So long, Paris

For years we've been paralyzed in the tractor beam of her brainless celebrity. Now it's time to kiss the creepy dollie goodbye.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Pop Culture, Britney Spears, Celebrities, Paris Hilton, Rebecca Traister, Life

Dec. 11, 2006 | You know that point in a Stephen King novel when you've sort of figured out that the creepy dollie -- the one with the plastic hair and serenely stupid eyes that roll in two different directions -- is actually an animate object wreaking havoc and destroying people and you wonder why the townspeople haven't cottoned on and crushed the damn thing under a truck or something?

I think it's safe to say we've reached that point with Paris Hilton. We need to acknowledge that Hilton is not simply a tabloid diversion but a malevolent blight on the pop culture landscape.

For too many years we have sat, paralyzed in the tractor beam of her wall-eyed celebrity, watching mutely as bad things happened to her band of D-list compatriots. We have witnessed the declining personal fortunes and liver health of her rotating cast of skuzzball BFFs, boyfriends and frenemies -- Bijou Phillips, Nicole Richie, Kimberly Stewart, Lindsay Lohan, Brandon Davis, Stavros Niarchos, Tara Reid -- because, really, who the hell were those people, anyway?

But then, a couple of weeks ago, Hilton started messing with Britney Spears, weighing down Spears' Phoenix-flight from her crapola marriage to grody Kevin Federline by dressing her up in tutus, taking her partying till all hours, and encouraging her to flash her whiskerless nether regions to paparazzi. Now, we all know that Spears is perfectly capable of attracting the interest of Child Protective Services all on her own. But this most recent visit from the state, as reported by Page Six last Wednesday, cuts deeper than any baby-dropping seat-belt infractions ever did. That's because we suspect that it has not been prompted simply by Spears' legendarily poor judgment or naiveté. No. Those unfortunate qualities just made her an easier mark for the pernicious influence of the world's most famous succubutante, and the rope line of gaunt, twitching bodies in Hilton's wake tips us off that it's unlikely to end well for her latest victim.

It's time to admit that Paris Hilton, that creepy dollie, must be destroyed. Metaphorically, of course.

Frankly, the time could not be more ripe for a recognition of Hilton's "Bad Seed" villainy. Even before her tabloid molestation of Spears, eyes were beginning to spring wide with comprehension. Three weeks ago, former "Saturday Night Live" head writer Tina Fey told Howard Stern about her antipathy for Hilton, calling the heiress a selfish, untalented, brainless "piece of shit" "SNL" guest host who is "unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is," and left "nasty wads of Barbie hair" on the floor of the studio. Meanwhile, conservative Manhattan Institute writer Kay S. Hymowitz wrote a piece in City Journal about the pervasive loathing of Hilton, summing up quite neatly Hilton's role as a "synonym for American materialism, bad manners, greed ... parochialism, arrogance, promiscuity, antifeminism, exposed roots and navels, entitlement, cell-phone addiction, anorexia and bulimia, predilection for gas-guzzling private transportation, pornified womanhood, exhibitionism, [and] narcissism." Hymowitz argued that while she "may be a composite of contemporary American sins," the act of hating Hilton is "a sign of lingering cultural sanity."

When Paris tore into Britney -- who, whatever inane decisions she has made, or been pushed into, during her decade in our pop culture consciousness, has retained an aura of pink-cheeked, creamy-bellied vulnerability -- she crossed a line. Spears fans, more frantic about the deleterious effects of Hilton than of the ghoulish Kevin Federline, swamped Spears' MySpace page with pleas, including one begging the singer to "please get away from the Parasite." On "The View," Rosie O'Donnell called Hilton an "idiot" and offered to adopt Spears, saying, "We don't want Britney hanging out with Paris." Hilton's face even appeared on the front of the New York Times "Week in Review" section, next to William Hamilton's headline "The Bar for Bad Behavior Keeps Getting Lower, Until It Doesn't." Hamilton's piece, about Michael Richards' racist tirade, O.J.'s canceled confession, and Spears' snatch shots, didn't even mention Hilton by name. But her image on the front was a tip of the hat to Hilton's role as devil on the shoulder, a bloodless specter of bad influence, a nipped and plucked incarnation of the kind of dark figures supposedly encountered by young girls in the Salem woods in 1692.

Hilton first came to national attention eight years ago, the teenage heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune. She was a wealthy party girl who liked to pose for photos and dance on banquettes at the tail end of '90s New York's boom days. And why not? The sun had risen and set on many a wifty socialite with no discernible skills, talents or opinions. What grated particularly, perhaps, even in those early days, was Hilton's open vapidity -- the unapologetic blankness of her stare, her affected Valley Girl upspeak, the fact that she didn't even bother to try to disguise her own lack of intellectual or moral ambition. But still -- another decade, another spoiled child pictured in the papers and in the pages of Vogue.

But Hilton's fame mysteriously increased as her coming-of-age coincided with a booming Internet gossip culture and an explosion of weekly magazines in need of trashy characters to keep their serialized narratives chugging along. Hilton saw an opening and took it, gaining enough steam for simply being rich and divertingly dumb that she landed a feature profile in Vanity Fair and a snail trail of photographs tracing her moves from nightclub to movie premiere. She became the star of a night-vision sex tape in which she left an impression not by showcasing one smidgen of eroticism, but by answering her cellphone mid-act.

She starred in a reality show, "The Simple Life," with her friend Nicole Richie, in which she got to showcase her rich-girl indifference and rock-bottom stupidity about class. She created a mini news cycle by losing her Chihuahua, only to later discover she had forgotten she left it at her grandparents' house. She has trademarked her catchphrase, "That's hot," and been unashamed to admit that despite all the educational advantages her family's vast fortune could provide her, she is not aware that London is in the United Kingdom. This has been Hilton's whole shtick: I'm dumb and badly behaved, but it doesn't matter because I'm rich.

And that's really it. That's what she's famous for. The press, often at a loss for words as to how to explain what, exactly, Hilton is or does, describe her as an "It" girl. But given that even her fashion sense is abysmal by every possible standard, it's impossible to argue that Hilton has "It" unless "It" means a hairless hooch and the willingness to expose it.

Next page: She is poisonous and culty and insidiously evil, and her tyranny must end