Stephanie Tanner style, Nice.

You’re my favorite comedian and just thinking about last night makes my face ache. I was referring someone to your unquotable, inimitable material, and I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard since the last time I watched it. You have a brilliant sense of humor and my friends and I thoroughly enjoy your work. It’s unusual to hear truly new material in comedy, but yours is fresh, personal, scathingly truthful, and spun in a way with which we can all relate. Lastly, though you may prefer comedy, it should be said that you are one of the highlights of the UFC.

That’s all. Thank you for getting up in front of the camera all the time. On top of the women who want you and then men who want to be you, there are a lot of us who simply can’t wait to see what you’ll say next.

Hi, I’m Samantha. Just your typical Joe Rogan fan. I found your blog while collecting material for a quick blog post of my own. I know one particular Mexican Feminazi is going to read it. I also know that if she doesn’t lash out on the behalf of Carlos Mencia like Charlton Heston with two thick globs of molasses hanging from his chest, then she’ll be choking it back. In that case, she’ll come back with something like, “You know, Joe Rogan really is an asshole. See Examples 1, 2, and 3.”

Paris is the same thing. It’s not hate. It’s disgust as a by-product of self-loathing. Unfortunately for language-based communication, “hate” has a nicer ring to it and, like “love,” it is a word applied more liberally than lubrication ‘twixt the nethers of that nice Tijuana girl who offers rides to ponies. Paris’s life is the tragedy we (general “we”) enjoy as a spectator sport. At one time, we grinned toothlessly at public executions. Then, we stared at car wrecks like saucer-eyed anime monkeys. Then, Fear Factor aired and we never had to leave the couch again. Dick in one hand, Doritos in the other, and cruel and unusual punishment on the screen. Heaven is a place on earth, baby.

Personally, I don’t hate Paris Hilton. I don’t care. If I could actually conjure up hate for the wholly ineffective offspring of some hotel mogul (who has zero social/political/economic/religious/et cetera influence on my life), I would conclude that I am in desperate need of a fucking hobby. At the very least, I’d google hot comics on the internet. I know very little about you and you are still much more interesting than Paris. Truly, I want to ask Paris fanatics the same question I would ask those who weave baskets, obsess over their bad relationships, or engage in any other altogether fruitless and frustrating activity. Wouldn’t you rather be doing one of twenty other fucking things? But that’s not the question on the table.

Of course Bob American is in desperate need of a hobby. We’re in the middle of an obesity epidemic, and rather than go out and work it off, we invent drinks with negative calories and diet pills – the newest of which (Alli) makes liquid fat fly out your ass. Rather than get up and savor life, people prefer to judge Paris Hilton while wearing a diaper. According to the results of the last presidential election, a little more than 50% of the American population wants to revert to infancy. And people say Paris is fucked up.

Which is my point; You’re asking for reason from an unreasonable hivemind. I would say that you can’t change people, but enlightenment is one of the core elements of comedy.

So why is Paris Hilton the target of the mob? She’s an heiress who rode the sex-tape scandal camel for what seemed like years. Big deal, right? The internet has seen both our naked asses, and who hasn’t filmed themselves having sex? Fuck, my porn debuted at a small NYU film festival and nobody cares. Dick could strap on a plastic plane, set it on fire, repeatedly plunge it into the bulbous peach atop Jane’s towering legs, screaming out Allah’s name as he did it, all under the rusted old nose of the Statue of Liberty, and no one would care. You know it’s not about the sex. After all, no one is targeting their zoom lens toward Goatse.

It’s bigger than that, and you know the story, Joe. Everybody loves it; That’s why it repeats all over the place. It’s the fall of the favorite son.
It’s not the sex. It’s not even the money. It’s the continued (admittedly, it seems almost endless) fall from grace. We love that shit. We’ve been burning, stabbing, beheading and dismembering our royalty for centuries.
The greater the fame, the greater the fall, and the former fans race after him, lapping up the blood before it cools. [Insert Blood of Christ joke]

It doesn’t matter that she’s not brilliant, exceptionally beautiful, particularly interesting, or funny. She’s in a position of power and she’s a fuck-up. Yes, CEOs fuck up all the time, but she rode into town on a big, pink-and-purple donkey wrapped in Christmas lights. She’s a clown show. She always has been. When Bob Waspenstein steals one million dollars, it’s offensive. When Chaplin slips on a banana, it’s comedy.

What is comedy? It’s a caricature of real life, a pleasurable transformation of pain. That’s where comedy comes from; it’s a coping mechanism that makes us feel better about tragedy. We joke about politics, relationships, family, celebrities, religion, disease, global issues, war, everything that causes us discomfort. Nobody ever tells jokes about how goddamn happy they are. Nobody wants to hear that shit.

But we recognize the ridiculous as a source of entertainment. The more extreme, the better. We’re like drug addicts begging the media to find a new way to get us high. Celebrities are like big fucking drag queens who are just short of setting themselves on fire just to outdo one another. I’m waiting for the celebrity case where a movie star was discovered fornicating with his dog, and, as per the legalese in certain states, it’s up to his attorney to prove that Fluffenstuff enjoyed it. Meanwhile, we’ll have to settle for the White Chicks stunt double making an ass of herself.

As a civilization, we are fascinated with the suffering of others. As a mob, we have an insatiable sadistic appetite. Always have. Why? Is that your question? The simple answer is “ego.”
Insecure people need to tear down the people they worship in order to quiet their own self-loathing, and insecurity is right up there with depression in this country. Doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, what you look like, there’s some motherfucker out there who would love to see you stoned to death because it would make them feel a little better about themselves.

