On how 'reality' TV changes reality

Some of you may have heard that there's currently a vacancy on the Supreme Court. True, the president has already suggested a candidate to fill the breach, as is his constitutional right; but if for whatever reason things don't work out with Judge Roberts, I have a humble suggestion for a replacement: Kathy Hilton, Paris' and Nicky's mom and the host of "I Want to Be a Hilton" on NBC.

Admittedly, my regular readers on the Senate Judiciary Committee may be somewhat taken aback by the suggestion. It is true, for one thing, that the paper trail on Mrs. Hilton's positions on matters of judicial moment is somewhat slight, although in this she may not be so different from other candidates for the position. It may well also be the case that her most important and widely recognized opinions concern couture. But in her favor, Mrs. Hilton is the repository of all virtue - intelligence, wisdom, taste, tact, elegance, beauty, and more.

Or so one is led to believe from the contestants on the show, who gush about her like they were Texas oil wells. Which brings me to the subject of this column.

Say what you want about Donald Trump, Tommy Hilfiger, or Martha Stewart, the past, present, and future of celebrity-based reality television. Whatever your opinion of their performances on the shows - and judging from Hilfiger's curiously affectless presence, I tend to imagine that he believes he's on the set of one of this summer's zombie movies - it's not hard to understand why the contestants might actually respect them.

Yes, the downtown fashionista types who are the contestants on "The Cut" may seem, as a group, like they'd rather have their swatches stuffed down their throats than wear Tommy Hilfiger's jeans - but they know they're talking to a man who created one of the biggest and most prominent fashion businesses in the world pretty much out of nothing. And though I'll eat my home-monitoring ankle bracelet if Stewart's current legal troubles get major airtime on her show, it's fair to show a little love to anyone who managed to create a billion dollar business pretty much from scratch. And as for Trump - well, even if his finances have been somewhat up and down over the years, he's still managed to make quite a name for himself in the real estate business. (I know, becase I see it plastered everywhere I go all over New York.)

But when it comes to Kathy Hilton, I'm sort of drawing a blank.

Please don't get me wrong: I have no particular animus against Mrs. Hilton; she seems like a nice enough person, and the way she puts up with some of the, shall we say, more obstreperous behavior from some of the contestants clearly displays a certain fortitude. (Perhaps a fortitude learned from dealing with her daughters, whose behavior couldn't have been quite as demure as she'd have liked it to be, to put it mildly.) But it's hard to see what's inspired the kind of encomia the contestants come up with on a weekly basis - paeans of praise that, as the season continues, seem increasingly at odds with the perfectly nice, but hardly extraordinary, Kathy Hilton we see on screen.

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