June 9, 2007
 
EDITORIAL: We Are But Visitors to Her World
 
By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
 
We hope Scooter Libby is taking notes. The former senior White House aide is facing 30 months in federal prison and can't seem to catch a break.
 
Facing 45 days in county jail, Paris Hilton talked her way out after four, persuading the L.A. County Aheriff Lee Baca to let her serve the remainder of her sentence under house arrest in her West Hollywood mansion.
 
Libby is a longtime public servant who got caught up in the CIA leak investigation.
 
Hilton is a willowy blond heiress and high-school dropout who broke into the public conscious with a homemade sex tape.
 
Guess which one the public would rather hear about?
 
Ostensibly she was paroled to her manse because of unspecified medical conditions; the large Hilton press corps had hours of happy fun speculating. A mysterious rash? Suicidal tendencies?
 
Our own guess was that after even a brief time under 23-hour lockup in her cell, she began suffering from acute limelight deprivation.
 
No one can explain precisely what it is that Paris Hilton does, but whatever it is, she becomes the center of attention for doing it. Indeed, she is in demand simply to show up at parties, openings, product launches, anyplace with a red-carpet runway. Forbes estimates that in one year she was paid around $7 million for doing so, which she does with an expression of peculiar detachment.
 
Her early release created a most satisfying uproar. The sheriff's department and prosecutor's office were at each other's throats and, according to the Associated Press, it also "met with outrage from the sheriff's deputies union, members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, civil rights leaders, defense attorneys and others." And do not let us forget the talk shows.
 
All the uproar landed Hilton back in court, where the judge said that when he sentenced her to jail, he meant jail. By AP's account, Hilton, who arrived disheveled, weeping, hair askew and without makeup, was led away, screaming and crying and calling out to her mother. If she behaves, she can get out in less than 23 days.
 
Somehow it's unlikely this would work for Scooter Libby.
 
But the rest of us -- and cable TV, the celebrity mags, gossip columns, Hollywood insider shows, paparazzi -- can comfort ourselves with this thought: We'll always have Paris.
 
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