The Saga of the Poor Little Rich Girl

And Lo! The blonde celebutante allegedy cried out as they dragged her away in handcuffs and tears, "Mom! Mom, it isn't fair!"

She's been talked about in many circles. A million cameras have flashed her picture as she hawked her CD, fragrance or her reality show. But, Paris Hilton must take comfort in knowing that her latest exploit had even eclipsed news of the replacement of General Pace and the tummy trouble of President Bush. Friday, the cameras followed her as she hugged her mother in front of her plush, Hollywood Hills home to the cold confines of L.A. Superior Court in police car 865. The melodrama had hit a high point as court drawings had depicted the hotel heiress sobbing as the judge lowered the gavel on her attempts to circumvent the law. The judge wasn't having it. He finally had lost his patience. After being sent to house arrest after a short, two-day stint in jail, Ms. Hilton was going back to stew in the cold, hard confines of another prison cell.

However, she will get treated for her alleged "medical issues" first. In the press, some aliments ranged from "a nervous breakdown" to a "rash". Even Ms. Hilton ought to realize that there are prisoners within the confines of lock-up who have worse problems than hers. Why couldn't the medical staff in her first place of incarceration step in instead of her own personal doctor and therapist? In the hoi polloi of the prison population, any prisoner who gets sick gets sent to the prison doctor. If they have mental illness, the prison psychological staff would be sent to see them.

Well, Ms. Hilton, what was wrong with seeing the medical help on the taxpayers' dime? I bet they are just as qualified as the fancy doctors that you pay for!

But, the most interesting thing in the saga of the poor, little rich girl is the world outrage against her house confinement. Not even in the case of Martha Stewart, had I ever seen such fury being vented by the hands of the public. As I talked about this with my mom and dad(and they watched the O.J. trial in full, too), they admitted that they were shocked at the outcry of the public when they found out Ms. Hilton was whisked away from her first incarceration point to stay within the confines of her mansion. To them, it was worse than the "country club prisons" one would often hear about when white collar, corporate convicts are sent away to pay for their penalties.

What especially fascinated my dad was the response of Nicole Richie. "I mean, David Letterman asked her how she was going to face her own DUI charges and she just laughed," he told me. "Would anyone else laugh at the gravity of such charges?"

Well, Dad, Ms. Hilton isn't laughing.

The astonishment and anger coming from the public is probably because they recognize that there is really a separate justice not only racially, but also in terms of class. Let's face it. Ms. Hilton is the victim of the American economy. Everyone is tired of seeing the rich get off of offenses that the commonplace United States citizen has had to be incarcerated over. The question has been asked over and over about what would happen to the any of us if we had to face the same charges as the heiress. Especially among Black folk, we wonder what would happen if any one of us were in front of the same judge. Would he have sentenced any of us to ten to twenty years in prison and be sent to the worst prison L.A. County has to offer?

Perish the thought.

We would have been quickly ushered among the nearly two million prison population in America without any way to appeal the case. The prison doors would slam in our faces mercilessly without any tsk tsking from the public at large. It's a sad, but true fact that if we were the ones in Ms. Hilton's Jimmy Choo shoes, we would have been
"just another statistic", without any money to hire a compentent lawyer to help us get out of it.

Ms. Hilton, who is now part of that same population, still has lots of money to fight her case without going into bankrupcy. For the rest of us, we would probably have to sell everything that we own to fight the charges that would be a drop in the bucket for the idle rich.

The famous? Well that differs in a way. When we think about celebrities of color (most notably O.J. Simpson), most have had to see the inside of jail cell. In the case of O.J. alone, he had to be incarcerated in prison for at least a year. The likes of Lindsday Lohan, Britney Spears and the rest of the bubble-gum, Hollywood crowd should be so lucky( in the case of Ms. Lohan, she was caught as being underage while under the influence by the authorities after her car crash).

And that's the problem. The outrage of seeing the rich get off of charges over the years has taken their toll.

We've had to witness high-profile client after high-profile client being let off while the everyday people we know or have read about in the crime digest pages of our local papers languishing in jail without anyone caring about their welfare. The outrage comes from the common knowledge that in a nation in which jobs are hard to come by while the oil companies profit, Ms. Hilton is another example of corporate greed representative of the one-percent of the uber-rich. What is worse, the American people are also tired of watching executive statements and the underlying falsities attached to them being used as a way to skirt away from wrongdoing. For that air of rareification, only the law has to be changed in order for the person in question to get away with it.

So, Ms. Hilton should take comfort. She's being treated in the medical ward now just like everyone else. She might be out in eighteen days due to good behavior. She's lucky in a way. People care about her. But would she be able to sleep at night knowing that there are other prisoners among her than no one cares about, let alone not getting the same preferential treatment as she does?