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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 29, 2007 / 13 Tamuz, 5767

Taking Paris seriously

By Betsy Hart


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Paris Hilton says that being in lockup for a few weeks was traumatic. I think being shot at in Iraq would be traumatic — not taking a little time off from having every whim satisfied on a whim. Nonetheless, different folks have different levels of trauma-handling ability. She apparently reached hers. (The lovely Paris was sent to jail for driving on a suspended license following a DUI charge. And good for that judge.)


The fact that Paris Hilton takes herself seriously — she once spoke of "retiring" (and I wondered: "From what?") — is not what's offensive. Socialites have been doing that for decades, I suppose.


What offends me is that anybody, sometimes it seems everybody, takes her — and, for that matter, her "sisters," Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan — seriously to the point of obsession.


And so while the young heiress whose claim to acting fame comes from starring in a TV reality show about herself — her real claim to fame is accidentally starring in an Internet sex video — was in jail, we regularly heard about her schedule, her meals, her outbursts. Just before her sentence of some 23 days was up, one headline read: "The World Awaits Paris' Release."


Please tell me the World has better things to wait for.


Then she got a prime spot on CNN's "Larry King Live" this week. Or rather, King got her for a scripted interview. In the world of media, Paris Hilton, especially Paris Hilton right after jail, is what's known as a huge "get."


Why?


Thanks to media saturation and the Internet, we can see every (ugly) detail of a celebrity's life. In particular, gone are the days when Tiger Beat ruled magazine picks of young girls (and we read upbeat stories of our favorite young crushes). Now it's Paris in jail and Lindsay passed out and drooling in a car, almost in real time. Surely at least some young girls are thinking, "Wow — you can act like that and be rich and famous and have fans? Note to self ..."


Society has always been obsessed with celebrity and celebrity shallowness; now this is all just easier to get ahold of. In that sense, the Internet gossip sprees are not unlike pornography. The latter has always been there. But when I was growing up, a teenager might get ahold of a Playboy magazine and it had to last the entire neighborhood of high-school boys about two years. Today with the Internet, the floodgates have opened and it's 24/7.


In an earlier age when the gossip rags had limited pages and television limited channels and news minutes, Paris, who can't sing or act, might not have made it onto them as easily. Now, the almost infinite media of television and the Internet are aching for content. And she and her cohorts provide it, well, 24/7.


That's when you realize more than ever that, as a parent, society can't do our job for us. I don't try to use Paris Hilton as an object lesson, or at least I don't stop there. This isn't really about her. In fact, she might have some really positive qualities — we just would never hear about them in today's media world. That's the point: The Paris Hilton coverage is more than anything else a symptom of the problem that our culture values, or at least is obsessed with, the wrong things, and those wrong things are more available than ever.


I want my girls — and my son — to value what matters. I want them to value excellence in any good thing, including the entertainment world. But most of all, I want them to value excellence in character. News flash: I can't let a world defined by Paris Hilton change what's true for the "world" of my children and me. A world obsessed with her may make my job harder. But it is still ultimately up to me, no matter how the culture is raising up Paris and her friends, to raise my kids to stand up to the world and think through making wise value judgments on their own.

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