"I'm not the most famous person in the world, but let me tell you something — all the Trumpers know me from the head picture."

"They all know me. They all know my face. They all know my hair. So O'Donnell goes, "No, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, this is my best friend Kathy Griffin,' and I just looked at the guy and I went like this, and then he knew, oh he knew...."

It's long, but the lengthiness is the style. There's a party at Paris Hilton's house, Kathy runs into The Rock and says "Hi, The Rock," a conservative mistakes Rosie O'Donnell for Roseanne Barr. It's worth it every step of the way and it's worth it to watch until you get to "I went like this," which is, obviously, a visual. Very funny!

At Britney Spears' wedding, Spears, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Selena Gomez, Donatella Versace, and Drew Barrymore attempt a spontaneous rendition of Madonna's hit song “Vogue.”

I found that at the NY Post, which calls it "awkward." I think they were just standing together and needing to pose, so the lyric "Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it/Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it" worked as a comical way to get in the spirit of producing a good visual for still photography. We weren't really meant to listen.

And let me say they all look great. I especially love Madonna's dress and find Drew Barrymore's giant black bag pretty funny. I'm sure it must mean something, maybe something like the polar opposite of a wedding dress. Drew is not currently married (and has 3 ex-husbands).

It's one of those rare mornings when — quite by chance — a theme appears on the blog.

I've written 2 posts: 1. "The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires," and 2. "'People get very wrapped up in the idea of spontaneously desiring sex,' Dr. Nagoski said, but, especially in women, it’s fairly rare." 

In the presence of this blessed convergence of the Forces of Blog, I perform the ritual of deliberately searching for more manifestations of the day's theme. You see what it is, don't you? 

Frenemies.

"Actually I soon discovered that a substantial number of names listed in my address book belong in the category of Frenemy, an incredibly useful word that should be in every dictionary, coined by one of my sisters when she was a small child to describe a dull little girl who lived near us," wrote Jessica Mitford in a NYT op-ed in 1977.

My sister and the Frenemy played together constantly, invited each other to tea at least once a week, were inseparable companions, all the time disliking each other heartily.

I wonder whether most of us do not, in fact, spend more time with Frenemies than actual friends or outright enemies? The fringy folk whose proximity, either territorial or work-related, demands the frequent dinner invitation and acceptance of their return hospitality....

But real friends — ah? Who are they? Mostly people, boys and girls whom we knew and laughed with, and loved passionately circa age 20....

But that is not the original usage of the word in print. The columnist Walter Winchell used it in 1953 in the Nevada State Journal — not that Mitford's sister cribbed the coinage — "Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?"

I got that from the Oxford English Dictionary, where I looked up the word "frenemy" today after seeing it in The Daily Mail. I was reading "Woman, 62, with cancer survives being trapped in car for EIGHT days without food and only rain water after getting lost and stuck in the mud" when I glanced away over into the sidebar and saw "BFFs again? Kim Kardashian shares a laugh with frenemy Paris Hilton in new Instagram snap/Enjoying a laugh together in Ibiza."

Ah! The Daily Mail! Oh, the decline! Let's cleanse our palate with a quaff of the fresh rain water that was journalism in the 1950s:

That "20 Worst Americans of all time" list compiled by Right Wing News by surveying conservative bloggers.

It's a ridiculous list, as lawprof Stephen Bainbridge points out:

Personally, I find the collated list pretty much of a joke. It reflects the partisan passions of the moment, not anything resembling a serious verdict of history.

But it was predictable that the list would be ridiculous, because of the methodology:

All [43] bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received. 

So, if everyone put Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama on the list, he'd come out as the worst person in American history. (The expression "of all time" highlights the silliness of the list. When in history do we start having "Americans"? 1776... 1787... or thereabouts. There were no terrible Americans in the Middle Ages or ancient times. Saying "of all time" makes you sound like a bombastic know-nothing. (It's an expression we've been using jocosely, chez Meadhouse, ever since this happened.)

In fact, only 25 of the 43 put Jimmy Carter on their list, and that was enough to put him at #1. Obama was second with only 23 selections. They're easy to think of, so they got on a lot of lists. (Surprisingly few, actually.) More obscure but more evil Americans were less likely to come to mind, but would probably have raked in votes if the surveyed bloggers had been given a list to chose from.

