The tragic flaw of the velvet rope

Being almost 40 and gainfully employed, I'm not very hip to minor Hollywood types, so until a few days ago, I'd never heard of Brandon Davis.

Evidently, apart from being Mischa Barton's ex-boyfriend, he is the heir to a vast oil fortune, and, judging by the widely-circulated paparazzi video featuring his comments abouts Lindsay Lohan, he is also a complete gaping asshole.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching the videos taken by photographers who hound celebrities as they shop, go to dinner, or out to clubs. It's a window into a strange and fascinating world.

Despite the fact that nearly every one of these little strumpets and cads seem vapid and devoid of any redeeming qualities, the reality is that their exploits are followed by millions of Americans.

Perhaps, in a variation on an old chestnut, we get the celebrities we deserve. If that's true, it certainly says something about us that we get Paris Hilton.

The lovely Ms. Hilton was featured prominantly in the video with Mr. Davis. In it, he is, we must charitably assume, drunk, and spewing obscenely graphic and tasteless insults about Ms. Lohan's genitalia. Paris follows behind him, laughing far too loudly, and occasionally whispering into his ear, presumably egging him on.

But it's near the end of his tirade that we see just what a sub-human he really is when he is seated in Hilton's expensive sports car, smoking a cigarette and heavy-lidded, and he tells us that Lindsay Lohan has 7 million dollars which means "she's really poor".

The implication of that, of course, is that Lohan is poor in comparison to himself (and Hilton) who stands to inherit much, much more. Yeeeikes.

And that's where he got himself into trouble. If he'd just stuck to his 4th grade pussy jokes, this probably would have been dismissed as him being a drunken idiot. But he took it somewhere that rich people are obliged not to take it.

We po' folk assume that, in private and amongst others of their kind, the rich glorify in their wealth. They roll around naked in large piles of dirty, dirty money, and they raise their crystal stemware and smile knowingly to one another whilst flying in their private planes and dining on their sumptuous meals prepared by world-famous chefs.

But in public, they are supposed to pretend like it doesn't matter. That the money doesn't make them different, or better than the rest of us. We (and they) know it's just a lie, but we expect them keep their end of the facade up.

Brandon Davis broke the rule, and one brave, raven-haired prole made him pay the price for it.

Catching him as he was coming out of a club, the unidentified woman verbally accosted Brandon with a string of piercing insults that drew far more blood than any of the borderline-retarded remarks he made about Lohan.

"Lindsay Lohan earns her money, Brandon. You get it from daddy."

Her attack was relentless and vicious, several times calling him a "little bitch".

In full view of cameras, he could risk no further damage to his reputation. So he did nothing but walk away, taking all of her venom silently with him.

And no one --not any of the dozens of people milling around, not even his friends-- no one stepped up to defend him.