Paris Hilton. Yeah, I said it. Watch this...

I’m not even going to apologize for this one. Here’s the deal. I know why people are obsessed with Paris Hilton going to jail. I know why this is a bigger deal than Lindsay Lohan going to rehab. I have the scoop.

People are crazed over this story because it represents the gross refutation of the American Dream. That’s right. I compared Paris Hilton to the American Dream. It gets worse. Stay with me…

Interesting side story first—I was in Paris recently with my mom and step-father, and we stayed in the Hilton Hotel in the middle of Paris. My step-father found this hilarious (in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I giggled at least once or twice), and continually said things like, “Boy, sure is roomy inside the Paris Hilton. Pretty big in here, huh?”—And then would giggle. Or- “It’s much cleaner inside the Paris Hilton than I expected, don’t you think?” Or- “Wow, I never thought I’d actually get a chance to be in the Paris Hilton overnight. Pretty exciting, huh? Does it feel like you thought it would?” Then my mother would sigh in disgust, my eight-year old sister would agree wholeheartedly, and I would titter like a schoolboy. Anyway, back to the fall of man…

Here’s the deal. The American Dream is predicated on the fact that if you work hard enough and make enough money, that you can rise above the riff-raff—that at some amorphous point, the rules will literally stop applying to you. We see it all the time, with our movie stars, musicians, even politicians. Sure, we expect someone to go down for storing thousands of dollars in their freezer, or snorting coke in a Wal-Mart, but for drunk driving? On a suspended license? This is not how America is supposed to work! The rich don’t have to pay taxes—why the hell should they be susceptible to other regulatory laws?

This is the crux of the problem…deep down, we all know that we (or at least our kids) could be rich one day. And we want them to be rich so they won’t have to deal with the inane mundane aspects of life. Things like traffic tickets or jail time. It’s related to the reason we were all enthralled by Britney Spears’ first pregnancy. With so much money and power, shouldn’t she be above getting knocked up? I mean, shouldn’t a stork deliver a clean, non-bloody mess straight to her doorstep? Can’t money and power buy your way out of painful childbirth? Of course, the Britney situation has a great deal more schadenfreude in the mix… (and don’t think that’s not part of the Paris thing, I just think there are greater ramifications to deal with).

And yes, this is infinitely more important to write about than Tom Tancredo or Mitt Romney. That will follow as election season heats up.