Like most people today I was incredibly disappointed at the American justice system. Paris Hilton, lawfully sentenced to 23 days in jail, was set free after 73 hours. [story]

I say “free”, because that’s pretty much what it is. Instead of serving the rest of her time in prison (which is supposed to be a bad place), she is allowed to go to her multi-million dollar Sunset Strip home under “house-arrest”. Sounds really heart-breaking, right? That will teach her! Instead of 20 days in a small cell… 40 days in a beach party palace. She went from not having even a cellphone back to her full-blown life, merely limited to the boundaries of her personal resort castle.

Everything about this is fishy. This was supposedly for medical reasons? Then why didn’t she go to the hospital? Sounds like she merely cried her way out of it… greased the palm of some prison official… and got herself a psychiatric get-out-of-jail-free card. And to add insult to judicial injury, her actual 73 hours in jail somehow miraculously counts as 5 days?!

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not getting on her because she’s a spoiled brat and I want to see her suffer (although I kinda do). I know that back when Martha Stewart received jail time it became frightening fashionable to bash her and question whether or not she was getting special treatment. I was not one of those people. I don’t think celebrities should be treated any different… and that’s why this Paris thing burns me. All she had to so was cry and they let her have her party life back. There is NO WAY that 20 days in jail equals 40 days of “mansion-arrest”. That doesn’t scan at all. The sheriff should probably be fired.

This reminds me a little bit when I was mobilized to go to Iraq and one of my soldiers decided she didn’t want to go (she only wanted the college money). We went to Fort Drum to get ready for Iraq and all she did was cry and cry and disobey orders and throw fits. And what did the Army do? They let her go home. That sent a terrible message to the rest of my troops who were bustin’ their butts. They weren’t all thrilled with going, but it was their job and part of their lawful agreement with the government. There was a day when honor and keeping one’s word meant something.

Anyways… there does appear to be a glimmer of hope here – the judge, apparently peaved at the spineless Sheriff, wants Hilton back in court. [story] We shall see.

UPDATE:

[story] Ok, I feel better now.

Speaking of… and not to be too trite of a follow up… that is just one of many situations that we, as mere humans, really don’t understand the magnitude of until we are actually present to experience it. I was just talking about this today with someone. There are certain circumstances that people tell us about… that we read about in newspapers or see on the news… that we can try and imagine, but our imaginations fall terribly short of the emotional and physical effects that real-world situations cast on us. For instance, While I was stationed at Fort Drum I was told about a place just off post, called the Golden Unicorn (I know… sounds like a gay bar), that served HUGE pancakes. Well, until you get served two pancakes that are each the size of early laptop computers you really cannot comprehend what 2500 calories of fried beer batter looks like…. you just can’t. I tried to google for a Golden Unicorn website but the best I could get were hits for 10th Mountain soldiers making breakfast plans on their MySpace pages.

Speaking of MySpace… what a parade of human debris that can be. Now, don’t get on me about devaluing human beings… I know that I’m not any more valuable than anyone else… but I can’t help but notice that what started out as a website for indie music bands to have a so-called homepage has now become a haven for teenage (and pre-teen) debauchery where little girls will post pictures of themselves in underwear to get the attention of pimpled-faced, testosterone-charged punks. Both aforementioned groups can’t seem to construct complete sentences with proper spelling and grammar (thank you IM) any more than your eldest relative can explain the impact of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XMLhttpRequest) on modern web development. And really… have you seen the pictures on there? Forget the dirty stuff… what goes through someone’s mind when they post the same shot of themselves five times and give each shot a totally different caption? It’s like deja-Zoolander all over again.

I think I need a hug.