Fake, vain, vapid, vulgar - no one embodies all of America’s worst traits quite like Paris Hilton, the media Frankenstein. Last week something truly amazing happened. Paris Hilton, America’s firstname in famous-for-being-famous, got her comeuppance: the heiress was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving without a licence and thus violating the terms of her probation in a driving-under-the-influence incident. In her appeal to the LA court, Hilton sniffled that she didn’t understand the terms of her probation, that she has people read her mail for her, and when it comes to legal matters, “I just sign what people tell me to sign”.

Such explanations, combined with Hilton’s fame, money, and expensive blond hair extensions, are more than enough to get any celebrity off the hook. Hence this rare instance of punishment has resulted in a nation fixated with the drama.

Hilton was never content to merely be America’s party girl. She wanted to be talented, and so of course went on reality TV. Hence the creation of The Simple Life, a programme that would follow Hilton and her sidekick, fellow heiress Nicole Richie, as they roamed the country learning how to flip burgers and interact with farm animals. Just before this bit of programming genius began, however, Hilton’s sex tape was leaked. So if

you didn’t know who she was before, now you knew her as the rich girl whose night-vision sex video you watched on the net.

The nature of American celebrity is such that when a star commits some sort of “crime”, the star apologises. The apology is either explicit (and most often delivered with eye-rolling earnestness), or implicit (a trip to rehab with no public comment). Hilton, however, eschews these rules. That’s what makes her jail sentence all the more shocking.

There’s something amazing about her, not just as a phenomenon but as a human being. To personify everything that’s wrong with US culture. That’s an incredible feat. Americans may be oversexed, overprivileged, materialistic, unintelligent, fake, vain, vapid and vulgar, but few manage to embody all these traits at the same time. While the camera will continue to bring her success, it remains to be seen if the prison security cameras take to her quite so kindly.