correction and continuation

I apologize to poor Paris. I minimized her suffering. She actually spent somewhere between 72 and 75 hours in jail, depending on which report was accurate. Either way that is more that the 24 I mentioned. This story has been going on so long I lost tract of time.

Since then the Judge has ordered her back to jail for the full 45 days less time served. According to MSNBC the Sheriff decided to allow her to serve her time under house arrest all on his own. He further commented that he thought she got a tougher sentence than other young celebrities charged with similar offenses. First point: last I heard it isn't a sheriff's job to change the terms of a sentence. That prerogative belongs to a judge. Second point: it doesn't really matter what he thought of the toughness of her sentence. It is merely his job to carry out the sentence, not adjust it to meet his notions of fairness.

To tell the truth, however, I am heartily sick of all these celebrities acting up, getting loads of publicity, going into rehab, apologizing abjectly and going out to sin again. I am also heartily sick of the fact that I can't get away from them unless I am willing to cut myself off totally from everything else that goes on. The nightly news leads off with these stories and covers them in nauseating detail. Then follows up with blow by blow coverage of the latest fight masquerading as whatever ball game until they are forced to give the scores as the time for the segment runs out. Between the two, and the commercials, we get precious little news.

I wish the mainstream media would take the example of the Kentucky restaurant owner who refused to serve O.J. Simpson Derby weekend. I wish they would 'just say no' to Paris, Lindsay, Brittany, and David (Hasselhoff). But then the networks would actually have to hire real reporters. And wouldn't that be awful. I shouldn't be so hard on the news readers, though. Several times they gave the story their campiest best and even asked if they really had to read 'this stuff.' Somebody, somewhere, has decided that this crap is what the audience really wants to hear. I, for one, don't; but no one is listening to me.