Politics and Hollywood are two things that will forever go hand
in hand.
Sure, they may not seem like the best of friends, but, like any
relationship with a lifelong friend, sometimes you’ve been
together so long that you don’t even like each other anymore.
Yet still, like Britney’s new prenuptial-lacking engagement,
you stay together because you have to.
So it’s expected that Hollywood and politics can cause
each other a little trouble now and again.
Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Moore are just
a few names that can generate enough controversy to light up
Tinseltown for an entire week.
So that’s why I wasn’t surprised to see a picket
line of disgruntled protestors staggered along Sunset Boulevard
last week. But what did surprise me was what they were so up in
arms about. The cause of their angst?
Paris Hilton.
Sure, the 23-year-old heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune has
been known to ruffle a few tail feathers of rednecks and
hillbillies throughout middle America on her reality show
“The Simple Life,” but her own people? What could she
have possibly done to make her fellow highbrow, upper-class gentry
of Hollywood so enraged?
She wrote a book.
Aptly titled “Confessions of An Heiress,” Paris
generously guides readers as how to live a life of endless wealth
and glamour, something she herself is more than an expert at.
Need an example of some of the pearls of wisdom this young
debutante is handing out to her readers?
Tip number seven for living like a heiress: Tell people what
they want to hear. Then do whatever you want anyway.
In my opinion, that’s some pretty good advice.
So when I heard that this actress/singer/novelist (That’s
right people, now she’s a triple threat!) was going to be
doing a book signing at Hollywood’s Book Soup, I knew I had
to go, if only to catch a glimpse of this tanned and lusty princess
of the late-night party scene.
But not everyone was as excited as I was about her attempt to
challenge the boundaries of modern literature. America won’t
let Ms. Hilton become the next Hemmingway without a fight.
Sure, she doesn’t have any weapons of mass destruction,
but apparently for some people she’s still enough to become
America’s new No. 1 enemy. Move over Bin Laden, there’s
a new terrorist in town, and this diva has more money than you can
shake a stick at.
But that didn’t stop these protestors from shaking a few
of their own signs, marked with lines such as “Hamster
bedding should not cost this much!”, “No Talent!”
and my personal favorite, “The day of the locust is
here!”
Chanting “Read a book, don’t write one!” and
“Go away, she’s got enough money anyway!”, the
protestors wielded their signs and shook their fists in attempts to
discourage a line of her fans from buying her new literary
endeavor.
I always knew the A in Los Angeles stood for activism.
Sure, Paris still signed a few books, and eventually the
protestors packed up and left, but I think the whole thing holds a
valuable lesson for those of us living so close to celebrities;
only in Hollywood would you find people protesting over something
so un-political.
But I guess everyone has to have a cause.
And if that’s not enough for you, take a lesson from
Paris’s new book:
“Trust me, people act differently to you when you’ve
got jewelry on your head.”
E-mail Scott at jscott@media.ucla.edu.