Where's the High-Tech Lynching?

New at Reason: America's sweethearts are getting naked all over the place. Nick Gillespie asks Where is the outrage?

Comments

[The Merovingian]

Hmm, those images aren't exactly high quality porn. 🙂

[The Merovingian]

Tim Cavanaugh,

What exactly is the big deal about seeing a woman's breasts, BTW?

[junyo]

Once upon a time in a not-too-distant past, both of these cases would have destroyed the careers of the women involved...

Paris Hilton and/or Jessica Lynch have careers? When did this happen? And what do they do, precisely?

[Mo]

junyo,
They do porn.

[dude]

Something tells me Mr. Flynt isn't releasing the pix because they're rather underwhelming. There's more titlation thinking about them rather than actually seeing them. Which credits him with a more subtle approach to the semiotics of eroticism than I would have imagined he had available.

Anywho, it's just a couple boobs. I think we've grown out of dropping jaws at those. You know when I think the turning point was? When Vanna White's nude pix came out.

[Madog]

Merovingian,

Keep in mind that the US is a nation built on liberty and freedom who's favorite national holiday is a feast celebrating people who came here to set up a society based on strict religious and moral laws where even dancing and cosmetics were forbidden.

Once you realize that all Americans are insane you'll understand why seeing a woman's breasts is a big deal.

[Anonymous]

http://www.uvmdudeman.com/paris_hilton_video3.htm

[Ron Hardin]

Confession: I don't know who Vanna White or Paris Hilton are. Sweetheart cluelessness has set in.

[dude]

Vanna White is the chick on Wheel of Fortune who stands there and turns the letters around. It's a game show that's been around pretty much unchanged since the 80s. Popular with the Matlock set.

Hilton - uh, think she's some sort of socialite (read: rich but doesn't do anything) C-list celeb? I dunno really.

[David Tomlin]

Paris Hilton is an heiress of the Hilton Hotel chain Hiltons

[Anonymous]

Paris is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, who founded the hotel chain. She's the granddaughter of one of Conrad's three sons, William Barron Hilton. (Another of the sons, Conrad Jr. aka Nicky, was briefly married to Elizabeth Taylor.) Her father, Rick Hilton, is a real estate developer in Los Angeles (Hilton & Hyland Real Estate).

[Joanne McNeil]

The Reason staff and readership's gender disparity was especially evident with this article. So a boost in TV ratings makes up for public humiliation? No matter how skanky, no woman wants a private video of her having sex -- especially at 19, and with an ex-boyfriend -- released to the world. I hate Paris Hilton, but feel for her. It is an awful thing to happen to anyone.

[Anonymous]

Joanne, then it must be a really awful thing to have happen more than once. Especially after you've gone to the trouble of hiring a PR firm to keep your name in the papers.

[twistedmerkin]

Merovingian, some of us here are heterosexual and enjoy seeing the female body. What are you, part fish?

[Brad S]

Joanne - that may be true, but I think the point of Tim's article is that Paris may be willing to live with a little bit of invaded privacy and a little bit of embarassment if it translates into her own personal quasi-celebrity stock going up. You know, like the old saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

[Anonymous]

There's no question that 19 year olds make bad decisions, and Paris may wind up deeply regretting the high profile of her teen years. But where for the love of god have her parents been?

[Anonymous]

two (possibly uninformed) comments about the article:

i don't think solomon was the one selling the tape.

"plaigarist" might be too strong a word for bragg, who freely admitted using uncredited stringers to do legwork for his pieces, something that may or may not have been common practice at the pre-blair-scandal ny times (bragg said the latter was the case). while giving the reader the impression he witnessed specific events is certainly misleading and unethical, bragg didn't copy other people's previously published work and pass it off as his own.

i don't have the timoe nor inclination to thoroughly research either of these items or look up a strict definition of "plaigarism," so take these comments for what their worth, i guess...

[fyodor]

Is Paris her real name??!? If so, her parents must have had a rather, um, interesting sense of humor!!!

[dude#2]

dude,

You've grown out of dropping your jaw at seeing boobs? I'm so sorry.

[heh2k]

the point of the article is not that it's "any pr is good pr", it's that sort of thing is no longer shocking, and is accepted by many people as normal.

[Mickey]

Paris is far from 'America's Sweetheart.' She's home-grown Eurotrash. Hard to get outraged when she plays to type.

The question about her parents is a good one: What in the hell have they been thinking? Surely they can't be surprised it's come to this?

[dhex]

as horrifying - or not so horrifying, as ms. hilton is a longtime tabloid regular in new york - as this revelation may have been for her, there's an easily understood rule of thumb when making homemade porn. if you can't live with the off chance of it being seen by someone other than the audience of your choice, don't make it. don't save it. don't dupe it. don't store it. etc.

maybe i'm just insensitive, but i don't really see the harm in any of this, esp. in the case of ms. hilton, for whom public notoriety has been a lifelong habit.

[Brad S]

I learned something today.

Apparently, one can have a career in "partygoing".

[Jon H]

The Paris video is a bit more interesting than the stills.

It's available on the web. Probably all over Kazaa.

There's also a fake, which is just a pornstar who's a dead ringer. The real video is green night-vision. The fake is just regular color.

[The Merovingian]

twistedmerkin,

Oh, I enjoy getting my hands on some breats as much as any heterosexual man does; but the idea that someone showing them on TV as "wow" or "sinful" or some such is a bit silly.

Paris is Ameritrash.

[Forbes]

Come on, Paris made the video(s), and the only thing she's famous for is as a notorious party girl getting mentions on Page Six (NYPost gossip page). Some Chicago Bear linebacker had a segment aired on FOX after he hooked up with her in Las Vegas during an off week. Talk about cross-promotion, the football player admitted he had no idea who she was. I bet she knew who he was (or had some help), talk about using what you know--what she knows is getting naked and getting down.

[Anonymous]

Hey this story was a hell of a lot better than that transvestite story. Fortunately I read this one second.

[David Tomlin]

To understand America, remember the religious fanatics were dumped in New England, and the convicts in Georgia. We've been working things out ever since.

[mike]

An aside, but Jessica Lynch's rank is PFC, not PVT (or "Pvt."). If she were a PVT, she'd still be in basic training.

[D.A. Ridgely]

As always, the answer as to why the pix are not being published lies with (Groucho) Marx"

"We took some pictures of the native girls but they aren't developed... but we're going back again in a couple of weeks."