Young, numb, and full of dumb

The public’s hunger for pretty young things remains as insatiable as their idols’ appetites for sex, drugs, and liquid diets. It doesn't matter if they’re addled (Lindsay Lohan), unstable (Britney Spears), or dumb (Anna Nicole), America always wants more, and we’ll forgive them anything. We’ll even look the other way regarding homophobia and racism as long as they spew from the shapely glossed lips of Paris Hilton.

Paris Hilton’s far-from-enlightened views on minorities came to light in February when a grainy tape was leaked to YouTube of the heiress unleashing nasty epithets at a party. While she and sister Nicky were dancing to Biggie Smalls, Hilton said we “are like two [n words].” Elsewhere, both sisters used the f word to refer to various men. Surprisingly, the story didn’t make waves—typically any dumb Paris tale is news. The tape was a tiny blip on Hilton's press reel rather than a scandal because only the blogosphere seemed interested; the mainstream media didn’t touch it. The whole thing died quicker than the heiresses’s album.

Web sites still write about her drunken escapades, magazines still photograph her unremarkable fashion sense, TV still devotes airtime to her empty sound bites, but almost no one denounces or even mentions her tirade. The press was more offended by Hilton’s influence over the pre-meltdown Spears than with her casual usage of the n and f bombs.

Ku Klux Kramer (a.k.a. Michael Richards) has seen his career implode; Mel “friend of Adolf” Gibson was shut out of the Oscars; f dropper Isaiah Washington endured a public whipping; and Tim “I hate gay people” Hardaway lost his endorsement deals and the All-Star Game. But Hilton? She continues to freely stumble around Winston’s and attend fancy European balls; she emerges completely unscathed for being just as hateful as all those famous men. Why?

“You're dealing with a young lady who sells pictures, sells magazines, keeps Web sites and blogs hopping,” says Mark McCarthy, senior director of communications for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which demanded an apology from Hilton after the tape surfaced. “But it's completely unacceptable.”

McCarthy points out there are two recordings of Hilton attacking not only blacks and gays but Jews and Asians as well. And while he’s amazed at how little the press has responded to the tape, excuse me, tapes, he and GLAAD aren’t surprised at the media darling’s response. "[GLAAD] spoke with [Hilton’s publicist] Elliot Mintz, and he informed us they were not issuing a public statement or an apology," McCarthy says. You'd think she'd have some 'splainin' to do—Hilton served as grand marshal of the 2005 Los Angeles gay pride parade.

Presumably Mintz knows his charge is just too valuable to the media for them to call her on her hypocrisy and hatred. A Google search for Paris Hilton brings up 6,819 results from outlets including TheSydney MorningHerald, MSNBC.com, and The Baltimore Sun.But a search for “Paris Hilton racist tirade” will get you just one post from an obscure British blog. Curious about what constitutes a news story about Hilton? Her 26th birthday party was ruined because Brandon Davis hurled plastic flowers at Paula Abdul.

The outpouring of Paris Hilton coverage actually makes it easy to believe that she, with her sheltered, privileged existence, would utter such inanity. “That's probably why no one's picked it up, because we expect this from her,” a friend said. Maybe, but I’m more inclined to expect Hilton to think London is in France and our president is George Clooney than express a deep contempt for minorities. The way I see it, naïveté is a misdemeanor and hatred a felony. In our demented world little girls idolize Hilton and all that she stands for. Girls and quite a few gay boys (remember that Out cover?) look at this living Bratz doll and pray for her life of surface pleasure and male attention. Now hatred is rolled into that desirable lifestyle.

It seems Hilton is simply too pretty, thin, rich, and, most important, lucrative to be barred from the place she loves most—the spotlight. She's been caught having sex on camera, driving while drunk, getting high in a car, gleefully ripping her peers to shreds, voicing her hateful take on minorities, and nothing has dimmed her marketability. Perhaps the only thing she can do to make her name unprintable in respectable publications is get old.