Fake Celebrity

Santa Ana, California - The law offers a number of approaches for a person to defend himself when accused of a crime. A defense can be based on procedural grounds, on stirring doubts in the minds of the jury and hell, it can even rest on demonstrating the actual innocence of the accused. But in California, there's one sure-fire way of getting off - be a celebrity.

The list is long and undistinguished, and I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say, if you want to kill a family member, rape kids or run into people with your car and never have to pay the price, California is the place for you to go. But by all means bring your publicist along for the trip.

Given the popularity of the celebrity defense, it was only a matter of time before California experienced a non-sleb attempting to pass himself off as a bona fide sleb. Greta Van Susteren can rest easy and Natalee Holloway can rest in peace, because it's finally happened. Some person calling himself "Skylar DeLeon" was today ordered to stand trial for a double homicide in a California superior court. (Where California gets off calling its bullshit courts "superior", I have no idea.)

Mr. DeLeon claims to have been a regular on the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers television program. From the news articles, that appears to be the entirety of his defense.

You remember the show, it featured the cute little Pink Ranger who inspired more het fanfic than the crews of all five Star Trek series put together. Then the same actress, Amy Jo Johnson, wound up on Felicity and thus worked her way into even more fanfics. If Johnson had offed a couple people, I'm sure she'd be acquitted - she's a genuine celebrity. But Amy Jo has never killed anyone, though she might at some point be held accountable for the estimated 24 boredom fatalities reported among the audience for that Felicity "Twilight Zone" b/w spoof episode atrocity.

Back to Skylar DeLeon - no such person is listed in IMDB or TV.com, on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers or any other TV program. But here's the rub: since he's getting media attention for his fake celebrityhood, he may become an actual celebrity. That's the problem with a celebrity-based legal system - any asshole can become famous.

Postscript: I was fooling around with a smartass headline for this post, when via Technorati I found Mighty Morphin Dumbass Murdering Retard at a blog called "Garbage House". I can't beat that, so I didn't even try.

Update: Somehow I missed that one of Skylar's alleged accomplices is named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I've always said those Kennedy's are no fucking good.