Patterico's Pontifications

6/8/2007

It’s Not Right!

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 7:40 pm



Mom! Mom! It’s not right that we should have to be subjected to endless coverage of this Paris Hilton nonsense!

Yes, yes, she’s back in jail. Whatever.

UPDATE: This is just pathetic:

la-times-whores-for-traffic.JPG

But hey, it’s working for them.

UPDATE x2: Maybe Paris could have gotten a lighter sentence if she had murdered someone.

By the way, Perfect Sense had the line of the week yesterday:

Paris told ICE that she was an illegal alien and as standard policy, they arranged to have her immediately released from custody.

Good one.

UPDATE x3: Did contributions from Paris’s grandfather to Lee Baca have anything to do with this? Allah — who is as frustrated as I am about not getting any comments on his real posts — asks the question.

UPDATE x4: The “Paris Hilton diaries”? Man, the L.A. Times is milking this for all it’s worth.

If we could get them to cover crime by illegal immigrants with the same thoroughness, it would really change the immigration debate.

UPDATE x5: How thoroughly is the L.A. Times covering this “story”? This thoroughly:

a-million-paris-hilton-stories.JPG

26 Responses to “It’s Not Right!”

  1. It’s certainly an interesting power struggle between the court and the sheriff, Patterico.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  2. Hey, Sheriff Joe over in Maricopa Co AZ volunteered to take this problem off of our hands no charge. Do you think we should have accepted his generosity?

    And, I still think it would be more effective to lock up Mom too.

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  3. Hey, it’s a market economy.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  4. Getting a view of the California Criminal Justice System watching Paris Hilton is kind of like learning about family relations by watching The Simpsons.

    huey (76a6ac)

  5. Hilton’s sentence was arguably more severe than what Sandy Burglar received for his FELONY. And thankfully we weren’t subjected to on-going coverage of THAT injustice.

    Frank Rizzo (5d7fb3)

  6. I wonder how many other victims of the City Attorney’s and Judge Sauer’s nastiness there are that we will never hear about. The Sheriff is the only one who has behaved well in this case. He showed perspective and proportion. The City Attorney and Sauer showed plain viciousness. The biggest fault, however, lies with Hilton’s first set of attorneys who basically threw her to those two snakes.

    nk (c66fe9)

  7. No, nk, the biggest fault lies with Paris Hilton for committing the offense in the first place — an offense that kills people, which you minimized, and I and others put into perspective in our conversation here, here, here, and especially here.

    So in your twisted mind, it’s vicious for a judge to jail someone for parole violation? Or for a prosecutor to prosecute someone and ask the sentence be upheld as ordered?

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  8. The biggest fault lies with Paris Hilton, moron.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  9. Comment 8 was my “condensed” version after I thought comment 7 was permanently trapped by the anti-spam filter.

    I stand by either.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  10. I wonder how many other victims of the City Attorney’s and Judge Sauer’s nastiness there are that we will never hear about. The Sheriff is the only one who has behaved well in this case. He showed perspective and proportion. The City Attorney and Sauer showed plain viciousness. The biggest fault, however, lies with Hilton’s first set of attorneys who basically threw her to those two snakes.

    Well, I suppose that’s right, if you ignore that he completely side-stepped the propper proceedures for modifying a sentence. The Sheriff’s Dept did contact the judge, but he said “show me the medical reports, and we’ll see.”

    The sheriff never got him the documents, never filed the motions to modify the sentence, and just did what he wanted.

    He MIGHT have been right, but he didn’t act properly. Having lied to the press doesn’t help him any, and I’d personally like to see him held on contempt charges.

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  11. nk, I apologize. I was wrong to insult you personally although it does aggravate me to see you attacking the judge for issuing a sentence and prosecutor for asking the sentence be enforced, not the criminal for endangering the public then disrespecting the court.

    I wish her well in her rehabilitation. Which is part of why I believe some time in jail is helpful.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  12. NK #6,

    You’ve basically taken a results-oriented position by asserting that the Sheriff got it right. Is it okay for the Sheriff to undermine/undo the Judge’s order because he views it as inappropriate? If so, that’s a socialistic approach (e.g., results matter more than process) and it surprises me you would endorse it.

