Funny You Should Mention Paris Hilton . . .

(please scan down to correction below)

This thought actually occurred to me yesterday when I first saw McCain's Paris-Britney ad, but I wanted to confirm it. Sure enough, though, the members of the Hilton family are big McCain supporters and they're not too pleased about the ad. Martin Eisenstadt reports the following:

I hear whispers from the inner campaign staff that the phone was burning off the hook today with calls from Paris Hilton’s grandfather, William Barron Hilton (co-chair of the Hilton Hotel empire), furious that the McCain ad drew an unflattering comparison between Obama and his own granddaughter.

It seems that the elder Hilton has donated $18,400 to the McCain campaign, and $35,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the last couple of years. (Paris’s father, Rick Hilton, has given an additional $6,900 to the McCain campaign. Suffice it to say, he’s none too pleased either.)

He then admonishes the campaign:

This is a reminder to my brethren at the Campaign: don’t bite the hand that feeds us.

Translation: don't mock the idle rich. That's our base.

Seriously, though, the Obama campaign should seize upon this episode to underscore the difference between his economic agenda and that of John McCain's. The soundbites practically write themselves:

-"John McCain wants to talk about Paris Hilton, so let's talk about Paris Hilton. John McCain's answer to our economic troubles is to give massive tax breaks to the Paris Hiltons of the world while doing nothing to help regular people get health insurance or pay for college tuition. No wonder her family has given thousands of dollars to his campaign."

-"John McCain wants to repeal the estate tax--or as I like to call it, the Paris Hilton tax--a tax that only affects people who inherit massive sums of money. And he wants to do this at a time when our country is deeply in debt and spending billions of dollars fighting a war we never should have fought. John McCain clearly shares the priorities of the Hilton family, but does he share yours?"

CORRECTION: As MLS points out in the comments, I'm wrong about McCain's current position on the estate tax. While he recently said that "[t]he estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books," he does not appear to be in favor of its complete repeal. He claims he wants to "reform" it to "keep it predictable and keep it low."

CORRECTION II: Wow, this post was not one of my finer blogging moments. Via William Wolfrum, it appears there is no such person as Martin Eisenstadt. I probably should have been a little more skeptical about the original post.