Narcissistic Nightmare

There she was. Our narcissistic nightmare. More a symbol of our national decline than an actual human being. Reduced to our most basest of instincts. Clutching desperately and tearfully for her mother. For anything familiar and comforting. Her vacant eyes began to fill with something like understanding, something like realization. A realization that her life had suddenly been wrenched from her and all control had been lost. Money, fame, recognition. None of her usual charms could win her freedom. They were taking her away and all she could do was sob and beg and plead and watch helplessly as someone else took control of her already miserable existence. And with it, the last vestiges of our humanity. I have to thank you Paris. Thank you for showing us what we have become.
During the height of the Roman Empire a Roman citizen could walk from one end of the known world to the other end without fear of molestation safe in the knowledge that he was protected by his nationality. That safety led to insulation and, eventually, to boredom. While it’s armies were off fighting wars and it’s leaders were squandering the powers of democracy the average citizen began to seek sport in a variety of pastimes. They began simply enough. Chariot races, reenactments of past glories, poetry, literature and spiritual cultivation. Eventually, as Roman society began to eat itself from within and from without, it’s citizens grew desperate. The old forms of entertainment no longer seemed important. Without fully recognizing why, the Romans began to cultivate an insatiable taste for blood and lust and greed. They were never quite sure who the enemies of the state were but they wanted someone to suffer and they wanted to watch. As the coloseum filled with blood and the gladiators did battle Rome’s citizens lost their humanity and with it their empire. Their bloodlust and voyeuristic paranoia had doomed the greatest civilization the Earth had ever known.
Fast forward about a thousand years. What has become of our own empire? If one of those long ago Roman citizens had been able to gaze into the future through a crystal ball and had been able to watch events unfold in the Hollywood hills last week they would have recognized the scene for what it was and they would have loved it. For all of her pitiful, sad, rich girl antics Paris Hilton was being thrown to the lions. They would have gazed down from above just as we did as the helicopters circled, and they would have seen the roiling mass of voracious, drooling reporters crushing in upon themselves like vipers trying to get a taste of the meatiest, juiciest part of her life. My God they would have loved it!
Much like Anna Nichole before her, Paris Hilton has become our national obsession. We need someone to blame. For what we’re not sure. All we know is that we love to see her and people like her suffer. Our armies are off fighting wars we’re not allowed to question or understand and our leaders have become so insulated from society that we’re not even sure what they stand for anymore. We have been reduced to this. To watching twenty-four hour coverage of someone else’s misery. It’s only a matter of time before we’ve devolved to the point of beating each other over the head with discarded femur bones for sport and thumping ourselves on the chest like Kubrick’s 2001 pre-humans. Can’t wait. Sounds like fun.
I feel sorry for Paris. I don’t know why. Probably because she never saw this coming. The rapidity of her self-destruction was amazing and the vapid, self-congratulatory reaction of the media was stunning. Moreover, the implications of our reaction could very well signify the end of the last remnants of our national innocence. We’ve tasted blood, albeit symbolically, and we want more. I, for one, feel like crawling into a cave with a bottle of whiskey, getting stoned drunk and beating myself over the head with one of those discarded femur bones I mentioned earlier. Here’s to you Paris and here’s to you America.