Columnist: It's Time for Paris Hilton to Pay Price
Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly says he’s open to letters or petitions calling for him to show mercy on hotel heiress Paris Hilton, now tearfully seeking a legal escape route out of her 45-day jail sentence for probation violation. The former actor can feel confident, however, that such a missive will not be forthcoming from Pulitzer prize-winning Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts.
Its about time, Pitts says, in his column today, that somebody held Hilton responsible for her “smug certainty that the rules do not apply to her,” not to mention the “the utter contempt she oozes for those who are not like her, i.e. not monied, privileged, pretty, white and heedless.”
Hilton reportedly told the judge in her case – after arriving late for court – that she is “a very busy person” who hired others to look at her mail and review the terms of her probation, so she wasn’t aware her driver’s license had been suspended, Pitts points out. Meanwhile, in a video of a party released earlier this year, Hilton refers to an unnamed person as ”a f—— hoodlum, broke, poor public school bitch from, like, Compton.” This working class municipality south of Los Angeles is perhaps most easily recalled as the home of a fictional hoodlum played by Samuel Jackson in the movie Jackie Brown.
Ironically, if her appeal of her sentence and petition to Schwarzenegger for a pardon aren’t successful, that is where Hilton is supposed to serve her time.
