Boycotting Paris Hilton

This'll be a noble experiment.

It's doomed to failure, but it's noble, cause it speaks to our desire to be a better, more serious people.

The Associated Press, the dominant news wire service to which virtually every daily newspaper subscribes, says it no longer will carry stories about Paris Hilton.

The details were contained in an internal AP memo.

“Barring any major, major news, we are not going to put a single word about Paris on the wire,” the memo continued. “If something does come up, big or small, we encourage discussions on whether we should write about it.”

The results of the experiment, naturally, will be fodder for a future A.P. story. “Hopefully we will be able to discuss what ‘news’ we missed,” read the memo, which could have used some stern copy-editing, “the repercussions of our blackout for AP both editorially and business-wise, and most importantly the force that cause the world to be fixated on this person who, despite her shallow frivolity, represents an epochal development in our culture.”

Will AP's client newspapers complain?

Eventually, yes.

In every newsroom in America, there typically is a bank of television sets that are constantly on. Sometimes, an editor is even assigned to "monitor" the televisions, so that the newspaper doesn't "miss" anything. TV loves Paris Hilton. She is a creature of TV, because TV loves celebrity, and America, consequently, loves celebrities, who comprise the Fourth Rail of American News (the other three are Crime, Sex & Gubmit.)

Censoring Paris Hilton from American news would be like deciding public schoolteachers seducing pupils is "not newsworthy," or women with enticingly displayed decolletage will no longer be photographed for the "Names in the News" section of your local rag. You just can't do that. Americans want it all, and we want it every day. The bold and the beautiful. The agony and the ecstasy. The serious, the sad, the shocking, the funny and, yes, the utterly useless and meaningless. In short, we want our Paris Hilton. Waaaaaa!!
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UPDATE

The AP carried this story today. It's about you-know-who.