I'm sure all of of you have heard of Paris Hilton. You may have already known she was a super-model and heiress to the Hilton family fortune. Or you may, like me, have never heard of her until recently, when endless spam advertising videotape of her having sex
with a former boyfriend began flooding your in-box.

Since spammers only hawk something they know they can sell a lot of I wondered why there was such a huge appetite for the tape. It's not like there's a lack of porn involving comely blonde babes, after all.

The key? As well as being young and beautiful, she's the cream of high society. And people love to see the cream get, er, creamed (in more ways than one!).

But her fame continues to grow in the more "respectable" sections of the media, too. Why? Because people also like to see a loser have a win.

See, Paris Hilton didn't let the tape destroy her. After being laid so low she just dusted - or should that be toweled? - herself off, and hopped back onto the catwalk undaunted. As well as continuing with her modeling gigs, she even starred in her own reality TV
series. (The show co-stars Lionel Richie's daughter Nicole, who may well regret not having her own X-rated tape scandal to boost her profile!)

So the whole sordid episode was more of a blessing than a curse. It could even be seen as a valuable lesson in how to maximize one's level of celebrity:

You climb the pedestal and bathe in the limelight. After a while you slip and fall off it. Then you climb back up again. You cry: "Hey, paparazzi. I'm over here!" Then you scream: "No, leave me alone!  I want some privacy, okay?" You become a public obsession, then a pubic one. On and off, back and forth, up and down you go - while the tabloids document your every move and utterance.

Another celeb who employed a similar technique (albeit unconsciously) was Princess Diana. Although not of royal blood, she joined that club through marriage. She, like Paris, slummed it with a lover well below her station: the appalling cad and bounder James Hewitt. (And there was another, unrelated similarity: she died in Paris, and often stayed at the Hilton. Spooky, eh?)

Okay, Princess Di didn't have the porn video. But someone did make audio tapes of her phone conversations which revealed all the salacious goings on. And there were many scandalous letters (including one eerily predicting her own demise that has
recently thrown her story back into the media spotlight).

And in the end, Di didn't just slum it, she slammed it - slammed it with a lethal finality! Getting into that car that night (and not buckling her seat-belt) guaranteed her much greater, more enduring fame than any survivable error of judgment could have done.

So, I say to any wannabe celebs: I hope you have learned from these lessons.

And if you want to outdo both Paris and the Princess? Well, then die violently in a car crash while making a porn video! You'll live eternally in the public mind, then.

END.



See more of Matt's politically incorrect rants and seriously twisted characters at:

www.geocities.com/matthaydenwriter