Klores Flacks for Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton has hired Dan Klores Communications, a PR firm that specializes in "crisis communications" for celebrities embroiled in scandals, to help her cope with the fallout over public circulation of a videotape featuring her having sex with a boyfriend. The videotape has sparked a media frenzy, but New York Times columnist John Leland jokes that the only thing that could really "damage her reputation as a vapid, self-involved rich girl" would be a videotape showing her doing something worthwhile with her life, such as "developing mathematical models for a low-cost irrigation system to be used in the developing world. ... Few celebrities have worked as hard at pure tabloid notoriety, or built reputations so unsullied by accomplishment or circumspection. Since she was the subject of a Vanity Fair profile in 2000, Ms. Hilton, whose great-grandfather Conrad Hilton started the Hilton hotel chain, has been seized upon by gossip columnists as a chance to construct a celebrity from scratch, using only the raw clay of her wealth and indiscretion. Though she has done little more than go to nightclubs, her name has appeared in more than 90 New York Post articles this year alone." The release of the sex video prompted a lawsuit by the guy she was boffing, but observers think the furor will goose viewership of her new TV show on Fox, "A Simple Life."