    DRJ (2d5e62)

  13. The last thing this troubled woman needs is this kind of attention. At least so it seems to anyone who considers her a human being. Then again, would she be so troubled without that media spotlight she loved to bask in over the last few years? She only has herself to blame. That’s what they tell me.

    Those ratings will sell a lot of deodorant and oldsmobiles. Her symbiotic relationship with big media seems to have morphed into a parasitic relationship. I would love to see that spotlight shining back on the media once in a while to see how many of their creatures lie about discarded and broken. But they will surely be there to cover that too, interrupted only by the commercial break.

    Amphipolis (fb9e95)

  14. Here’s your hero-sheriff, nk:

    Well, my Dad is a 36-year retired veteran of LASO, and my brother is 17 years in on his career with LASO.

    Per my dad and my brother, and their friends/coworkers (some of whom I know as well), Sheriff Lee Baca is a “scientologist” who panders to the social elite and takes advantage of peoples gift giving willingness to the point that he had accepted more gifts in one year from donators than all 57 other California Sheriff’s combined, almost $50,000 worth of gifts. He is accused of under reproting his gifts and donations as well. They also referred to him as a “useless turd”. Nice. Makes one wonder what the morale is like on the LASO. It turns out that less than 10% of the Sheriff’s Department Deputies were for his reelection last election. The Sheriff’s Union opposed him as well. But he had a lot of campaign help from celebritys and other welthy high rollers, apparently.

    I thought, well, maybe they’re bitter employees. So I did some checking. Guess what, they were actually being kind.

    Lee Baca is well on his way to earning the title, ‘Most Crooked Sheriff In The State’.

    1. In 2004, he took more gifts than California’s other 57 sheriffs combined.
    2. put one of his closest friends on the payroll as a $105,000-a-year adviser.
    3. accepted more than $42,000 in gifts since taking office, including some from those who do business with his department.
    4. authorized favorable treatment for Mel Gibson after a sheriff’s spokesman initially said the arrest occurred “without incident” and made no mention of the superstar’s now-notorious anti-Semitic rant
    5. withheld video and audio tapes of the Mel Gibson drunk driving arrest, asserting they were exempt from open-government laws.

    …and much more.

    Courtesy of a Hot Air commentator.

    He also has a series of links to back it up here:
    SilverStar830  on June 9, 2007 at 6:54 PM

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  15. There are no comments yet under the blog post you linked to yet.

    Anyway, it’s an alalysis of how tough the judge is (agreed — and this is a good thing) and how crappy her lawyers are (agreed — obviously a bad thing).

    It doesn’t, at all, talk about the gross celebrity ass-kisser that is Lee Baca.

    He once tried to set up a:

    “unit of celebrity deputies, complete with badges and guns”

    Another source:

    He was issued a badge and gun as part of the department’s new reserve program — set up for celebrities, executives, athletes and other notable community members — after just 64 hours of training rather than the 162 hours state law has required since July 1.

    According to department sources, the applications were rushed through to beat the new law. Recruits for the new unit — one of Baca’s pet projects — were spared the customary polygraph examination and in some instances were assisted in filling out their applications by deputies who went to their homes to complete the paperwork so the recruits would not be inconvenienced, the sources said.

    “It was a sham,” a knowledgeable departmental source said. “It was a rush job with incomplete applications because they were friends of the sheriff or money people. Investigators knew that no matter what… everyone had to pass.”

    And therein lies your hero.

    Of course, your link is more relevant than

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  16. … continuing

    Of course, your link is more relevant than < 10% of Sheriff’s deputies supported Baca for reelection.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  17. I think there’s actually a pretty serious behind all the pointing and laughing. On a macro level, people are getting tired of there being such a huge gap between rich and poor.

    Paris is more or less the embodiment of a scofflaw, with her driving on a suspended license when she doesn’t need to and showing up late to court and the outbursts and everything. People don’t like the idea of there being a new noble class in the US that can do all the wrong things and never get in trouble. It isn’t that strange.

