An Open Letter to Paris Hilton
Written During Her Incarceration


I hope this correspondence finds you as well as you might be all through these thorny, for you, times. I see no reason to rejoice about your imprisonment. You have been denuded, both physically and mentally, and set in a chamber which is in total contrariety to the standard of living you have experienced since your childhood. This is traumatic—it would be harrowing for any person regardless of his or her economic standing. Nevertheless, I also wish that your punishment will be used as a “breathing space” prompting you to reflect upon the entirety of your life and not just what has recently emerged concerning it.
As you contemplate, you might come to the very heart-rending realization that you have been manipulated ruthlessly. And not just by the adolescent-minded paps. By a whole nation, and more, which finds some perverse pleasure either in seeing you deprived of your deluxe way of life—something most of us have not—or in revelling in a Fantasyland genuinely desiring it had what you hold. You have been set up to be the sole recipient of a whole society’s guilt complex—one which marinates desperately in a vindictive GroupThink. You now know that the paps would have been even more pruriently comfortable if you had driven your car, in a state of intoxication, into some tunnel where it would have careened off some cement stanchion leaving your body in many broken, bloody pieces. And those indecorous paps, too, would have scurried with their digital cameras to the nearest news room to haggle over the price for the gory details surrounding your death. As a Vietnam veteran, I know well what it means to be the rubbish bin of the vicious collective consciousness of the schizoid citizens of the DisUnited States of Northamerica. You have my sympathy.
I will tell you straight away, Paris, why you are the most fortuitous woman in the DisUnited States. If you mull over your past with vigour, face some exceedingly disgusting facts, and use the innate intelligence I am convinced you retain, you will find yourself in the unique position of being able to formulate a resurfacing and, after, brandish a reprisal worthy of a finally-victorious field commander. The hour has arrived for you to claim your right to be respected as any other human being instead of being gazed at as the whipping girl of a confused, fickle, and sadistic society. That accomplished, you will assume the stature of a woman of dignity and charm and serve, in the future, as an admirable exemplar for all of us to imitate.

“Sail on Silver Girl, sail on high, your time has come to shine,
All your dreams are on their way…”
Bridge over Troubled Waters, Simon & Garfunkel


Your friend,
Tony


Written by Anthony St. John in Calenzano, Italy on the First Day of Summer, 2007