Every time Paris Hilton or one of her friends does something to schlock the conscience of a nation, there is one little-noticed side-effect: “From the Desert to the Sea” gets a lot more hits.

I usually find out about Paris’ latest missteps by observing the spike in my visitors; whereupon my first thought is: My heavens, what’s Paris done now? (Today, it’s a DUI.)

Most of my new readers (welcome everyone!) go to this post from last February, in which I express surprise that Elliot Mintz, a LA radio personality from the “underground” days and then prominent publicist, confidante and acolyte to John Lennon and Yoko Ono would ply his trade on behalf of Ms. Hilton, her sister, and several other blonds-in-distress like Christie Brinkley and Janet Jones Gretzky.

I did a little bit of digging and was able to find some facts to verify my recollections, plus a pricelessly funny, oh-so-earnest display ad from the time Mintz was a late-night host on KABC-AM. I had fun writing it; it brought me back to the days when all I wanted was to live as cool a life as the zonked-out DJs with left-wing dreams and mystical fantasies who introduced me to the Grateful Dead, Carlos Santana, David Bowie and Steely Dan.

My post got picked up by LA Observed’s Kevin Roderick, who gave it a very kind boost, which led a lot of other people to it, which floated the post up the Google search list, which then meant I got more hits the next time Paris did something that Mintz had to go out and explain to her worried public.

Eventually, my homework was transformed by someone into a Wikipedia entry on Mintz, which includes two links back to my blog. If you Google “Elliot Mintz,” you’ll find my handiwork at #2, just behind the Internet Movie Data Base entry. (At IMDB, you’ll find that Mintz was featured in Something’s Happening, a 1968 documentary about the youth movement. His co-stars were Muhammed Ali and General Herschey Bar.)

It’s quite a compliment to the public relations industry that so many people are interested not just in the celebrity, but in the publicist behind the celebrity. But, like me and quite a few others who have served clients as a PR professional, the job is not something we started out planning to do; self-doubt comes with the territory.

Even Mintz. His quaalude-calm demeanor and icy self-control seemed to wobble a bit when he had to explain why Paris was laughing at her boyfriend’s obscene taunting of Lindsay Lohan. I mean, this is the same guy who was hanging out with John Lennon when he was talking revolution! Now he’s babysitting a childish socialite who flouts the rules of decent bourgeois society not because she wants to overthrow the system, but simply because she’s got enough money to buy her way out of any trouble she gets into.

Paris Hilton is the black hole of scandal journalism; what would destroy almost every other celebrity’s reputation only enhances hers. I think I see, just behind Mintz’ reptile eyes, an unspoken wish that his Paris Hilton gig wasn’t so easy…that everyone in the press and Hilton fandom who enables her arrogant sense of entitlement would, for once…just ignore her.

Or maybe he wishes he were young and foolish again, and that he didn’t have to be a designated driver to someone who knows so little about what used to matter to people like Elliot Mintz.