NYC to Paris: A Love Fest

It’s been whirlwind week for Paris Hilton, and the rest of us who breathe the air that surrounds her - that air can carry on the jet stream from the Hollywood Hills to Manhattan Valley.  She was released from prison, got to eat Taco Bell, went corporate and bland for Larry King, and she’s on the cover of People looking like an out of place Cosmo girl.  Wow. I knew there was some serious PR positioning going on here but can you re-invent yourself on such in a mass scale in a matter of days? Apparently.

Paris has discovered a new, deeper kind of love, the love of the admiration of the people - so now we can deepen our appreciation of her. It is a Diana-kind of celebrity that penetrates and transcends, that’s what she’s after. In that respect she is much more mature than Lindsay and Britney. Paris has “meetings” and talks about her many businesses. If anything, the outfit she chose for the Larry King interview was “corporate.” She looked like a successful careeer woman who just happened to spend 23 days in prison. She was suited up for Fortune, not Vanity Fair.

Paris earns her own money, she wanted to make that clear. This means that we will have to grow up with Paris, we will have to mature as she matures, every revelation of hers will be ours, and wait until she finally finds the first love of her life, who will surely be the first of many. Can you imagine a Paris Hilton wedding? It would be sure global chaos.

92% Say Lindsay Should Do Time

TMZ.Com is reporting that Lindsay Lohan was allegedly coked up and legally drunk when she crashed her car in Beverly Hills on Memorial Day weekend. The Police could present the case to the D.A. in the next few days. Lindsay recently re-upped after an initial stay in rehab. More than 15,000 have weighed in so far on a survey on the leading gossip news site and the consensus is overhwleming: throw her in the slammer.

With Lindsay out of sight in rehab and likely going up the river to the Big House, the road is paved with gold for Paris to emerge as the successful power woman of the future. Britney was recently photographed topless, trying on underwear. She looked dumpy and trashy. Right now Britney is running a distant third, with Lindsay likely to catch the spotlight in the next few news cycles.

Meanwhile, Paris has rented a Malibu beach house for the summer and will treat herself to some post prison R&R as she gears up to become the next gen Martha meets Angelina meets Diana meets Madonna. Nothing else is happening in the world at the moment. Over and out.

Paris loves us. We are saved, halellujah.

A defining moment in American culture passed like a comet through the videosphere last night as Paris Hilton patiently answered probing questions from the CNN bologna salesman Larry King. What can you say about Paris? Poised, repetent, she rehearsed her lines well. I believed her.  Did Mike Sitrick media train her?

Sing glory halellujah, Paris will be burned in our social consciousness forever, at least as long as I am alive. Her latest positioning is for the long-term. She will go to a poor African country we never heard of and start adopting babies. To spare the innocent, she will volunteer to walk across fields where there are suspected landmines. She will reduce her carbon footprint by wearing heels instead of pumps. She will buy a time share in Darfur.

It is admirable that Paris wants to jettison the ‘bad’ people in her life and maintain her core of purity, chastity, and nobility. I believe that she believes that she has been transformed and that partying and drugs were never part of her life. The sphere of her world extends about six inches beyond her personal space, she is a master illusionist. She is beginning to channel Madonna - reinventing youself is as simple as issuing a press statement and appearing on a talk show. We no longer have Party Girl. We now have Power Woman.  That’s entertainment. That’s PR.

Paris Inspires Rapture & Post Confinement HOT Look

New York Times serious liberal readers absolutely freaked when the Gray Old Lady finally, finally got wise and put Paris in the lead story Online with videos, big, vivid photos, a blog, and constantly-updated reports from the post-confinement front.  The comments on the Times blog were united in horror, with variations of: my god there is war and disease, discord, poverty and serious issues - what is this crap? Why is the Times doing this? Why - because it’s news and the L.A. County Sherriff’s spokesperson said that this was on a whole new level - bigger than O.J. or Charlie Manson - we’re talking end of the world stuff.

If the liberals would stop kvetching long enough to watch this AP video of the Paris prison release extravaganza on The New York Times website they would have seen that we are indeed in the midst of the rapture. Hallelujah! 

Who is that man on his knees? As soon as Paris was released from confinement he began screaming PARIS YOU DID IT, YOU DID IT, OUR PRINCESS IS FREE! He was waving a sign that said LIBERATE PARIS. Then, in a spooky desperate anguished cry he screamed repeatedly DON’T YOU EVER GO AWAY AGAIN and he fell to his knees crying. What’s really weird is that nobody seemed to pay attention to him. This is California, right?

