Don't let Paris be a candle in the wind - She can't do this alone

America doesn't have royal families, but we have something similar: Industrialist dynasties. Families with household names that adorn the walls of museums and hospitals built with their massive fortunes; families like the Vanderbilts, the Gettys and the Hiltons. And while they don’t technically hold the titles, the children of these families definitely behave like princes and princesses, but too often without the requisite social graces. Case in point: LA County’s most famous ex-inmate, Miss Paris Hilton.

Paris’ first act in public life has been a disaster. It started with Rick Salomon making a bundle of money selling footage of her having sex, and ended with the American media horde making a bundle of money selling footage of her in tears being taken back to jail. Along the way, she starred in her own reality TV show, she released an album, shot music videos, starred in a horror movie, and basically took being a Hollywood party girl to astounding new heights.

In her second act in public life, the first thing Paris needs is some serious image control. The most valuable commodity any celebrity owns (especially one who is famous mainly for being rich and famous) is his or her image; and the bigger the celebrity, the more important image control becomes. Take Michael Jordan, for example. He’s been in the public eye for the better part of 20 years. For most of the ’90s, he was the most recognizable person in the world. But you never saw him do anything wrong. I have a friend who has worked with him on a few commercials. He tells me Michael would arrive with six or seven lawyer/agent/assistant types and go straight to his dressing room. Two minutes before he was supposed to be on set, they would all emerge. Michael would do what he had to do, they’d all go back in the dressing room, and a few minutes later, they’d all leave. Even on a closed set, Michael’s "people" kept Michael away from his "public." And that’s exactly what Rick and Kathy Hilton need to get for their little girl: Some "people."

While they’re at it, they can get Paris a new house in a gated community (so nobody knows where she lives), a car with heavily tinted windows (so nobody knows where she travels), and a 400-pound driver/bodyguard to take her wherever she wants to go and protect her when she gets there.

More important than image control, for her second act, Paris needs a purpose. There, she’s on to something already. She says she wants to open a halfway house to provide services for women coming out of jail because "these women just keep coming back because they have no place to go." I hope she’s successful putting this together. When she’s done, she can take on other humanitarian projects. She could do the same thing Angelina Jolie was trying to do before she fell for Brad and they decided to adopt every poor, brown kid they could find and move them to Malibu. While she may never become the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, Paris Hilton could use her fame and the fact that cameras will follow her wherever she goes to call attention to the needs of under-served populations everywhere. She could become America’s Princess Diana: An advocate for those less fortunate than her (in Paris’ case, the whole world).

I give Rick and Kathy Hilton (and their attorneys) credit; ever since the debacle that was Paris’ early release and subsequent return to jail, they’ve done well. They got Sheriff Lee Baca to say Paris was being treated unfairly. They got City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo explaining why Paris is in jail, but his wife (who is no poster child for safe driving herself) is free to damage more city vehicles. And they (finally) stopped talking to the press. Good for them. But their work is just beginning. What they cannot do is leave Paris alone and unprotected from the media army and its reconnaissance troops — the paparazzi.

Left to her own devices, the Hiltons’ little girl will get eaten alive. NBC was prepared to pay her $1 million to sit for an interview after her release, despite the fact that none other than Barbara Walters and ABC passed on the interview (and refused to pay for it). The media has put a bounty on Paris’ image and anyone who loves her can’t sit idly by while the price continues to rise. Because that’s what happened to Diana Spencer, no longer the mythical "Princess Diana," that night 10 years ago in a tunnel in Paris, France — her image so valuable that she paid for her privacy with her life.