Paris Hilton: A Model for Public School Values?
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Would you have a problem with Paris Hilton teaching your children? After all, this 24-year-old is the granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton hotels and the source of the family’s $300 million. As she’s jetsetted between Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria, Beverly Hills and the Hamptons, surely she’s picked up some important life lessons she could pass along to the kiddos.
Well, let’s see. She barely got her GED, danced topless on bars, posed provocatively for FHM Magazine and engaged in a make-out session with lesbian model Ingrid Casares.
So far, Paris doesn’t exactly sound as though she’d pass the Girl Scout leader test. But worst of all, her fame hit the stratosphere when, at the age of 19, she and her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon made a porno tape of themselves that ultimately hit the internet with a vengeance in October, 2003. She didn’t have the decency to blush.
To their utter shame, the bozos at J.P. Cleary Middle School in Richland, New Jersey, 30 miles west of Atlantic City, actually thought last month that Paris Hilton would be a perfectly suitable role model and substitute teacher for their 12 to 14-year-olds!
You see, Paris stars in FOX-TV’s fish-out-of-water “reality” show called “The Simple Life” in which she lives on a farm. Apparently, it’s a modern takeoff on the 1960s sitcom “Green Acres” starring Eva Gabor. In its latest incarnation, Paris and her co-star Nicole Ritchie are traveling across the country trying their hand as interns at various jobs.
Why would any self-respecting school administrators give FOX’s wacky proposal a second glance? When something smells fishy, just follow the money. Turns out they offered to pay $5,000 to film an episode at the school. I guess the school administrators wanted to buy some fancy leather couches for the faculty lounge or something.
Without batting an eyelash, these morally clueless dopes sent home a letter from the show’s production company and permission forms to parents in early January.
Surprise, surprise. For some odd reason, the parents had a teensy, weensy problem with the thought of an X-rated porn star teaching their impressionable children.
One parent, Sue Barber, exclaimed: “I just feel that it’s ludicrous that the Board of Education and the administration would invite Paris Hilton to teach 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds…[her] reputation leaves a lot to be desired.” No doubt Sue wasn’t the only parent who wanted to have Superintendent Diane DeGiacomo and the members of the Board of Education custom-fitted for some fashionable straight jackets. In order to dispel the growing mob of understandably angry parents and to keep her job simultaneously, Superintendent Diane came to her senses and decided reluctantly it was time to send Paris Hilton packing.
Here’s the question: How isolated is this kind of nonsense in public schools today? Sadly, it is more common than you might imagine. For example, last month at Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, California, public school officials knowingly invited in a speaker for their annual Career Day who advised the young girls that they could earn a good living as strip dancers.
In fact, William Fried, a management consultant, went on to bolster his claim with a fairly heady figure. He told the wide-eyed eighth-grade young women that stripping would be a good career move for them since they could make as much as $250,000 per year, depending on their bust size.
14-year-old Jason Garcia remembers Fried saying: “For every two inches up there, you should get another $50,000 on your salary.” Beyond his in-classroom verbal endorsement of such a reprehensible and demeaning career move, Mr. Fried also distributed a so-called “tip” sheet to the students which listed 140 potential careers.
Right there – along side accounting and nursing – he listed stripping and acting as a spiritual medium as equally legitimate professional options. Parenthetically, I had to chuckle that one possible career move would be to act as a spiritual medium. I thought you either were a spiritual medium who could dabble with the powers of the occult or you were not. But, as we learned from the now bankrupt Psychic Friends Network, most of the alleged psychics were only acting as spiritual mediums for $9 an hour. It was Hollywood 101.
Not only did Mr. Fried affirm unethical, unbiblical career choices for these kids in both verbal and written form, but he had the audacity to defend the indefensible in a subsequent interview with the Associated Press. He repeated his reprobate position, “The truth of the matter is you can earn a tremendous amount of money as an exotic dancer, if that’s your desire.” Worse than that, Mr. Fried did not think he offended anyone.
I’m reminded of the wise counsel from Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool seems right to him.”
Yet sadly, this man with his amoral agenda, has been welcomed back with open arms three years in a row to influence vulnerable teenagers whose parents have clearly misplaced their trust in the public school. No longer is the school acting in loco parentis – or in the place of the parent. Mr. Fried seems categorically hostile to the unspoken, but understood interests the parents have in protecting their children’s innocence.
What’s been the reaction of the principal in Palo Alto, California you ask? Initially, Joseph Di Salvo praised Mr. Fried, adding that the presentation and handout had been praised by students. There’s a shocker. Why wouldn’t the average pimply-faced-trying-to-fit-in-and-sound-cool teenager praise the tactics of William “Stripper Promoter” Fried?
After getting an earful of complaints from parents, Mr. Di Salvo still defended Mr. Fried’s presentation as fundamentally positive on balance.
I guess the same could be said of the Titanic. Except for an iceberg gash in its side, it was a seaworthy vessel!
To his credit, the principal said he would send letters of apology home with students. However, he still wasn’t totally convinced that Mr. Fried shouldn’t speak at next year’s Career Day. Mr. DiSalvo was still thinking that one through. (Don’t hurt yourself buddy!)
Let me give you a Polaroid snapshot of the kind of damage this kind of public school presentation does to the ability our young people have to determine right from wrong.
13-year-old Mariah Cannon indicated that she did not want stripping taken off Fried’s list. “Although parents might find it hard to hear, it’s a legitimate career choice,” she said. Out of the mouth of conscience-numbed babes!
Time and time again the public school officials are squandering the trust placed in them by parents.
First we had to protect our kids from evil on-line with Net Nanny. Then we needed to filter out obscenities on broadcast television with TV Guardian. And now we have to monitor what the public school teachers and administrators are doing? These are the very people who are supposed to be most sensitive to the God-given boundaries of children.
Add this kind of immodest envelope-pushing nonsense to the evolution-teaching, pre-marital sex-endorsing, homosexual agenda-affirming and God-hating curriculum of most public schools and I can better understand why so many Alamo City-area parents are choosing to homeschool their children or send them to private Christian schools instead.
Ultimately, as Christians, we understand that it is our primary obligation to raise our children in the admonition of the Lord. The Bible, not Paris Hilton, is our plumb line.
TAKE A STAND ACTION STEPS:
1. Contact Buena Regional School District Superintendent Diane DeGiacomo to object to her willingness to let Paris Hilton, whose fame was fueled by her porn video, interact with middle school children. (914 Main, Ave. Richland, NJ 83501 856-697-0800 856.697.0800 ext. 8100)
2. Contact Joseph DiSalvo, the principal at Stanford Middle School, and ask him to bar William Fried from addressing the student body again in light of Fried’s endorsement of stripping as a legitimate career choice. (480 E. Meadow Dr., Palo Alto, CA 94306, 650. 856-5188.)
3. Get an excellent video entitled “Let My Children Go” by Ray Moore through: http://www.exodusmandate.org/
4. Learn more about home schooling in San Antonio at http://www.homeedsa.com/ and nationally at http://www.hslda.org and http://www.visionforum.com.
5. Check out some of the great Christian private schools listed in the San Antonio Christian Beacon.
© 2005 Adam McManus.Adam McManus hosts a weekday afternoon radio show called “Take A Stand” on AM 630, KSLR in San Antonio, Texas from 3-6 p.m. To sign up for his weekday e-mail alert, go to: www.TakeAStand.net and listen live at www.kslr.com. Contact Adam at (210) 344-8481 ext 132 and adam@takeastand.net.
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