You Want Beleaguered? *I’m* Beleaguered!
There is yet another L.A. Times article on Paris Hilton today. This one is about Hilton’s all-important return to jail in Lynwood, and has this interesting word usage:
Whitmore described the beleaguered hotel heiress as being in “stable condition,” but he declined to comment further on her medical condition.
Excuse me . . . “beleaguered??” Dictionary.com defines “beleaguered” as “under attack.” Oh, the drama!
Meanwhile, an accompanying video contains numerous news reports about this controversy. Helicopters fly overhead. TV newsmen apologize for having to use old footage of Paris being transferred from one jail to another. The L.A. Times runs story after story after story, and pores over millions of jail records. And Al Sharpton is coming to talk to Lee Baca about how unfair it all is.
Just shoot me now.
P.S. Can any “heiress” truly be “beleaguered”?
I wonder how many more posts you, who say this isn’t news, have made about this than I, who say it is news, have. 🙂 😛
David N. Scott (71e316) — 6/14/2007 @ 5:39 pmDavid N. Scott,
Let’s say that every time you turn on the TV, every time you turn on the radio, every time you open a newspaper, you heard a discussion of Whoopi Goldberg’s hairstyle (to take a random, meaningless example). I would probably write more than one post about the idiocy of this. And you would accuse me of being obsessed with Whoopi Goldberg’s hair.
Patterico (2a65a5) — 6/14/2007 @ 5:43 pmI don’t think you’re obsessed with it, I just think you’re massaging google.
Just giving you trouble. Don’t worry about it. 🙂
David N. Scott (71e316) — 6/14/2007 @ 5:49 pmI have been known to do that with Paris Hilton before, and I’d admit it if that’s what I were doing now. I’m not. When I did it before, I learned that the people who come as a result of those searches tend to be morons.
Patterico (2a65a5) — 6/14/2007 @ 5:55 pmI guess it actually has been a pretty long gap between Paris posts. Only 2 of your last 10 posts have been PH related.
So, you’re right. Sorry to roust you unfairly.
David N. Scott (71e316) — 6/14/2007 @ 6:00 pmObservation 1: an heiress can easily be beleaugered. By all the men who want to marry her money.
kishnevi (f6198c) — 6/14/2007 @ 7:04 pmObservation 2: Given the quality of LAT reportage, are you sure you want them to cover anything more imporant than Paris H.?
How can you ask that when our Paris is skidding into one grim milestone after another! Why, concerned residents fear the media mania is approaching civil war! It’s only a matter of time before newly dis-hyphenated Mayor Villar (Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in 7,000 years) throws Sheriff Baca under the bus. Some analysts suggest (and some don’t, but they’re stupid Republicans) that what we need now is an outpouring of support from the public. Donations can be forwarded to a trust fund at My Bank, Los Angeles CA. All funds will be spent to stop global warming.
Patricia (824fa1) — 6/14/2007 @ 7:21 pmHow many first time drivers on a suspended license, with no other previous record, get 45 days hard time personally supervised by a vindictive judge who makes absolutely sure that every day is served to the fullest in the harshest possible fashion? Seriously, how can anyone doubt that she is being punished for being a rich, famous white person? This judge needs to be ejected. I’m no fan of hers, I couldn’t care either way, but I think I can recognize pure cruelty and political calculation when I see it.
BillWils (f84e40) — 6/14/2007 @ 9:24 pmEnsuring someone who drinks and drives, then violates probation twice, driving on their suspended license each time, serves a 45-day sentence is “pure cruelty” and political calulation?
No other motives? Just sadism and politics?
Christoph (bad4f9) — 6/14/2007 @ 9:35 pmIn the common usage of news writers, I take ‘beleaguered’ to mean a neutral ‘in trouble,’ in the sense that the person being described is harried, or is struggling under the weight of difficult circumstances.
So in this case the usage is a little bit tongue in cheek. Mock tragedy.
multum_in_parvo (ff7b02) — 6/15/2007 @ 12:20 amkishnevi nails it:
Let’s face it: MOST of our media is incapable of covering anything of substance with anything approaching intelligence and fairness. If I read a news report by AP that the sky was blue, I’d wonder if they were describing the red of an early sunrise.
Hell, Leno is a better news source. At least he’s funny!
Ranten N. Raven (0102f7) — 6/15/2007 @ 4:37 amOur esteemed host asked:
Well, Eleanor of Aquitaine kind of was, between husbands (King Louis VII of France, and then King Henry II of our mother country), but that is going back to the eleventh century! 🙂
Dana (3e4784) — 6/15/2007 @ 5:58 amThing is, the media which are “beleaging” (can I copyright that as a new word?) the lovely Miss Hilton are only giving the people wnat they want.
Our host noted a few days ago that the Times’ website was well on its way to its best month ever, due in large part to searches for Paris Hilton. We could, in the past, accuse the media of cheapening the public discourse by their choices on what to cover, but internet seartches are reader initiated; you can’t (reasonably) blame the media for what people choose to seek.
The most important question remains, however: when Miss Hilton gets sprung, will our esteemed host be the prosecutor who gets he when she gets nabbed for illegal driving in Compton? 🙂
Dana (3e4784) — 6/15/2007 @ 6:06 amWhat the heck is “the harshest possible fashion” that BilWils mentions above?
I mean jail is jail is jail–unless our “beloved” former Attorney General Bill Lockyer has personally escorted you to your cell and introduced you to a 7 foot tall tattooed dude who says “Hi Honey, my name is Spike” (which is what Lockyer said he’d like to do for Ken Lay, Chairman of Enron). I haven’t read anywhere that Ms. Hilton’s cell is different from other cells (they didn’t turn the heat up or the AC down, they didn’t give her a specially stinky toilet etc.)
“Pure cruelty and political calculation”–you walk into any courtroom in the world and do everything you can to piss off the judge and let him know that his silly little stuff is reserved for “others and not you”, and he’s going to do what he can to get your attention.
Even the dimmest among us ultimately figure out that poking an angry tiger in the eye with a sharp stick ain’t smart.
Mike Myers (2e43f5) — 6/15/2007 @ 7:09 amWhat #9 Christoph said… She violated probation twice by driving on a suspended liscence. The first time the judge gave her a pass, and warned her, told her not to do it again.
Then she went and got pulled over for doing 70 in a 35, at night, with no headlights on.
She kind of was ASKING for big jailtime.
And “jail” isn’t “hard time”. It might not be comfy, but she’s not out breaking rocks in the prison yard, ya know? She’s in a cell (well, she in the jail’s medical wing, but you get the idea).
Oh, you mean hard time as in “without access to the trapping of the hyper-rich to which she has long since come to depend and rely on in her day to day life”…
yeah, in that case I suppose it is hard time.
Cry me a river…
Scott Jacobs (90eabe) — 6/15/2007 @ 7:32 amCry me a river…
No, Scott, that song was about the other blonde bimbo celerity: Mrs. Federline.
kishnevi (342a5e) — 6/15/2007 @ 9:12 amCan any “heiress” truly be “beleaguered”?
Yes, I’d say Patty Hearst was, until she flipped.
Rick (ec0cf2) — 6/15/2007 @ 10:12 amOMG! Patterico’s Pontifications has got another article up on Paris Hilton. How can we keep up with the guy? To the presses!n
Los Angeles Times (e95c5f) — 6/15/2007 @ 5:00 pmI understand DA Nifong was crying while he resigned today. Now *that’s* something I’d turn my TV back on to see. Paris Who?
Socratease (64f814) — 6/15/2007 @ 5:25 pm