Paris Hilton Campaigns for Drunken Elephants

Update!  Turns out that Paris did not speak at all about drunken elephants.  Sloppy reporting courtesy of the Associated Press.

Paris has seen enough pink elephants in her time. Now she returns the favor by dressing in pink and chastising Indian elephants who party too hard, drink too much, and menace citizens by being dangerous and crashing into power poles.

You’d think I was making this up, but I’m not. From the AP here:

Paris Hilton is being praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India.

Activists said a celebrity endorsement such as Hilton’s was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer and then go on a rampage.

“The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them,” the 26-year-old socialite said in a report posted on World Entertainment News Network’s Web site. Her comments were picked up by other Web sites and newspapers around the globe.

Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in the state of Meghalaya were electrocuted after drinking the potent brew and then uprooting an electricity pole.