Karl Klockars

HEY you.  C’mere.  I wanna tell you something.  No, I can’t say it very loudly.  Someone might hear us.  This is the kind of thing that you don’t want getting around too much.  It’s like Freddy Krueger – the more that forget about this, the less likely anyone will come back.  Get it?  So keep this quiet.  But I have a theory.

The recession killed Paris Hilton.

Real? Wax? Does it matter?

I don’t know where this thought came from – it’s not like I sit around afternoons considering the current location and mindset of rich celebutantes, although if she were GPS tagged like a shark or an elephant I’d download the iPhone app to track her – but like a bolt from the blue, it hit me.

WHEN we were all fat, sassy and stupid rich, we couldn’t get enough of the pretty little casualty and her temporary tragedies.  Our tabloid brain was plugged into every move of her twiggy little limbs.  Each party appearance, each trip to the French Riviera with some new boytoy/herpes vector.  We watched them all.  Chicagoans and Bears fans will remember well the flood of vomit that came from seeing Princess Paris rocking an Urlacher jersey on Monday Night Football a few years back.  We couldn’t get enough.

That’s when we were riding high on home prices and crazy speculation and over-inflated stock markets.  It was a gilded age.  Every other morning, sites like the Drudge Report were bringing up people who were selling thousand-dollar caviar pizzas and hamburgers with gold baked into them and cocktails with rubies garnishing them.  No shit – we were crazy with fakeassed cash and we didn’t care who knew it.

As a result:  Paris Hilton.  She was our queen of indulgence, representative of our unearned overpriviledged society.  When we considered America, whether we liked it or not, we were Paris.  We have seen the enemy, and she is blonde and looks like she smelled something funny – and she is us.  All of this lasted for a good 4 years or so.  It was a good run.

When you're searching for Paris images, it's impossible to find ones that don't make you hate her.

THEN everything went to shit.  The coverage started trailing off throughout the Presidential campaign (when we started to think maybe we have more important shit to worry about), and when financial institution after financial institution imploded before our eyes, all things Paris were forgotten.  Oh, sure, we’ll still see stories here and there but for the most part, it’s all gone.  Gone like the gains on the markets, gone like the flippable condo units and the second homes purchased on home equity loans.  Gone like all those mortgage payments on overpriced real estate that we could never afford anyways.

Bam.  Stocks under 7k, no more Paris H.

WHY?  Why has she gone away when she was so ubiquitous before?  Why have we moved on to Jon and Kate?  Is it because now we need real people with real problems to focus our little tabloid brains on?  We’ve got enough shit going on in our own lives, that we need our celebrity spotlights cast on other people who have been screwed by existence as well?

Is it because we couldn’t stand looking at the personification of our greed-god-culture any more?  Because we knew that even as we were stuck holding the bag for the bankers and investment animals that made all their bank off of our duped-up hopes, she was indifferent to all of it?  Because as the world’s financial centers dried to dust, she was enjoying the same glass of Cristal, the same mink fur stole and same vagina-exposing dresses?  That we couldn’t stand looking that shell of a human in the “eyes” as we faced the facts that we’d destroyed our economy?  And she didn’t care?

"You'll never hear from me on this! Tee-hee!"

It was like the world fell in love with the girl that not only wouldn’t love you back, but would take the notes you sent her in school and share them with all her friends and make copies and give them to everyone you knew and humiliated you in front of everyone you might one day ever encounter.  And finally, we realized that she wasn’t healthy to be around.  And we turned a shoulder on her, a little bit wiser and with a lot of emotional scars, but eventually we moved on.  Our pockets are empty, but we’re a little bit better for not indulging ourselves in the slow poison of Paris.

RECENTLY, we’ve heard news that the recession is over.  That employment is on its way back up, the Dow is above 9000, people are buying cars again and maybe we’re not completely and totally screwed.  And now we have incontrovertable truth that our economy will soon be thriving and pulsating healthily and we’ll all be able to afford that diamond-encrusted ham sandwich we’ve been craving.

Do you know why?

Because MTV is very soon going to be running a Paris Hilton documentary.  Her tiny little life has filled 68 minutes of content as a beacon of hope unto the world.  (I could do 68 minutes on my life – how uninteresting can she be?)  It’s not the stock market.  It’s not the manufacturing world.  It’s not bonds and it’s not T-bills and it’s not leveraged accounts or real estate management.  It’s Paris.  Only Paris.  And she’s back.

At the beginning of this hunk of text, I told you to keep it down.  To stay quiet with this.  Because I thought she might get wind of someone talking about her, and use it to leverage her way back into our lives.  As it turns out, she’s way ahead of us.  And she’s bringing with her the good times again, people.  For better or worse, Paris is back.

And now, let’s all collectively turn away.