If you can't do the time. . . .

Apparently, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer was as disgusted with "celebrity justice" as the rest of us. He's sent spoiled brat Paris Hilton back to the hoosegow, "medical condition" or no.

And Shakwanda from Compton said "A-MEN!"

Of course, in that fine spoiled brat tradition, the heiress horrible was led from the courtroom Friday weeping and screaming. Yes, screaming.

It's a fine day in America. The Associated Press has all the poop in this early dispatch:

Paris Hilton was escorted from a courtroom screaming and crying on Friday after a judge sent her back to jail to serve out her entire 45-day sentence for a parole violation in a reckless driving case.

“It’s not right!” shouted the weeping Hilton. “Mom!” she called out to her mother in the audience.

Hilton, who was brought to court in handcuffs in a sheriff’s car, came into the courtroom disheveled and weeping. Her hair was askew and she wore a gray fuzzy sweatshirt over slacks. She wore no makeup and she cried throughout the hearing.

Her body also shook constantly as she dabbed at her eyes. Several times she turned to her parents, seated behind her in the courtroom, and mouthed, “I love you.”

Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer was calm but apparently irked by the morning’s developments. He said he had left the courthouse Thursday night having signed an order for Hilton to appear for the hearing.

When he got in his car early Friday, he said, he heard a radio report that he had approved Hilton’s participation in the hearing by telephone, but he had not.

“I at no time condoned the actions of the sheriff and at no time told him I approved the actions,” he said of the decision to release Hilton from jail after three days.

“At no time did I approve the defendant being released from custody to her home on Kings Road,” Sauer said.

Earlier Friday, a weeping Hilton was brought back to court in a police car, apparently handcuffed. She was taken from her home, where she returned yesterday after the sheriff’s department decided she could serve out her sentence in home confinement, with an ankle monitor.

The frenzy began early Thursday when sheriff’s officials released Hilton because of an undisclosed medical condition and sent her home under house arrest. She had been in jail since late Sunday.

Hilton was fitted with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and was expected to finish her 45-day sentence for a reckless driving probation violation at her four-bedroom, three-bath home.

The decision by Sheriff Lee Baca to move Hilton chafed prosecutors and Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer, who spelled out during sentencing that Hilton was not allowed to serve house detention.

(snip)

California Attorney General Jerry Brown criticized the Sheriff’s Department for letting Hilton out of jail, saying he believed she should serve out her sentence.

“It does hold up the system to ridicule when the powerful and the famous get special treatment,” Brown told The Associated Press before testifying at a congressional hearing in Washington.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of people who’ve seen their family members go to jail and have various ailments, physical and psychological, that didn’t get them released,” he said. “I’d say it’s time for a course correction.”

I REMEMBER WHEN we used to call Jerry Brown "Governor Moonbeam" when he led California in the '70s. But, you know, I always thought he had a deeply sensible streak in there somewhere. And, boy, is he right on this one. There's a couple of course corrections called for here -- for the system, and for the hysterical heiress.

However satisfying it is to see Paris Hilton get hers (courtesy of the Long Arm of the Law, no less) -- and satisfying it is -- we have to hope that this is that pathetic young woman's Divine Wake-Up Call.

Listen, we're all dirty rotten sinners here, and we all have our pathologies and areas where we might even be bat-s*** crazy. The difference between Miss Hilton and your average struggling, stumbling Christian imperfectly trying to cooperate with God's saving grace is that we know we're screwed up.

We care that we're screwed up.

We don't want to be screwed up.

We're not making millions solely because we're screwed up.

And we're willing to take The Cure.

I hope Paris gets to be sick and tired, and then sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I hope she -- one day -- is willing to take The Cure, too.