So long, Paris

In some ways, Hilton's presence on the celebrity scene is troubling because of the suspicion that she is a straw woman for all those who like to think of young women as dumb floozies. We keep her there, as a mortifying symbol of American womanhood -- yes, she is famous overseas -- in part because she is a satisfying punching bag for anyone with women issues. This year Keith Olbermann felt free to call Hilton a slut on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her face. One of her former conquests, Elijah Blue Allman, has said that he used Tilex to clean his genitalia after their unprotected encounter. As Hymowitz observed in her piece, "slurs like 'tramp,' 'tart,' 'slut,' 'skank,' and 'skanktron' have suddenly become acceptable again, as long as Paris is their target." Indeed. Unable to choose between politically incorrect punch lines, the New York Post recently ran a photo of Hilton, Spears, and Lindsay Lohan under the cover headline "Bimbo Summit" and the inside headline "3 Bimbos of the Apocalypse"; the piece concluded with the sentence, "Skanks for the memories!" And it was funny! Which is part of what is so dangerous about our attentions to Hilton. It's easy to suspect that it is because she offers gratifyingly inappropriate opportunities to lash out against femininity and sexuality (outbursts to which few object, because there is literally no one who wants to defend her) that she has remained famous at all.

But aside from the creepiness of what she says about a not-so-latent American desire to have a stupid and sexualized woman around to degrade and humiliate, what makes Hilton horror-movie scary is the evil that she spreads. It's the poisonous effect she has on people and how long it's taken anyone to really catch on. Look at the trail of consumptive, addled, brokenhearted, humiliated bodies she's left behind her: Hilton's most famous friend Nicole Richie has suffered from an "inability to gain weight" so severe that the 25-year-old woman has recently appeared on the verge of death. Kimberly Stewart, Rod Stewart's daughter and an early Hilton home-girl, was recently revealed to be suffering from some sort of liver disease precipitated by partying too hard. Paris' younger sibling Nicky was inspired to get into a quickie -- and quickly annulled -- marriage while partying with her sister in Vegas. Oil-heir Brandon Davis, egged on by Hilton, was moved to go on a Looney-Tunes tirade about actress Lindsay Lohan, in which he was videotaped calling her "firecrotch"; his grandmother soon packed him off to rehab. While he was dating Hilton, shipping heir Stavros Niarchos insulted a homeless man by offering him money to pour a drink over his head while Hilton and their other friends laughed. And Lohan, an arguably talented young actress who keeps on-and-off company with Hilton, appears closer to serious, party-ravaged collapse every day.

As for Spears, it took less than two weeks of exposure to Hilton before her vagina -- and C-section scar -- was hanging out all over the Internet, before she became the thinly disguised object of a gossip column blind item about drug use, and before she was back on Page Six for having Child Services breathing down her neck.

It is surely fair to say that Hilton is not sticking her own finger down anyone's throat, or blowing drugs up their nasal passages, or pouring drinks down their gullets. She's certainly not the word-wizard behind the offensive and troubling -- but oddly poetic -- "firecrotch" epithet. But her proximity to the scene of every misfortune is enough to send frissons of exquisite terror down a spine.

The other almost-supernatural aspect of Hilton's reign of harebrained horror is the way that she herself remains intact while those around her wither. Hilton is like some kind of Dorian Gray cockroach. While her buddies waste away and collapse and see their careers flushed down the celebrity toilet after having been in her presence, she grows stronger: appearing on more magazine covers, getting bigger record contracts, attracting more attention, sleeping with more of her fading friends' boyfriends. Even her Plasticine exterior seems unravaged by her excessive behaviors.

She is, frustratingly, indestructible. Hilton has been caught on tape referring to two black friends as "dumb niggers." She has been arrested for drunk driving. She has peed herself in a taxicab in Hawaii. She has vomited onstage while singing her own songs. She has laughed like a retarded hyena as boyfriends like Davis and Niarchos have embarrassed themselves and ruined their own reputations. And yet, she has never had to go on Letterman to apologize; she has never had to meet with leaders of a community to make amends; she never even had to clean the taxi that she befouled. As a completely non-achieving celebrity, there are no higher moral, spiritual or intellectual expectations burdening the heiress. So she's a moronic, racist, boyfriend-stealing, talentless twit? Surprise. We never thought her anything better.

There is no question that we are culpable, as readers and writers and photographers and Web surfers and consumers -- addicted to the empty calories and steady buzz of hating on Hilton. And though, like cigarettes or smack, most of us wish in our heart of hearts that we knew how to quit her, there's no realistic way to make that happen. Some have tried. Lloyd Grove even banned the heiress from his gossip column, but it didn't make her go away, not one little bit. So instead of unrealistic exhortations that we put down the crack pipe, perhaps it is more practical to push for simple recognition of what she is: Bad News.

Paris Hilton is more than a punch-line-rich pest. She is poisonous and culty and insidiously evil, and her tyranny must end. Last week, as she spread like a rash to Spears, the scariest image was not Spears' nude lady-parts or the weird fishnet-trading Toulouse Lautrec get-up that Hilton arranged for the pair. It was a picture of the young women walking hand-in-hand, Hilton in a T-shirt that read "I'm Paris Hilton, I can do whatever I want." Next to her, Spears wore a shirt reading, "I'm Paris Hilton, I can do whatever I want."

She must be stopped. Before she kills.

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