A: You just don’t get it, do you? Where I come from–New York City–Paris Hilton is a very important person; she’s a socialite, an heiress, a party girl. She’s even doing some modeling now, so you know she’s important. Even before her latest escapade–the supposedly unauthorized release of a video of her having sex with her then-boyfriend Rick Solomon–Paris Hilton was always in the papers. Here’s Paris drinking a bit too much at a fashion show! There’s Paris making out with a girl after drinking too much at a fashion show!
OK, I get it. She’s one of those people who are famous for being famous. But she’s also heir to the Hilton hotel fortune. Hasn’t she done anything with her life?
There you go again. Rather than justify your insolence by answering, I called up my pal, Richard Johnson, editor of The New York Post’s world-renowned gossip section, “Page Six,” and asked him why Paris Hilton deserves fame when she has achieved so little.
Johnson resented the question: “Who achieves anything, really? She’s rich. She’s young and she’s pretty. And she’s much more fun than any of the other girls out there. If you go to a party and she shows up, a feeling goes through the crowd that this is the right place to be. I can’t explain it, but that’s what happens. I’m a big Paris Hilton fan.”
OK, I’ve asked you enough stupid questions, but now I really want to know: How hot is the videotape itself?
The three-minute segment that everyone has downloaded by typing the obvious keywords into Google is, alas, disappointing. It’s filmed in a pitch-black room, forcing Solomon to employ the “night vision” feature on his camcorder. Now, most of you probably don’t realize that you even have a “night vision” feature on your camcorder, but you’re not missing much. Instead of letting me watch two people formicate, the whole thing looks like one of those propaganda videos of “successful” missions in Iraq that the Pentagon is always showing. I didn’t know if I was watching two people have sex or a misguided sequel to “The Blair Witch Project.”
The action opens with an extreme close-up of a particular variety of sexual intercourse that appears to be as about exciting to Hilton as doing her own food shopping. In the second segment, Hilton mugs for the camera like a Broadway chorus girl trying to catch the director’s eye. She’s about to initiate intercourse when her cellphone starts ringing. (Those damn cellphones! Remind me to stop having sex with socialites or heiresses.) Good sex, this ain’t.
Sounds like you’re not troubled by the morality of the video, just the production values.
Look, my sources tell me that men and women have sex, so why should I be bothered by the evidence that it’s true? But I am increasingly concerned about the quality of celebrity sex videos. At least Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee cavorted in broad daylight! At least Rob Lowe got it on with two people!
What did your wife think of the Paris Hilton tape?
My wife really likes clean hotel rooms, so she was most appalled that the Hilton-Solomon copulation occurred on top of a hotel comforter and not between the sheets, where it belongs. “You know, even good hotels never wash those comforters!” she said.
What kind of person films himself having sex?
I really don’t know. I’ve never done it, personally (I have some body-image issues, if you must know) so, thankfully, Hilton’s publicist offered her opinion last week.
“Not everybody indulges in that, but couples do it sometimes and it’s just for themselves, for fun,” said the publicist, Siri Garber. (Remind me to never sleep with someone with a publicist.)
Why is the country so obsessed with celebrity sex lives that we’ll even get obsessed with the sex life of a borderline celebrity?
There you go again. This story is bigger than just celebrity humping. In that grainy, night-vision glow, Paris Hilton has done more than shine a light on several sexual positions that I can’t wait to try out. No, she has cast a shadow over an entire nation that doesn’t know whether to enjoy sex or condemn it.
And I would be remiss without a shout-out to my esteemed benefactor, Rupert Murdoch, who made the most of the Hilton story (full disclosure: He owns the New York Post, where I am proud to work). On his Fox News Channel, Murdoch unleashed the dogs of moral outrage. Meanwhile, Murdoch’s Fox Network heavily promoted Hilton’s “reality” show, “The Simple Life,” and gave it a prime spot on its crowded schedule. You don’t have to be a loyal Murdoch employee (and I swear that I am!) to admire that man’s dexterity.
How is “The Simple Life”? The previews I’ve seen make Paris Hilton’s sex video look like a big-budget Hollywood movie.
Hey, I don’t like such attitude from my artificial prose devices. But you’re right about this. “The Simple Life” is an abomination. Like all reality shows, this one has an egregious class element; namely, that spoiled Hilton and her equally spoiled best friend, Nicole “Daughter of Lionel” Ritchie, are sent to Arkansas, where they encounter Americans who may not have their money, but are possessed of values–a work ethic, morals, integrity, etc.–to which the socialites don’t even have the decency to aspire.
In one scene, Ritchie and Hilton are employed at Sonic, a fast-food burger chain. When their manager asks them to put out a sign advertising “Half-Price Burgers All Day,” they instead write, “Half-price anal salty weiner bugers” (although it’s not clear if they intentionally misspelled “buggers” or are just really dumb). The manager is appalled, but to Hilton and Ritchie, it’s all a big joke. Of course, the joke’s on them, as we see later, when the pair is forced to hose down the cow pens (although it’s not clear if the two little rich girls are disgusted by the smell of cows or just by having to work hard). The best moment of all comes when Ritchie complains that the cow urinated on her arm. One of the farmers, employing timing that Milton Berle would’ve envied, deadpans, “That’s not as bad as the stuff on your cheek.”
But it sounds to me that in Ritchie and Hilton’s whining, complaining and slacking off, Fox is actually making a counter-intuitive political statement of populism: If viewers can’t help rooting for the hard-working farmers and low-paid laborers against the elitist rich girls, isn’t that a powerful metaphor for the coming presidential race, too?
Hey, are you writing this, or am I?
