| They'll Always Have Paris
By CHOIRE SICHA
The Simple Life 2" — the second season of the reality show, on which the celebutante Paris Hilton and her Best Friend Forever, the professional pop-star-daughter Nicole Richie, are set on a cross-country road trip — once again takes the heaviest of topics and makes them as weightless as a social X-ray. Beginning this Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Fox, the pair moves ever westward from Miami Beach to Beverly Hills, without the steamer trunks of credit cards that usually accompany their adventures. Unburdened of their tremendous wealth, and unschooled in the basics of daily conduct, they hop from family to family as frequently as any child under the care of a state welfare agency.
Rolling their eyes in perfect post-adolescent fashion for the millions of viewers in TV-land, Ms. Hilton and Ms. Richie somehow become our troubled, adorable orphans. The jokes are always about how unfit they are for survival. Meanwhile, the less hilarious fact that they are pretending to be needy, while the trailer-park strangers on whose kindness they rely might actually be struggling to make ends meet, somehow gets swept under the Airstream.
As with so many reality shows, part of the fun of watching "The Simple Life 2" is wondering what lapse in judgment, what moment of weakness, what incriminating negatives the producers exploited to get thinking people to agree to 10 episodes of prime-time infamy.
In this case, Ms. Hilton and Ms. Richie have offered a very straightforward explanation: it's a job. Each young woman has her own forthcoming movie, book, album and perfume and makeup lines. "I'm an Aquarius, so I love doing lots of projects at once," said Ms. Hilton, speaking recently by phone. "I'm a busy woman — I want to make my empire on my own, just like my grandfather."
But why would the families that put them up put up with them? That, it seems, is a job, too, albeit a far less lucrative one. Questions regarding payments received official "no comments" from a 20th Century Fox Television spokesman, Chris Alexander, and employees involved in various levels of the production were reluctant to disclose any financial details. But one member of a host family, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the family expected to be paid $1500.
That's better than minimum wage, but not enough to explain opening one's home to TV crews, national scrutiny and supercilious ectomorphs. Particularly given their reputation: "Everyone thought they were going to be snobs," said J. O. Batten, their Hernando County, Fla., host in the season's debut episode.
Mr. Batten is a rancher, a farmer, a rodeo producer and a candidate for county commissioner. It's not impossible that such a businessman would see TV face-time as valuable exposure.
But asked about their famous houseguests, many of these householders speak in an almost parental tone. To be sure, the blonde twosome can behave like lonely, abandoned children. "The impression that me and my family got," J. L. Cash, their host in Kissimmee, Fla., recalled in a recent interview, "was that you had two ladies here that didn't have much of a family life." It's as though their real parents abandoned them to a harsh Dickensian world of tabloids and scandal — and they work in a sort of sweatshop of celebrity.
Dr. Cash, a preacher for 36 years, oversees a bundle of churches. "True Christianity is about love," he said, "love being put in action." So his plan, as he now explains it: "What if we could introduce them to family and love as we know it?"
It's a touching idea, but in terms of cultural exchange, Dr. Cash brought gospel music, and Ms. Richie brought a stream of obscenities to the dinner table. "Nicole, she had a little problem with the language for a little while," he allowed.
Laurette Mequet, who plays host to the girls during their passage through Breaux Bridge, La., has a somewhat more satisfying exchange, something like a Cajun First Thanksgiving. She taught them frogging and crawfishing, and they took her daughter shopping for her first date. "That's not something we would have normally done, let her have a date," she said. "She's only 14. They even showed her how to walk properly in her dress and all that stuff I wasn't teaching her. I can teach her about the lake and the nature but not about shopping and dressing." | |
