DanMargarita.com

The celebutante will be serving 23 days in Century Regional Detention Center in Los Angeles in a “special needs” unit. That refers to a place where celebrities, former police and other high profile inmates are kept away from the general population, and not a place where the mentally challenged live. Well, we are talking about a woman whose main claim to fame was starring in a widely circulated sex videotape. Usually, Ms. Hilton’s special needs include a hairstylist, a make-up person and a valet.

Of all of the people she has working for her, none of them seem to include a chauffer which would’ve spared her from a DUI arrest in September of ‘06. For her transgression, Ms. Hilton had her license suspended and was given probation. In January she was pulled over by police and signed a document acknowledging that she was not supposed to drive. Just over a month later she was pulled over yet again, and charged with violating her probation. If she can’t bother to hire someone to drive her, perhaps she could hire someone to read legal documents for her.

She was originally sentenced to 45 days but that was cut to 23 for “good behavior,” which I’m guessing is for managing to go six months without starring in another porn tape. Actually, court officials credit the good behavior for showing up at her court date as mandated. That seems to verify Woody Allen’s adage that “Eighty percent of life is just showing up.” I’ve yet to get a pat on the back from any boss for just showing up at my job when I’m supposed to.

She also failed to sign up for an alcohol education program that she was expected to, so I guess it really is to her credit when she was able to keep at least one appointment.

Ms. Hilton will be allowed out of her cell for at least an hour per day to shower, watch TV, get some outdoor recreation or talk on the phone. Welcome to her new real, reality show “The REALLY Simple Life.”

While it won’t be the comfortable quarters that she’s used to, Ms. Hilton will not exactly be suffering the harsh prison life that Paul Newman’s character did in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”
It might be more like “Any prisoner not finishing dinner will spend a night in…the spa” or “Now what we got here is…a failure…to share the TV remote.”

One could even reference older prison movies and picture Ms. Hilton rattling a tin cup across her prison bars and crossing days served off of a calendar, although she wouldn’t even need a full-month calendar for her sentence.

Fans of Ms. Hilton circulated an online petition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency, noting that she “didn’t hurt or kill anyone.”

Using that logic, Ms. Hilton could set a bomb off in Times Square, but shouldn’t have to serve time if it “didn’t hurt or kill anyone.”

The petition also says that she “has learned her lesson” yet she apparently didn’t by getting pulled over a second and third time. So, what makes them think she’s really learned her lesson now?

Her attorney Howard Weitzman, is quoted as saying that “she is being singled out because of who she is.” I assume he means because of her celebrity, and not as someone who has repeatedly violated her parole.

With her short sentence, I don’t expect that there will be any time to get a protest movement going. I don’t even think Bob Dylan would have enough time to write a song for her like he did for boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was convicted for murder in the 1960‘s.

“Here come the story of a socialite/who’s persecuted ‘cause she’s rich and white”

This whole story has been great fodder for the tabloid TV and newspaper industry, and I guess I’m just as guilty of complicity in giving this ink when there are much more important things going on in the world, but since I’m not a hotel heir, I gotta make a living, too.

No doubt, Paris Hilton will make news when she is released in two-and-a-half weeks, and for years afterward. So…

We’ll always have Paris.
(C’mon. You didn’t think I could pass that one up, did you?)