Watching the three minutes of the Paris Hilton sex tape available online and any three minutes of her new reality show, The Simple Life, it’s clear that at least one aspect of the TV show is real–that too-blank-to-be-believed stare of hers. The fisheye she gives the camcorder during sex with Rick Solomon is the same one she gives Farmer Leding when he tells her she’s got to get a job.
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The Simple Life is a classic fish-out-of-water comedy. Hilton, heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, and her pal Nicole Richie, heiress to Lionel Richie’s fortune, are dropped, sans money or cell phones, into Altus, Arkansas, population 817–the heart of the heartland that Springsteen and Chevrolet idealize as the cradle of American values. The premise, of course, is that Hilton and Richie are vapid bimbos who have no idea how everyday folks live. Too rich, hot, and decadent for post-9/11 America, they’ve been sent out for a Maoist-style reeducation in the sticks.
What’s more fascinating than how different the heiresses are from their hosts is how much they have in common with them. Hilton’s favorite lunch is a McDonald’s value meal. Richie, at a barbecue with the local Clems and Clydes, has no more to say to them than they do to her. In fact many of the locals seem just as nonverbal and directionless as the visitors. Say what you will about the girls, but the locals signed on for the same reason they did: to get famous. And as for Richie’s recent heroin bust and Hilton’s ubiquitous sex tape–well, in America, drugs and homemade porn are hardly the sport of kings.
Let’s say The Simple Life teaches the girls a lesson and Hilton tones it down, starts wearing panties, buys her way into the Ivy League. Then what? George W. Bush dried out and look where he ended up. A Paris Hilton with politics on her mind and permanent money could be trouble. New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine, a former Wall Street financier, spent about $60 million of his own money to win the country’s most expensive senate seat in 2000. Using the estimated $360 million Hilton pile, Paris could buy five of those. Or run for president a couple times.