So, tweak the methodology. Have 2 stages where you first take suggestions for who should be on a list, then have the voters pick however many they want from the list. If I have to pick 20, I may need to pad it out with individuals who aren't really that bad. Or give everyone 20 votes and let them pile the votes on their choices in whatever proportion they want. You could dump 15 votes on Obama and 5 on Carter, for example.

By the way, oddly enough, my name appears in the first comment over there at Right Wing News:

What an [sic] spectacularly ignorant list. I'm a progressive, and I could do a better job of being a right-wing butthole than the people who voted.....

Michael Moore over Upton Sinclair or Lincoln Steffens? Jane Fonda over Paul Robeson? Not one member of the Warren Court? Not Theodore Roosevelt? Where's Daniel Ellsberg or Seymour Hirsch-- or Julian Assange?

This is why we make fun of your lack of intellect, folks-- you can't even identify the people who've done the most damage to your belief system. It would be as if progressives compiled a list of the most vile and bigoted conservatives in history and picked Wally George, John Schmitz, Ann Althouse and Orly Taitz.

... whoever they are.

If you click over to Bainbridge, you'll see his comments on each of the individuals on the RWN list. Bainbridge also makes his own "Worst Americans" list, with a decided emphasis on traitors. He puts Aldrich Ames and Benedict Arnold at #1 and #2.

Now, for some reason he puts Paris Hilton at #11. Huh? I guess he thought there had to be a female on the list and that was the best he could do. He called her the "personification of the celebrity obsessed culture." Isn't the obsession with celebrities the fault of the people doing the obsessing? (Let's take responsibility for our own faults. It's the conservative way, I've heard.)

In an update, he defends his #11 selection of Hilton "as one of the earliest examples of how it is now possible in our culture to be famous merely for being famous without having any significant merit or worth."

Earliest examples? Earliest examples??!!! If Paris Hilton seems like an early example, you might not know so much about history.  The definition of "celebrity" as someone who is "known for his well-knownness" appears in a book that came out in 1962 — "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America" by Daniel J. Boorstin.

Can we think of some earlier examples of famous-for-being-famous Americans? Who was Boorstin writing about in 1962? We had empty celebrities then, for sure. Somebody motivated Andy Warhol to say "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Or is that why we can't remember the empty celebrities of the past? Their fame-time ran out, and we forgot.

And how about giving Paris Hilton credit as an entrepreneur? You try creating a compelling character out of yourself and making money out of that product? The fact is, she's a model and an actress, and the way she annoys people like Bainbridge and seems dumb and pointless is part of the fabulous image-product that has sold so well.

FactCheck is handing out awards for the 2008 campaign season ads:

Nicely done. Best Actor: Chuck Norris. Best Actress: Paris Hilton. Much more at the link.

Is it ever appropriate for the government to take into account that a "particular remark was really hilarious, very, very funny?"

Justice Stevens asked yesterday in the argument about whether the FCC could fine a broadcaster for allowing a "fleeting expletive" to go out over the airwaves. Here's the NYT account of the argument, with the usual details about the issues in the case, if you need to get up to speed. I'm reading the transcript. (PDF.) And, no, nobody said "fuck" in the elite courtroom yesterday. They did say "F-word" many, many times. And they talked about Paris Hilton. Scalia is onto her bullshit:

JUSTICE SCALIA: This Paris Hilton incident was scripted. The use of the indecent word was almost invited, wasn't it?

GENERAL GARRE: Certainly our view is that it was pandering and invited. It could have been expected.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Wasn't there a different word? Wasn't there a euphemism in the script? I thought there was a euphemism in the script.

GENERAL GARRE: The euphemism in the script I think was "freaking", and another euphemism for the S-Word, but they obviously departed from that. And I think the commission --

JUSTICE SCALIA: But it was sort of an invitation. I mean, before she was ntroduced, said, "Now we're on live television, you have to watch your mouth," or something like that.

GENERAL GARRE: That's what Paris Hilton said. I mean, I think the whole thing was set up to be pandering --

JUSTICE SCALIA: It was a setup.

So did these words just slip out or not? Nino knows what you're up to.

Meanwhile, the elderly Justice Stevens wants you to know that he thinks some of these dirty jokes are freaking hilarious:

JUSTICE STEVENS: Maybe I shouldn't ask this, but is there ever appropriate for the Commission to take into consideration at all the question whether the particular remark was really hilarious, very, very funny? Some of these things you can't help but laugh at. Is that -- is that a proper consideration, do you think?

