A post by Maynard
Did you catch the anguished scream interrupting the Superior Court spokesman’s announcement that Paris Hilton was headed back to the pokey? It’s the climax of this CNN newsclip:
ALAN PARACHINI: The judge heard arguments, he heard out the County Council’s Office, representing the Sheriff, he heard the defense, he heard the City Attorney. He ruled that he was remanding Ms Hilton to the Sheriff’s custody to serve the remainder of her sentence at the Century Regional Detention Center.
MAN (yelling): No, no, no, no, no, no!
WOMAN: Shut up!
The gentleman who yelled was waving a sign proclaiming, “Liberate Paris”. It turns out he’s a writer for late night TV talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. He’d injected himself into the press corps, awaiting the opportunity to satirize the proceedings. The resulting chorus of groans and “shut up!”s might indicate that some of the participants took this farce a tad more seriously than a sane person would.
In Maynard’s humble opinion, this event is a circus, and it highlights some of the deficiencies of our criminal justice system. I’m not holding my breath waiting for reform to happen, but it’s worth remembering that things aren’t quite as they should be.
No offense, Maynard, but what exactly are you proposing as an alternative? Paris Hilton’s fame baffles me–she’s not remotely either talented or attractive, and people don’t get famous just by being rich–but when famous people get in trouble, it makes news. What else is new?
Lost in all this is that DUI is not a joke. I’ve tried more than a dozen of them and plead hundreds more, and while drunk people are admittedly entertaining, behind all of that remains the fact that when you mix alcohol with the deadly weapon a car actually is, people die. Every DUI is a DUI manslaughter prevented.
Yeah, Maynard, no kiddin. But do you really want to poke that balloon? Most of us that hang around here and other like-blogs could go on for pages with observations in that vein. Dave J pointed out a significant part of it. But Paris is just a festering boil that shows a serious underlying infection that has multi-multi-multi levels and facets. We, us, U.S., have allowed Holly-wierd to set the societal standard of conduct for too many years. Holly-wierd isn’t what it used to be, and in some respects, that’s too bad. Used to be it had people of charactor and class, no not perfect by any means, but they had class. Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Bing Crosby, Sam Levinson and Johnny Carson, of course. And many others long gone. But there are no longer those statesmen (and states-women) to fill their shoes. Hence, the Lindsay Lohans and Hilton/Ritchies and their co-horts abound, now. Paris is where she is because of her wrong decisions. But her parents bear the brunt of the responsibility for pampering her and never (seemingly) holding her accountable for her actions. Now the court must perform that duty. And of course, her mother’s bleatings abound, “my poor baby”. The problem arises from disfunctional parents raising disfunctional children who grow up (at least age/number-wise)to be disfunctional adults. They become disfunctional lawyers (jeez, another balloon you don’t want to poke), disfunctional congressmen (!), senators, presidents, judges, actors, actresses and the list goes on. Hence you wind up with an increasingly disfunctional society that becomes a septic tank of stench from border to sea to border, etc. It may not be totally that bad but unless we can turn this “Titanic” around, it’s heading there. I do choose to have hope that we can. There has been a significant outcry about the immigration situation and the Paris-release situation that there may be enough of us to accomplish something positive. Yes, the next election will tell. We have lots of work to do. Are we up to it? I pray we are.