Media Literacy: The truth about Paris

Today's media literacy blog was first published in the summer of 2006.

I look at Paris Hilton and can’t for the life of me understand what people find so exciting about her.

Paris Hilton looks at a picture of me and says there is not a single reason on earth why she should try to excite me.

Her view is closer to the truth than mine.

Sigh. I live in an old world. My biggest entertainment excitement of the summer is wondering if the CBS Evening News will start showing car commercials when Katie Couric takes the anchor seat in September. It would be the first time since 1993 that the advertising world believes I might actually be interested in buying something you can’t find in a drugstore.

Paris isn’t the narcissistic one. Well, yes she is. Narcissism is her business, and she is very good at it. She was shopping in New York City not long ago, trying on shoes, and one pair she was looking at cost $1,000. She argued to the management that she should be given the shoes, because when others saw her wearing them, they would come in and buy a pair, too. For the $1,000 investment, they might get $15,000 back. They gave her the shoes.

But in our unique relationship, Paris isn’t the narcissistic one; I am. Mine is a narcissism of time and place. The time I was 15, or 20, or 25, was the best time in all of history to be 15, 20, or 25, and if everyone understood that, what a wonderful world it would be.

I need to go sit in a large mall for a couple of hours every day, until I reach a point where I can acknowledge that youth has changed. I just need to let go of June Allyson, Phyllis Thaxter, Donna Reed, Wanda Hendrix and even Jean Arthur, as the femme for whom the hero eventually falls. June Allyson sets a good example. June Allyson has grown up; the last time I saw her on a screen, she was selling incontinence apparel.

I need to follow her lead, start to live in 2006, and let Paris be Paris. Matt Leinart has fallen for her, and he certainly is not George Gipp or Monty Stratton or Glenn Miller or an F-86 Sabre fighter pilot with seven kills over Korea. Matt Leinart, falling for Phyllix Thaxter? I need to give myself a break. In a recent Sunday supplement magazine, some fossil in his own recliner at home took a big gulp off his oxygen bottle and wrote Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, wondering, “Why would quarterback Matt Leinart, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, who is going to make millions playing for the Arizona Cardinals, hook up with a total airhead like Paris Hilton?” Walter’s reply: “Because he likes tall blondes and L.A.’s club scene. Next question?”

Thank you, Walter. Your answer was like a pail of cold water thrown in my face. Mattworld and Parisville are not strange places at all, in 2006. I am the one who is strange. I am the anomaly, not Paris.

The mall looks so strange to me because I am the only one sitting on the lip of the planter box with my bermudas buttoned at my waist, the hems above my knees, my shirt cut to fit my size, my baseball cap on frontwards, no tattoo on my body, and my cellphone on the kitchen counter at home. From my narcissist 1959 fortress I will peer through a portal at 2006 for an hour today, maybe a little longer tomorrow, and when I am finished I will go over to Marie Callendar’s for a martini and some oatmeal.