Imagine the law turning on whether a joke is funny! I know it when I hear it.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Oh, it's funny. I mean, bawdy jokes are okay if they are really good.

Justice Scalia would like you to know that he's no prude. That's not the issue. The question is whether the FCC can regulate, not whether dirty jokes make old judges laugh.

"For McCain, being cool meant being a rogue, not a policy wonk; but Obama manages to be a cool College Bowl type...."

And it must irk McCain that the cooler cool these days is the nerd cool, says Maureen Dowd. Her column is all about the envy McCain must feel for Obama, but I wanted to focus on the transformation of cool.

Obama is making schoolwork, studying, and showing your braininess cool. That's good for the kids, people.

I love the new Paris Hilton ad — discussed in the previous post — because she — the emblematic airhead — now sees it in her interest to act really smart. She probably is reasonably smart: She's built a very successful career while making it look effortless. It was cool to (seem to) be a big dummy. And she's picked up the new trend: Being openly intelligent.

What a great trend!

Paris Hilton does a pro-McCain ad!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Oh? You think it's not pro-McCain? Explain why!

(And I'll tell you why you're wrong.)

ADDED, 12 hours later: I guess I owe you an explanation. My reason for calling this a pro-McCain ad is this. First, of course, Paris Hilton is promoting herself, as she always does. She exploited the opportunity that the McCain ad gave her, as she exploits every opportunity. That's very free-market capitalistic of her, but that's not my big reason. McCain's ad presented her as an airhead (for the purpose of suggesting that Obama is also an airhead), so here she is suddenly being very smart. Her ad has her saying something that we are supposed to accept as exactly what a very smart person would say if they weren't limited by constraints of party politics. She presents her answer on oil as a "hybrid" of the 2 candidates' positions, but listen to it! It's McCain's position. She supports off-shore drilling, with appropriate environmental safeguards, as we encourage the development of alternative energy sources.

That's McCain's position! Secret message of the ad: The smart position is McCain's position and not Obama's.

Now, you might want to say that all that funny stuff at the beginning about McCain's age is anti-McCain. No, it's not! It's McCain's position. McCain is constantly making jokes about how old he is. How many times has he said "I'm older than dirt and more scarred than Frankenstein"?

Finally, Hilton is giving the "biggest celebrity" ad another big boost. That ad has already worked, but it was coming to the end of it's life cycle. Hilton jolted it back alive.



FROM THE COMMENTS (that predate my explanation): Ben (The Tiger) said:

How is it pro-McCain?

1. Well... there's no hint of pulling back from her lifestyle. Looking to where she can fly next is not unlike McCain's call for the sound of fifty thousand Harleys.

2. Her position is very much like McCain's -- drill, but not everywhere. (I'd prefer more drilling.)

3. If she really wanted to skewer McCain, she'd do more than make fun of his age in a way that he did himself on SNL.

4. Obama not seriously engaged.

5. Again, she's not backing down from the American life of excess. There will be no scolding of people's life choices. That doesn't fit with the environmentalist movement.

6. She left the door totally open for the McCain riposte -- "Paris Hilton supports drilling! Paris Hilton has a better energy policy than Barack Obama!"

***

So the ad's objectively pro-McCain.

Was it intentionally pro-McCain?

I suspect so -- I don't think she's dumb.

But then, I'm prejudiced -- I'm a McCain fan.

Beldar said:

I don't think the ad's intentions, other than furthering the popularity ambitions of Ms. Hilton, are at all clear.

Because I already had a view of Obama as (mostly) humorless and of McCain as being willing to poke fun at himself ("older than dirt"), I was inclined to take her comments about the "really old guy" as fond teasing. But honestly, that's me projecting sly wit onto Ms. Hilton that I'm not at all sure she intended.

The ad does McCain palpable damage by its strong suggestion that he opposes conservation. He doesn't. As others have pointed out, what she describes as the "Paris Hilton position" is in fact essentially the McCain position (a combination of prudent development and conservation). In fairness, the McCain campaign itself has muddied these waters by choosing to lampoon Obama for suggesting that people check their tire pressure, which in fact is a perfectly good conservation suggestion, albeit wholly inadequate by itself.

I'm not at all sure why, Prof. A, you think this video cuts so unequivocally in McCain's favor. I think you may be crediting the "average" viewer, or at least large numbers of viewers, with more subtlety and discrimination than they in fact possess, but I eagerly await your promised explanation.

