Finally! Paris is sucking it up

For once in her silly life, Paris Hilton is taking the hard road. Late Saturday she released a statement saying she was ''learning and growing'' from her time behind bars and will not appeal her 45-day jail sentence.

For all the attention her weird, public pseudo-life generates, she can now use the spotlight to stand tall and take her punishment like a woman. She is, after all, an adult at 26. Maybe this will help heal the damage of her Friday court appearance.

She could have set an example for young women who view her as the pace car of fashion -- not only how to dress but how to act. She takes a lot of heat for being a bad example. This was her chance, for once, to set a good example -- to take responsibility and serve her time.

Instead, she left a courtroom Friday crying and screaming like a spoiled toddler being sent to the "naughty step" when a judge ordered her back to jail after one day on home monitoring. She made Tank Johnson look like Nelson Mandela.

A psychiatrist described her as "distraught and traumatized" at the prospect of incarceration. Which is sort of the point of jail, right? It would defeat the purpose to go in happy about it.

Hilton's high life left her uniquely unprepared for life beyond the comfort zone of of vanity, cameras, nightlife, her faux fame and the red carpet. When real life came knocking, it was all too shocking.

She was arrested last Sept. 7 in Hollywood on suspicion of driving under the influence after being observed "driving erratically" on a late-night burger run. Her license was suspended. In January, she pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of alcohol-related reckless driving. She was placed on three years' probation and fined $1,500.

But later that month, she was pulled over and informed she was driving on a suspended license. On Feb. 27, Los Angeles sheriff's deputies stopped her for driving 70 mph in a 35 mph zone "in darkness without her headlights on." The document she had signed acknowledging she was not to drive while her license was suspended was in the glove compartment.

This is not cool when you're on probation. Authorities were also peeved that she hadn't gotten around to enrolling in an alcohol education course, another condition of her probation. A judge sentenced her to 45 days for violating terms of her probation. She accepted a deal to serve 23 days in a special unit, and checked in around midnight June 3, after attending the MTV Movie Awards.

On Thursday, she was sprung because of an undisclosed medical condition. The sheriff sent her home with an electronic bracelet to serve 40 days of home confinement in Hollywood Hills.

Not so fast, argued prosecutors. The judge called her back to court Friday and ordered her back to jail to serve her sentence -- the entire 45 days.

And that's when she freaked out, crying and screaming for her mother.

Maybe her acceptance Saturday of the sentence will mark the end of the Paris Hilton fascination. Maybe this will indeed make her stronger. Otherwise she relegates herself to a role straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made," he wrote.

Maybe the jail library has a copy of The Great Gatsby Paris could read to pass the time.

Source: www.suntimes.com