Paris Hilton Goes to Jail

Last week many Americans shared a collective giggle when a Los Angeles judge ordered celebrity Paris “the Heiress” Hilton to 45 days in jail for violating her suspended driving status for the second time. The party princess had been on probation after pleading no contest to a drunk driving charge back in 2006.

Paris Hilton now comes in the can! Will everyone’s favorite celebrity socialite spend 45 days in the slammer this summer? Stay tuned.

Just in case you’ve been holed up in a cavern without television, radio or a subscription to People, and have no idea who Paris Hilton is, let me clue you. Young Ms. Hilton is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton and one of the heirs to his vast hotel empire. She is also, along with Nicole Richie, one of the stars of the FOX-TV show The Simple Life.

The premise of The Simple Life is to take two fabulously wealthy, incredibly spoiled, double-digit IQ-ed, West Coast socialites (Hilton and Richie) and throw them into situations where they have to interact with ordinary Americans. Hi-larious!

I have to admit that I watched a couple of episodes of The Simple Life and was mildly entertained by the sight of these two dimwits traipsing through America’s heartland thinking they were more clever by half than the real people who were fixing the girls’ luxury car and making them dinner.

But this week, I had to wonder, what is it about Paris Hilton that makes some of us gleefully enjoy the fact that she might have to spend the better part of the tanning season behind bars? Do we really dislike her that much? Or is it a feeling of satisfaction that, despite her fame and money, she is just one of us in the eyes of the law? It doesn’t matter if you’re Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson or the King of Siam, drive drunk in America and we’ll show you the inside of a jail cell, by gosh!

That made the second time in a week that I asked myself serious questions about the concept of “equal protection under the law” and why that idea is such a cornerstone of our American way of life. The first time that I pondered the concept was when I learned that the House had passed legislation on May 3rd to “expand federal hate crime categories to include violent attacks against gays and people targeted because of gender” to existing hate crime legislation. The new legislation passed 237-180 and basically it makes it easier for federal law enforcement officials to take part in local prosecutions involving bias motivated attacks.

I guess I have a problem with hate crime legislation because it contradictorily goes too far yet doesn’t go far enough.

For example, all of the federally enacted hate crime legislation that is on the books today makes no mention of several large subclasses of Americans such as the elderly, the military, or the extremely obnoxious (you know who you are). And what if someone picks a fight with someone else because he thinks the person is an illegal immigrant? After the fight, the first guy learns that he just traded punches with an American of Samoan heritage. Does the federal government get involved because the first guy’s assault was based on bad information? Or would they step in to prosecute someone for hate crimes against illegal immigrants at all?

Proponents of hate crime legislation love to remind us about Brandon Teena, a young Nebraska transsexual depicted in the movie Boys Don’t Cry, who was raped and murdered by two young men after it was discovered that she was biologically female and posing as a male. They try to make it sound like Nebraska authorities wouldn’t take rape and murder seriously without the help of the federal government.

The other misconception about hate crime legislation is that it implies that without it local authorities can legally keep federal authorities away from a criminal investigation if they want to. With all of the new Homeland Security legislation in place, you can bet your bottom dollar that federal law enforcement officials can assist on any case they want to, most of the time with the full cooperation of local lawmen.

Sure, hate crime legislation sounds like a good idea, especially if you fall into one of the groups that it is supposed to protect. But you have to ask yourself, if you are gay or African-American or in a religious minority: do you really want the United States government recognizing you as a subclass of American citizenry? One that needs special protection and special laws?

You also have to ask yourself why the AARP and other organizations that look out for the elderly are not exactly tripping over themselves in an attempt to make that special interest group included in the new hate crime legislation. Maybe older people have seen this sort of “separate but equal” legislation before and want no part of it.

My point is that we should make sure we have a justice system in this country that protects all victims of violent crime. In my opinion every violent crime is on some basic level a hate crime. Let the punishment fit the crime, regardless of the status of the criminal or the victim. If there is an element of hate or prejudice that is part of the motivation in the crime, let the local courts figure it out and decide accordingly if a stiffer punishment is merited during the sentencing phase of the trial.