Ben (The Tiger) responds:

I want to see Althouse's explanation, but I think it's telling that almost all the right-wingers whose reactions I've read think that the spot was charming, whatever else they've thought about Paris Hilton in the past. (And I do, too.)

Yeah, and Beldar, the unclarity of Hilton's position is what makes it effective. An openly pro-McCain ad would not be effective. Her above-party-politics pose is .... hot.

Greg Toombs said...

The ad is 90% about McCain (when it's not about Paris) and 10% the 'other guy'/Barack.

Specific McMentions:

1) He's the oldest celebrity in the world
2) like super old
3) dancing a sin & beer in a bucket examples
4) is McCain ready to lead
5) wrinkly, white-haired guy
6) thanks, white-haired dude
7) Paris' energy plan endorses McCain's drilling plus his $300 million battery prize
8) three McCain pictures - none of Barack

It's all about McCain.

When it's not about Paris.

J Lee said:

What makes the ad pro-McCain in large part isn't just what it says, but the McCain camp's reaction to the ad.

Watching how the morning network news shows tried to play it today, the spin was "Paris Hilton strikes back at McCain ad", which is where it would have stayed if they had their way. Unfortunately, they were forced to also cover the McCain camp's reply that credited Ms. Hilton with having a better energy policy than Barack Obama. Had the McCain camp responded with the same sort of humorless "whatever" remark the Obama people did, it would have freed up the big media folks to paint this exclusively as a slap-down of Maverick and his original ad.

Now, here's something different, and very smart, from LB-Philadelphia PA (who has only commented once before, back last year):

Has anyone else picked up on the subliminal racism of the "best tan" comment? I mean, Obama is seriously tanned and he's from Hawaii. It's code, I tell you, code!

Interesting, but is that pro- or anti-Obama point?

Views from the Santa Monica pier.

On the beach, a statement about the war:



Take a step back:




I told you Obama is everywhere. And, hey, he really is the biggest celebrity in the world. He's literally overshadowing Paris Hilton, and I don't even see Britney Spears.

ADDED: Enlarge that celebriphoto. I think that's Britney in the back next to Johnny. Depp. (Not McCain!)

MORE: Here's a description of the memorial, which is called Arlington West and is put up by Veterans for Peace. I see that the crosses represent the deaths in Iraq, with red crosses signifying 10 deaths (so that the monument, which appears on Sundays, does not get larger over time, just more red). I couldn't find a discussion of why the Veterans for Peace thinks crosses are appropriate for all of the dead, since not all were Christians.

"I’m so overexposed, I’m making Paris Hilton look like a recluse."

Hey, Obama started it!

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world... O-BA-MA... O-BA-MA..."

He's a big celebrity, like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton... and gas prices are terrible.... get it? Being really famous and popular often goes along with being an empty nitwit, so if Obama is famous and popular, he's probably an empty nitwit. And gas prices are terrible.

∴ McCain.

It's logic!

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage sings:

O-Ba-Me
O-Ba-Ma
Life goes on, brah!
La la how the life goes on.

When Larry trapped Paris.

It was mostly bland as hell, but there was one point in his interview with Paris Hilton where Larry King punctured her glossy veneer. She was all about how jail had transformed her and how she's going to devote herself to good causes -- children, homeless women, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis -- and she said she read a lot of books in jail. Really improving herself, you know. But then it seemed like the only thing she was reading was all the fan mail. Eventually, we hear about one book: the Bible. Did she read it every day? Yes! What's your favorite Bible passage? Uh, I don't really have a favorite....

The dogs of the day, summer 1982.

Memories of the Chipwich -- see previous post -- led me back to this article (TimesSelect link) about the fads of the summer of 1982:

Down coats and spinach salads, high-tech sofas and sauces nouvelles, Rubik's Cube and the Chipwich, cats and Donkey Kong, Izod shirts and sequined head antennae, sesame noodles and the resurgent miniskirt - all have burst upon us sporadically.

Bursting resurgent miniskirts... remember?

Sequined head antennae... haven't thought about them in a long while.

Now it is the time of the akita. The akita is a dog, simply a dog with a certain historical cachet, to be sure, of an ancient breed native to Japan and apparently possessing an admirable character, but just a dog. Yet undeniably the akita is the New York dog of the moment, and to have one is to be exceptionally modish.

What a lucky dog, to have been the dog of the moment.

