PARIS WAGS HER...

PARIS WAGS HER FINGER. I was out of town and offline for most of the Paris Hilton media frenzy last week, but today the imprisoned woman herself released a statement siding with those media critics who found last week's coverage excessive. And you just know something is wrong when even Paris Hilton is chiding the press for not being serious enough:

I must also say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things, like the men and women serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world.

Yes, this was probably written by a canny publicist trying to spin things for his client, but, just as Hilton was able to raise questions about Britney Spears last fall -- such as, how out-of-control does a person have to be to make Hilton look like a model of decorum in comparison? -- she's now managed to humiliate the national press corps by calling them silly. Which, in fact, they have been. O.J. Simpson also weighs in over at Editor & Publisher:

"When Paris Hilton was going to jail last week, more people knew about that than knew that we were sending people into space that day," Simpson said in a phone interview from Miami. "It has replaced what is real news. There was always a place for it, but it was [gossip writer] Rona Barrett. Now it is the equivalent of Edward R. Murrow reporting it today."

I think someone is probably rolling in his grave.

--Garance Franke-Ruta