The Rake Magazine

OK, it's a little premature, but I couldn't help laughing at the first reports out of the Par Ridder hearings today.

Question: what's the difference between a little rich girl driving while drunk and a little rich boy driving a newspaper while drunk on power?

UPDATE: Mnspeak's worth a look on this. Lots of funny people there.

The story in the NY Times this morning says that NBC has outbid ABC for the right to have the first interview with jail bird Paris Hilton when she gets out next week.

NBC indignantly protests that they "don't pay for interviews." However, it does seem that they pay the Hilton family other fees for access to Paris's baby pictures.

ABC, the less virtuous of the two networks, had offered a straight $100,000 for the interview, but was told they were "not even in the same galaxy" as NBC.

So why would they want to be in that galaxy anyway, unless of course, they wanted to just drop the news charade anyway and just admit the news, for network TV, is just entertainment?

That theory would seem to be borne out by the recent installation of ABC's Barbara Walters's star on the Hollywood sidewalk.

One of the few perks of this job, if you can call seeing a movie you have to write about a perk, is getting to see movie screenings before having to wait in line with the rest of the blockbuster fans.

Tomorrow, while most of humanity is lined up to see if the Silver Surfer does destroy the earth, I'll be at Michael Moore's latest: Sicko.

Before you get all upset about how liberal he and I are, can you just take a minute and read just a little bit about health care in this country, and how for want of $80 to have a tooth pulled, a 12-year-old child from Maryland named Deamonte Driver got a brain infection, ran up a bill that we'll all be paying of over $250,000, and then died? For want of 80 bucks, which is less than I spent on dinner with my wife last night, a kid died.

That is sick.

It's a barely kept secret that Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are among the most searched terms on the internet. In fact, if you teamed "rehab" with "Lohan" last week, you got over 6.8 million Google references.

That was, of course, topped this week with 6.9 Google hits on "Hilton" and "jail".

I've railed here before about America's fascination with sex bombs over fragmentation bombs. Thank God someone in the entertainment industry feels the same way I do about empty celebrity.

Sarah Silverman has already got several pans for her "mean spirited" body slam of Paris Hilton at this week's MTV Movie Awards. But, I'm one of the ones who think Sarah got it just right. If you don't want to watch the video clip, here's the highlight from the Reuters story: "[Silverman] joked that the bars of Hilton's cell would be painted like penises to make her feel more comfortable, but noted: "I just worry that she's going to break her teeth on those things."

Watch the video. I already loved Sarah Silverman. My estimation of her has increased.