Linda Ronstadt and Yoko Ono own akitas, and one buyer confessed that he had bought one because Judith Jameson, the dancer, has one. On Sunday mornings the small Village park at Horatio and Hudson Streets becomes a gathering place for akitas and their owners, a place for the dogs to play and their owners to preen over pets burdened with such names as Mick Jagger, Dr. Pangloss, Mercedes, Gorm, Black Shogun and Kuma, the last meaning ''bear'' in Japanese.

Ah, for the days when one longed to be like Linda Ronstadt and Yoko Ono.

And yet, Yoko Ono was on Larry King last night. Tonight, Larry's got this summer's fad, Paris Hilton.

How will you think about her -- if you survive so long -- a quarter century from now? Will all the meaningless little things seem deeply evocative? They will -- if you are still alive.

Do not neglect to love the sequined head antennae of today.

Women are so very competent, so why do we stare at the screw-ups?

Naomi Wolf ponders the complexities of why we care what happens to Paris Hilton. Why, she asks, when real women manifest "high levels of competence, idealism and all-around effectiveness," do we obsess over pop culture screw-ups? Wolf considers one possibility, in the most interesting paragraph of her essay, and then embraces her preferred answer, that women these days are doing so well handling all their responsibilites that we "sometimes we get tired of our own competence" and want the "escapism" of fantasizing about the alternative of "letting it all go to pieces and having someone else clean up the mess."

But let's look at the paragraph where she allows herself to says something that doesn't fit quite so neatly into her praise for the wonderful, hypercompetent women of today:

On some deep level, there's a generalized feeling that women's vulnerability equals the guarantee of receiving a reliable supply of their love and care. There's an anxiety that if women become too strong, too independent, we won't be able to count on them to nurture and they won't need love. Because men, children and (not to put too fine a point upon it) the whole edifice of human civilization depend on women's willingness to nurture, it's scary to take a step into the unknown -- to see if women will continue to love if they're really free to choose whether to do so. (We will, of course, but it will take a generation or so of proof for everyone to calm down about it.)

Oh, no! A scary thought! Wolf immediately inserts a parenthetical denying that the liberation of women could actually upset something significant. And don't think she's the one who's scared by the cause and effect she was able to envision.

It's your problem: Calm down. Surely, you don't want to be among the retrograde characters who are going to take "a generation or so of proof." What's with these people not instinctively seeing how good progress simply must be? They actually need to see and observe the consequences of social change before they can join me and all the other good people who know that this will all work out for the best?

But let's think about these deep feelings. What if many of the most competent, strong, and independent women choose to not to form families? What if the ability to do everything for yourself gives rise a preference for remaining free of all of the extra burden of taking care of the needs of others? What if ambition to excel in public life causes many women to embrace the simplicity and freedom of an independent private life? These are perfectly rational questions, not mere hysteria or antifeminism. Wolf tries to package the questions away into the matter of whether women will "continue to love," which is a crude simplication. Oh, yes, Naomi, love, love, love. We'll always want to love.

And then it's back to the boosterism: Women are soooooo competent.

***

Of course, there's a much easier way to explain our obsession with celebrity screw-ups. Why do we stare at a car wreck instead of constantly marveling at all the cars that proceed expeditiously along the highway without incident? What's with all this news from a war zone when there so many peace zones? Why does the newspaper have an obituary page instead of running notices telling us that people are not dead yet?

"I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage."

Said Paris Hilton, talking about jail and claiming that it's time for her to stop playing dumb. She might start by realizing that jail is a cage. And that everyone feels terrible about going there.

But I look forward to the new Paris Hilton, the one who says, "Now, I would like to make a difference. ... God has given me this new chance." I just hope this making a difference business doesn't involve adopting children or letting us know what's wrong with the government or... Actually, I might prefer the old Paris Hilton -- minus the drunk driving.

UPDATE: Okay, I allowed myself to be suckered into TiVo'ing "The View." Barbara Walters reports that Hilton said she's 26 and too old to act dumb anymore, that's it been "an act," and that she'd like to offer something better to the "young girls who've looked up to" her. (Did anyone actually look up to her?) "I have become much more spiritual." God has helped her. Elisabeth Hasselbeck approves: "God is there!"

Ah, the cause is not children or political: It's breast cancer or multiple sclerosis. Good choice. Hilton wants to build "a Paris Hilton Playhouse" for sick children. (Sorry, that sounds so wrong.)

