We'll always have Paris...oy...if you want to or not

When I got up this morning to run an errand, the radio was talking about Paris Hilton... when I logged on to check my e-mail the top news blurb on Yahoo was of Paris Hilton... When I turned on the noon news on TV, the top news spot was about Paris Hilton.

We are a nation obsessed with celebrity... or non-celebrity that somehow ended up at every party that celebrities attended and like a Yellow-Beak Toko bird on the head of a rhino, leaching off the remains to sustain itself.

I akin it to the Greeks and their soap opera of gods. For some reason this socialites imprisonment is the top news story of the day. More important than Iraq or the toppy turvy stock market or even the fist fight that broke out in in a state congress down south (yes it doesn't only happen in other countries).

We just have to know no matter what other stories are out there... I wonder what's going on in Iraq or Congress or downtown (thank you Divertor!.

Thank goodness for foreign media, online news and my newspaper subscription so I can get other news.

It's frustrating! I mean, that whale in the Sacramento delta story was all the local news cared about last week... we finally get rid of that one (the whales made it back out to sea, you can 'awww' now) and now we have Hilton-gate 2007 (because you know there will be a 2008... 2009... actually, we better just rename that Hilton-Gate June07 now before July comes around.)

KGO radio talk show host Ron Owens devoted an hour to Hilton-Gate June07 this morning on his program and tried to justify it by playing up the "is there justice?" "Do celebrities get treated differently?" "Does being rich and white get you out of jail?" angles. Oh just admit that you're as giddy as a gossiping middle school girl about the whole thing and enjoy yourself Ron, no need to carry the manufactured air of civic duty on this one. (We know you like to have fun.)

Mercury News Columnist Mike Cassidy put it another way, "I don't want to see another word written about Paris Hilton. Not one. No more blog posts. No more graffiti on the bathroom walls. No more pictures of Paris. I don't want to see Paris Hilton in her jumpsuit. I don't want to see her in underwear. I don't want to see her not in her underwear. Think of all the trees that can be saved by American newspapers."

I had planned to ignore the story as much as possible just like I've ignored every other celebrity story thus far, but late in the evening as I logged on to check my mail there was an AP video awaiting me and wouldn't you know it, once again, Paris-Gate June07. (Aurggh!)

The nation was on the highest alert-- Prada alert (that's still hot right?).

So just out of curiosity I decided to see just how widespread it was getting. I already knew about the numerous petitions that people were signing, but I wanted to see what else was going on. Call it a psydo-Anthropological study (more like I'm bored and was going to do it anyway, so why not write about it).

A search for the phrase "Paris Hilton, jail" turned up these results:

-Technoratii hits- I'm only seeing 23... wow, woulda expected more... maybe there's hope for humanity yet. Or the bloggers are all to busy talking about google videos newest developments.

-YouTube videos- I'm not sure, a lot! I'm just amazed that there's already parody music videos up and running. And pretty slick ones to.

-Her MySpace page- got bored and stopped counting.

-Google blog search hits- over 3,600,003... sad.