Friday, June 08, 2007

Who gives a *bleep* about Paris Hilton?

Walhydra realizes that, by publishing this post, she is committing the very culture crime she is getting ready to rant against, but...oh, well....

The faithful reader will have noticed several previous occasions when Walhydra has flown off the handle about being famous, exploiting someone's so-called fame to sell headlines, or being gullible about that fame.

She figured she'd said enough, already!

And then, today at lunch, she noticed peripherally that Fox "News" was broadcasting live coverage—for over half an hour—of Paris Hilton's mansion. That is, the mansion and the crowd of newscasters waiting in front of it for the sheriff to arrive and ferry her back to court.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!

It wasn't even as interesting—not that she was watching, you understand—as that boring "chase" of the white Bronco years ago.

Walhydra has mentally ill street people customers at the library who are way more interesting.

But she thinks she's beginning get a better sense of what this is all about.

Maybe.

People have probably always had a perverse fascination with those who appear to be more powerful, more important, more attractive, more rich, more more than they are.

People envy these folks. We want to be like them. We want what we think they have, and we want other people to admire and envy us as we do these folks.

And we want to see them FALL!

That's it. We want our resentment of their privilege to be rewarded by the disclosure—live on Fox "News" and on every tabloid cover at the grocery checkout—that they are utter failures as human beings. That they screw up, over and over and over, even more than we do.

Walhydra feels both better and worse, having realized this.

Better, because she thinks she can be the eensiest bit forgiving toward others who actually pay attention to Paris Hilton, et al.

Worse, because she just paid attention—again.

Oh, well....