The most disturbing part of this entire Paris Hilton prison debacle is not, as previously suspected, that it has forced me to sympathize with Paris Hilton, but rather that it has now forced me to link approvingly to Christopher Hitchens, who only just last night I was calling "a nasty, useful idiot for the neo-cons."

And now here I go, clearing my throat as above before deciding to do something I would have never believed I would do, and choosing to write about Paris Hilton. Choosing to write about her, furthermore, not just as if she were some metaphor or signifier, but as a subject in herself. At some point toward the middle of last Friday, it seemed to me, one was being made a spectator to a small but important injustice. Those gloating and jeering headlines, showing a tearful child being hauled back to jail, had the effect of making me feel sick. So, you finally got the kid to weep on camera? Are you happy now?