest of us. For the most part they are fairly normal people but they end up being treated like public property because the rest of us want to know what it's like to live in their world. There's nothing much different about any of them other than the fact they make more headlines than you or I. To say that Hilton was on her way to work and that it was necessary for her livelihood is in no way akin to saying that she's like a single mother who violated a similar probation to go to work to pay her rent. I don't think Hilton has to worry about money, at least not if she even gets a fraction of what I spent staying at one of her family's hotels.

If Hilton was smart, she'd use this opportunity to her advantage and use the opportunity to do something with it. Apparently her fans are so enamoured by Hilton that they are always after any bit of news on her that they can get. The watch her reality shows and read about her in the gossip columns. Why not use that and create a new mini-season of her reality show, "The Simple Life"? It could be called, "The Simple Life: LA County Lock-Up" or something like that. She can give her viewers a view of life in the slammer and 'inspire them' to not do the same thing. She can show viewers how to make the bright orange prison jumpsuits more attractive. She can show us how to barter using cigarettes or how to avoid getting hurt in prison riots. Whatever it is, she should serve out her time quietly and the rest of us should just get on with life. Life is difficult enough without having to worry about "The Simple Life".