'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Drive My Car

Paris Hilton, not for the first time is arrested for drunk driving. She gets the best part of a month in jail. George Michael, not for the first time is pulled from a car in drugged state, slumped unconscious over the wheel. He gets a couple of hundred hours community service.

The comments that come out concerning Paris run something like ‘Well, she should do her time like anyone else’. Sure, if that is what drunk drivers normally get in that jurisdiction, which I doubt.

There is an assumption that once a sentence is handed down, it is right and just. Now, if it can be shown that most other (or even all other) individuals who have received sentences for a particular offence have been dealt with more leniently than in the subject case, then maybe the judge should serve whatever the difference is between the two. That would focus Their Honours minds somewhat.

My hunch is that the hullabaloo of the trial, combined with Paris’s late arrival in court irritated the judge to the extent that she was unfairly dealt with. But, what does it matter? She is just a cheap slut who has made a pile of money on top of the pile that she had already. Then the word ‘cheap’ is surely misplaced, and what point are such classifications anyway?

I am not really writing about Paris Hilton (though I would for a kiss). I am writing about how justice can simply disappear in a snowstorm of self-righteous assumption.

In itself, it is of little consequence. Life will go on and it’s easy to say that there’s nothing fair about it anyway. But we should be. We are the ones who set the whole thing up in the first place. We did everything but drive the car.

Send your opinions regarding Mr. Benedict's writings to bbenedict@netlistings.com