by Jamie Pancake

Created on: November 17, 2009

When it comes to any jailhouse story, no one should get paid to tell it. If an ex criminal wants to tell their story, they should do it for free and they should only be doing it to help others to make better decisions and not end up where they have landed. Anyone who is in jail, no matter what the reason, is there because they broke the law in some shape or form and I do not think that it should be glamorized in any way.

When it comes to Paris Hilton in particular getting paid to talk about her life behind bars, I think that it is ridiculous that she would even take the money in the first place. There are millions of young girls out there that idolize her and wish for nothing more than to follow in her footsteps, and for her to take one million dollars for an interview about an incident that could have killed her or others is outrageous. If she wants to do the interview to voice her admitting to the mistakes that she made that would be great, but she should definitely not accept any type of money for it, unless she were to donate all of the proceeds to an alcohol education class or something else that would benefit others that are at risk for landing in jail for the same type of crime. Let's face it, Paris Hilton does not, nor will she anytime in the future, need the money that is offered to her for such an interview, so she should not be trying to glamorize the incident in any way.

At the same time, I think that it would be a bad judgement call for NBC to offer her so much money for a story like that. How would Paris or any of the network executives feel if a young girl who saw that interview and thought that it would be cool to drink and drive went out and got into an alcohol related car crash and was killed or killed others? I would hope that nothing of the sort would ever happen, but if Paris was in fact paid that much money to do an interview about her jail time that stemmed from her drunk driving arrest, that is likely to happen. Furthermore, any girl that gave the Paris Hilton interview as a reason for going out and drinking and driving would no doubt get some time on the air on a news channel at the national level.

I think that it is horrible that she would be offered money for an interivew of that type and I hope that she would have enough common sense to realize what a role model she is to so many young girls and act accordingly. If she wants to tell the story so badly, she should write a book about her life and include it there or do some public service announcements about how wrong it is to drink and drive and how horrible it is to spend any time in jail.

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