Forget Paris ... Hilton

It's a lesson as old as the elementary-school playground; if you want to get rid of an irritant, one of the best things to do is ignore it. This morning the Associated Press reported the end of a weeklong ban of stories about Paris Hilton.

The hotel-enterprise heiress, reality television "star," wannabe singer, and general pox on the future of America's youth has been speckled all over the news for all of her "adult" life, and editors at the AP were intrigued to see what would happen if they just ignored her antics for seven straight days.

As it turns out, there was a bit of a public outcry, but not because the world's gossip mongers wanted details of Paris' latest drunken entanglement (or the freshest not-safe-for-work snapshots). Rather, critics were concerned about what such a ban meant for the news industry in general. What topic, important or trivial, could possibly be next on the banning block?

Well on Tuesday, as the ban drew to a close, Miss Hilton was ticketed for driving with a suspended license (of course she was), and the news machine started cranking again. For now, but hopefully not forever, it's a Paris Hilton world; we just live in it.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.