Judging someone is like advising them; it requires you to be (or pretend to be) above them. By judging people, we are able to assume/consume whatever power we imagine them to have. By judging Paris, they become better than a rich, (conventionally) beautiful young girl.

And it’s not unique to celebrities. People are laughed at for inanity all over the world. One boy scout wipes his ass with poison ivy – he never lives it down. One man streaks through Central Park; all of New York City glances twice at the paper. Quayle misspells “potato” and the whole country laughs. The number of people who respond to you is relative to your fame, but I don’t know that the reaction on an individual basis is altogether that different. Really, is our fascination with celebrity dirt different from a gaggle of housewives gossiping at Walmart?

Maybe it is. As it relates to a celebrity, people can fantasize that they have an intimate relationship with a star. It’s the sense that, in reading about people’s lives, we develop a deep and personal connection with them. We know their secrets. We have a deep understanding of their inner being, or so the tabloids would lead us to believe. Whether that’s indicative of our typical relationship scenario, I don’t know. Maybe we, as a society, project and receive, like two people talking “to” each other, as opposed to “with” each other, and that habitual behavior reinforces this demented little fantasy. I don’t know why it happens, but it does.

By maintaining an emotional investment in the lives of celebrities, people feel as if they are somehow connected to greatness. By knowing greatness, by judging greatness, they are the fantasized peer of greatness. We forget our sins while we cast stones. Again, human nature.

You want news? Friend of mine dies of dehydration at a nature camp at the feet of a guide who refused to give him water. I write an article about the camp. I write another about the boot camp that killed Martin Lawrence (14 year old, suffocated by seven guards within three hours of arriving – video). I write a third about Straight, the anti-drug organization that has treated over 50,000 American children and is regarded as one of the most abusive institutions ever to exist. But Melvin Sembler, the guy who runs it, backed G.W. Bush’s campaign, so, after he was sued in dozens of abuse cases, he became the ambassador to Italy. Straight still exists, by the way, under the name DFAF, and still receives millions of federal dollars.

You could propose I have a bleeding heart. I’d say that’s unreasonable, considering two of the kids in my prissy, whitebread home area (a few miles from Bridgewater) won suits, one was punched in the face by three guards for thirty minutes, and the other, a physically and emotionally tortured girl with a learning disability, won about four million. The victim who took to the news, though, was Samantha Morrie, who was forced to live in a small room with no toilet for weeks on end, enduring rape by the guards and subsequent abortion. For what little it may amuse you, Ray Bradbury, one of Straight’s former patients, stole Sembler’s penis pump and put it up on Ebay.

You (general “you”) write stories about bad sex, you get hundreds of comments. You write posts about a thriving organization which is America’s leader in institutionalized child abuse, you get maybe twenty-five responses. Fifteen of them will be from abuse survivors. All the other readers will wait for the dust to settle and go back to reading the funnies.

Why? Because we don’t sympathize with the pain of comedic figures. We (the audience) aren’t expected to show empathy for their pain. That’s why we pity starving children, change the channel and laugh at starving celebrities. And, because no one likes to feel sorrow, people ignore the dying troops, the homeless vets, the emotional trauma and mental strain suffered by the average police officer. We want to be amused by the freak show. We don’t want to have to feel sorry for them. It’s human nature. It’s Fear Factor. There’s no pity, there. Happy feel good, sad feel bad. Get more happy. Simple as hamsters with the food button.

Where does this soulless selfishness come from? Maybe sympathy and compassion are things we learn. Children fry ants. As we grow older and become people of character, we recognize the wrongness in torturing indiscriminately. But underneath it all, there’s still that part of our brain, that childlike part, that loves to fry ants.

And you’re asking why a nation of fat, diapered babies behave like children. I’m not suggesting that we’re part of some elitist group. I’m suggesting that the public is an anonymous “we” that cannot be held accountable, individually, for its actions. And, if we could not be held accountable for our actions, people would lie, cheat, and steal with every pulse of their heart. If something else were true, we wouldn’t need gods to threaten us with eternal suffering in order to behave like good people.

What I don’t understand, will probably never understand, is why these people go out, seemingly with the intention to fan the flames. What the hell was Paris doing at the MTV Movie Awards? Why couldn’t she watch them at her house? Have a party with her friends? I’m not suggesting that she buy a bunker and hide out for the next twenty years. I’m saying, if I made an ass of myself in front of my twenty friends, I would try to keep a low profile for a while until they forgot about it. If I had eighty friends, the same would apply. Paris happens to have millions of eyes watching her. Fortunately, the American public has an attention span of a few days. If she would just Sit Back for seven goddamn days, we would forget she was ever alive. Celebrities are prosecuted all the damn time. Only when they spout anti-Semitic rants do we take notice.

You want to solve her problems? Get her hooked on the UFC, Fear Factor, and the Man Show. I swear to god, more women love those shows than men. And, by the time she comes up for air, the public will have forgotten who she is. Everybody wins.

As for the priorities of the public, you discover a way to change that and I will fetch your ale and whores until your appetite for entertainment is sated.

Its an interesting sociological thing how nobody bats an eyelid to the real issues, but gets angry about this shit. Maybe its because people know subconsciously that they’re being fucked in the ass, and have been for a long time, and somebody like Paris Hilton provides them with an easy scapegoat to take out all that subconscious hatred on. Like a collective unconscious thing. Whatever…

Peace love and good smoke,

Matt