Paris Hilton is (relatively) free!

Why was Paris Hilton behind bars while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney still ran free? Even though she was guilty as hell, this still seemed grossly unfair.  Although it will seem unfair if Scooter Libby actually goes to jail.

This does at least means she will be unable to to invade Iran anytime soon.

Oh well, she was not behind bars for long. She served three days plus about two and a half hours, and the authorities decided that this amounted to five days, since she arrived just before midnight Sunday June 3rd, and left not long after midnight three nights later. She was released to 40 more days of house arrest (making 45 days of confinement in all.)

As often happens, the justice system found multiple ways to be unfair: on the one hand, they sent her to jail on charges which didn't warrant it, and on the other hand, they let her out for no good reason.  The judge made a big show of making her so hard time to show that she was no better than anyone else— no home confinment or other alternative sentence for Ms Hilton, no sireee!— but then once she was in jail the LA County Sheriff's department went ahead and reduced her sentence to house arrest.

It is strange how the justifiable public indignation at the rich and powerful gets directed at the wrong targets.  Paris is a basically harmless person: a lot of the vicious commentary about her ignores the fact that she is a fairly intelligent and successful 26-year old woman, but she does have a certain childlike quality to her.  She's not a menace to society.  Even when she was picked up for drunk driving, she was just barely over the limit. She is infinitely less dangerous than Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, etc.  And yet she is the one who is the target for our outrage today.

If all goes according to schedule, she will be stuck in her house in West Hollywood for 40 days until Tuesday, August 10, 2007. Politically (bearing in mind that she is highly apolitical), it probably would have been better if she could have just served her 23 days in jail. She was regarded with a certain amount of sympathy after she surrendered to the authorities, especially since she withstood some downright Limbaughvian abuse from Sarah Silverman at the MTV Movie Awards. But now she has even become the target of demonstrations: an African-American community group rallied in downtown LA the day she got out to demand an investigation into her early release.

Like I said in my intro, it seems like a shame that she went to the slammer, even if for just a few days, at a time when the likes of Bush & Cheney are allowed to run free.  Her excuses were lame, and she was blatantly scoffing at the law by continuing to drive.  But they weren't as lame as Bush's, and she hasn't killed anyone, and she hasn't even destroyed one country yet, let alone 3 and counting like Bush.