There are two possible explanations for this behavior. Either he is a psychopath who should be kept out of these situations, lest he do  harm. Or he is a personification of our worst tendencies as a society and he has been sent as a sign that our idolization of false gods dooms us as a civilization. I fear the former and trust the latter. Paris may be our modern-day St. Joan, but she could also be the Anti-Christ. I can imagine that the Anti-Christ would really like Taco Bell after being forced to scarf gruel for 23 days.

Meanwhile, nobody can figure out how Paris looked so hot, absolutely radiant, after emerging from prison. It has already sparked a post-confinement beauty craze. A new facility has sprung up in Malibu called CONFINEMENT: IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU. Instead of 28 days in rehab you spend time in a mock prison. You have to wear an orange jumper, you shower in public, get a pillow if they feel like, and you have to sleep on a hard bed in a cold cell. Solitary confinement is extra. On your last day they fly in Frederick Fecacca to cut your hair, Selma Magoosh as colorist, Francine du Tush for makeup, and Mr. Severance to coordinate the outfit. Nothing makes you feel younger than freedom, baby. Take off those cuffs.

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Is Paris Burning?

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, she’s free at last. A smiling, happy Paris Hilton was released this morning into a swarm of crazed photographers who chronicled every gesture in a frenzied flash of popping lights. It was a fitting end to a tortuous ordeal for our modern day St. Joan, the nation, and indeed the world.

Paris seemed to come alive in the exultant moment of liberation, bearing no signs of animosity toward her jailors. Not since Nelson Mandela walked out of prison after decades in captivity, or St. Joan chose death over renouncing her beliefs, have we seen such a brave martyr willing to suffer for our sins. 

The reports of her metamorphosis in jail - from silly little party girl to mature woman ready to better the cruel world - have set the stage for a one hour Larry King segment tomorrow night. After being caught up in the pay-for-play tussle surrounding the Paris interview, ABC backed out and Barbara Walters, not wanting to appear snubbed, took the low road. 

Walters told New York Post’s “PageSix”: “Tawdry. The whole thing somehow was beneath me. Besides, it was a no-win. If I did a tough piece and her tears started to flow, it would be, ‘Oh, there’s Barbara Walters making people cry again.’ Too soft, and I’d be criticised.”

Paris has matured in her PR approach as well. The Hilton family has retained crisis communications pitbull Mike Sitrick, a big gun who can take control of the public reformation of the beloved heiress. Sitrick released this statement over BusinessWire on behalf of Paris:

“I am thrilled that Larry King has asked me to appear on his program to discuss my experience in jail, what I have learned, how I have grown and anything else he wants to talk about. Larry King is not only a world-renown journalist, but a true American Icon. It will be an honor to do his show.”

Praise the journalist, take any questions, be happy and upbeat, lay the foundation for your renewal, control the message. Some hardball PR at work here. Paris is back in control of the show. We tune in for the next episode.

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Colleges to U.S. News: You Don’t Rate

U.S. News & World Report has built a powerful business around ranking top colleges. Started in 1983 as a modest guide for parents overwhelmed by data needed to choose the best college for their kids, it has ballooned into the media-whipped Bible for academic status climbers and college administrators who lust to be in the Top 10. In the end, it has been a terrific PR program for the magazine.

No longer. The Annapolis Group, a consortium of 115 liberal arts colleges, has forcefully rejected the magazine’s slice and dice approach to college rankings. Dozens of liberal arts colleges that belong to the Group, some high up in the U.S. News rankings, will no longer play ball with the magazine. 

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Coolhunting Totally Transparent PR

I have been on to these Coolhunting guys for a couple of months, since they started the Swarm Creativity Blog in  a marketing push to support their new book “Coolhunting - Chasing Down the Next Big Thing” . Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper, co-authors of the book, were members of a live online Coolhunt for a month, ending in May, and logged it on the Swarm blog.

These are cool characters. Gloor studies Collaborative Innovation Networks at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, develops networking and data visualization software, and wrote “Swarm Creativity – Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Innovation Networks”. Cooper is a writer and a research affiliate at the MIT Sloan School. 

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Hillary Ups The Ante With Mob Inspired Web Video

Is that Johnny Sack from the Sopranos up there in a web video announcing Hillary Clinton’s campaign song. How brilliant is that? Nearly as brilliant as getting husband Bill to play a central role in the video, and for the brief script to mirror the last cryptic minutes of the last episode of the Sopranos. Those Clintons have a knack for an accurate middle of the road reading of the American mass psyche - they’ll need it to fend off Barack Obama - but really the song sucks. It is this weepy over the top Celine Dion show stopper that doesn’t exactly rouse you to patriotic fervor, or inspire a vision of the promised land. Can’t we bring back Fleetwood Mac?  Instead of Bill and Hillary, this time it’s Hillary and Bill, and we can accept that we are getting two for the price of one. That’s progress. And it gives the Clintons an edge that could win this election.

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