    Also, with all of this ‘sheriff letting her out when the judge said not to’ and ‘tense showdown over whether or not the sherriff would refuse to bring her before the judge’, there’s some interesting internal politics.

    Besides aren’t ‘haha, loook at this stupid thing other people are covering’ posts opportunistic at best?

    David N. Scott (71e316)

  18. Completely agree with David N. Scott.
    Paris Hilton, the clubgoer is a waste of any newspaper’s space. Paris Hilton’s legal odyssey is something else again, and I think worth a few comments from Patterico and the likes of the thoughtful readers here.
    Baca’s actions and words at the very least raise eyebrows AND some valid questions about pretty bizarre choices made by the Sheriff’s department. Why all this excessive concern for “this lady”‘s delicate mental state? Is he insane? Is one tall, blonde famous-for-nothing celebrity’s meltdown while in county jail(for but a few hours!) something out of the ordinary, worthy of the system snapping to immediate attention?

    I really despair at the gaping chasm between a woman like Hilton and what could–or maybe should–happen to one like myself. Not only “poor” people get less than this treatment–middle class ones do, too. And it makes me furious that Baca rationalizes and practically moralizes over this one unremarkable person. Sure, I care about gas prices, outsourcing, our next president, the amnesty bill and Iraq–but this is a situation that is much closer to my everyday reality. I or someone I care about might, god forbid, be in county custody one day. We in L.A. have a more than prurient interest in these things. It’s our justice and punishment system and it sure seems to have a few celebrity glitches.
    Baca looks really bad here.

    JPL (da5dfa)

  19. It’s rather telling that the most important thing the LAT could think of when identifying what Paris upstaged was (drumroll please) the VMAs.

    It’s actually her parents fault. When you name your child after a hotel, you got to expect a screwed up life will follow.(Although it called have been worse. They could have named her Los Angeles Hilton.)

    kishnevi (03a14b)

  20. I don’t understand the recurring comments that Paris Hilton’s second set of attorneys were incompetent. Help me understand why you are making these comments because it looks to me like they knew this Judge and decided confrontation wasn’t a good plan.

    There are times when the best course of action is to stop fighting and show remorse, especially if one is guilty, and I think this was one of those times.

    I hope Paris Hilton is truly remorseful but I’ll be happy with an unrepentant Hilton who decides to never do anything like this again so she can avoid further jail time. Prompt, firm punishment is a deterrent and, despite all the criticism deterrence gets from the PC crowd, it works with many people.

    DRJ (2d5e62)

  21. Re comments 19 and 20–
    I was once arrested for driving with a suspended license–suspended because of a DUI–and spent an entire two hours in jail, and when I showed up for the court date it was completely rubbed off because I had gotten a clean license between the arrest and court date. So you see I got off a lot easier than Paris Hilton, and I’m not rich or famous or even well connected. Of course, I didn’t need to explain away all the other stuff Paris Hilton needs to explain away…

    kishnevi (03a14b)

  22. Christoph #16 & 17,

    We have the exact same thing in Illinois too. It is the only other state besides California to have no carry law of any kind. So if you want a gun permit you become a “part-time” deputy sheriff or deputy coroner. And it has nothing to do with the Sheriff’s Police keeping the county roads safe or the Corrections Department keeping the people who deserve to be locked up locked up. And “notable community members” is a pretty large group. Who knows? You and I might be in it.

    Can we parse it down to just how is the world safer if some half-baked actress serves 23 days in a county jail as opposed to the same time in a
    pay jail or 45 days confined in her home?

    nk (c66fe9)

  23. “Can we parse it down to just how is the world safer if some half-baked actress serves 23 days in a county jail as opposed to the same time in a pay jail or 45 days confined in her home [massive mansion]?”

    If she serves a sufficient deterrent sentence after violating probation, she may no longer drink and drive.

    Christoph (bad4f9)

  24. paris hilton in jail…

    This site is so freeking cool. Pceace !!…

    paris hilton in jail (1dd387)


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