She's got a spiritual advisor who apparently told her that "her spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen and that is why I was sent to jail." (Sounds similar to a psychologist opining that she felt guilty and was seeking punishment.) "God has released me." Joy Behar: "But the judge hasn't."

She's reading books and newspapers. What book? Guess? Of course: "The Secret."

"Mom, Mom, Mom.... It's not right."

Paris Hilton sent back to jail.

ADDED: Some description from the Daily News:

Dressed in a gray sweatshirt over slacks, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing no makeup, the spoiled 26-year-old bawled throughout the hearing. She dabbed her eyes, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and her body shook constantly. Several times she turned to look at her parents, who were seated behind her in the courtroom....

"The defendant is remanded to county jail to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence," he said. "This order is forthwith."

That's when Hilton started screaming.

She's certainly figured out how to maximize the publicity value of going to jail. Didn't Paris Hilton originally find her way into the national consciousness by somehow become the victim of supposedly unintentional publicity?

MORE: The NYT -- which really is classier than the Daily News -- gives us not only more law but more politics. Excerpt:

“She’s a pawn in a turf fight right now,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles. “It backfired against her because she’s a celebrity. She got a harsher sentence because she was a celebrity. And then when her lawyer found a way out of jail, there was too much public attention for it to sit well with the court.”

The struggle between the judge and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, incited indignation far beyond the attention normally paid to a minor criminal matter.

Judicial and police officials here said they were inundated with calls from outraged residents and curious news media outlets from around the country and beyond. The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, decried Ms. Hilton’s release as an example of “double standards,” saying consideration was given to a pampered rich girl that would never have been accorded an average inmate.

Even the presidential candidate John Edwards found himself drawn into the debate. When asked about Ms. Hilton’s release on Thursday he said, “Without regard to Paris Hilton, we have two Americas and I think what’s important is, it’s obvious that the problem exists.”

"Pawn in a turf fight" is not a mixed metaphor as long as you consider chess a turf fight... which it kind of is. As for John Edwards... ask him a question and he's got an answer: two Americas.

Paris Hilton out of jail.

After only 3 days. Some "medical" problem. They won't tell us what it is. Maybe all the other prisoners would fake it.

ADDED: Nicole Richie can stop praying now.

MORE: TMZ says the "medical" problem was an impending nervous breakdown. Is everyone going to fake that now? There's a poll over there, and 93% of the readers are not believing it.

Was that equal justice for Paris Hilton?

She was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving (more than once) on a license that was suspended because she was caught driving with a blood alcohol level of .08%, the point where violation of the law begins. (If only she'd been a tiny bit less skinny, would she have had a few drops more blood and scored a .o79?)

She will not be allowed any work release, furloughs, use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled after a hearing....

She was then ordered to report to a women's jail in suburban Lynwood by the set date or face 90 days behind bars. The judge's ruling excluded her from paying to serve time in a jail of her choice, as some violators are allowed to do....

"I can't believe that either attorney did not tell her that the suspension had been upheld," the judge said. "She wanted to disregard everything that was said and continue to drive no matter what."

It seems obvious to me that she's being treated worse because of her celebrity, though I can see how you could say that she acted different -- flouting the law -- because of her celebrity. Even so, she didn't deserve that much. Start here if you want to read what other bloggers are saying. I think Jeralynn Merritt gets it right. There's something surpassingly creepy about the lefty bloggers like TRex who burst with pleasure when the overbearing power of the state comes down on someone they happen not to like. (And take a look at the comments on that TRex post if you want to get an idea of what kind of nitwits make up the big traffic at FireDogLake.)

ADDED: I wish people wouldn't take one phrase from this post out of context as if I'd made a flat assertion that she was treated worse. I'm basically asking the question and saying that I support equal treatment. I don't want her treated worse or better. I'm also saying that it makes me sick when people gloat when someone is sent to jail. I think it's wrong to enjoy seeing someone suffer, even if that person is terrible. (I've said it before.)

"With Anna Nicole, she was pathetic but at the same time you thought, 'Gosh, if I could just scoop you up and fix things, it would be OK...."

"You wouldn't want to scoop up Paris Hilton.'"

Ah, yes. The classic two types of hyper-sexualized women -- the kind you think you can help, who just really need you, and the ones who seem ready to crush you if you came anywhere near. Anna Nicole is to Paris Hilton as Marilyn Monroe is to Madonna.