So, you wanna be a Hilton? Well, I'd suggest therapy.

Or maybe hypnosis. Shock treatments. Whatever it takes to get that ridiculous notion out of your head.

But I'm not convinced that even the contestants on "I Want to be a Hilton," which premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. on NBC/Ch. 5, really want to be Hiltons. No, like all "reality" show contestants, what they really want is their 15 minutes of fame and to win some big bucks.

Not necessarily in that order.

The premise of this show is more ridiculous than most. Kathy Hilton is going to teach a group of contestants how to be rich and elegant. She's going to take "these hopefuls (who) have no idea how to act around wealth and class" (as the narrator intones) and turn them into uppercrust, cultured, mannered, beautiful people.

I'm confused. This would be the same Kathy Hilton who's the mother of Paris Hilton, right? And Paris Hilton just screams cultured and mannered, right?

Actually, no. Paris Hilton screams obscenities. And spouts racial epithets. And acts incredibly rude to anyone who gets in her way.

Before she was a legal adult, Paris (and her sister, Nikki), were both party girls, and Kathy let it happen.

At the age of 19, Paris and her boyfriend made a porn video that ended up all over the Internet and in video stores. Despite the fact that Paris has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the video, she accosted one guy who was selling the tape at his newsstand and stole it. And, so aghast at her porn-star image, Paris makes a TV advertisement that's banned by the networks.

Maybe the blame should go to whatever nannies raised Paris, but shouldn't Kathy get some of the blame for hiring those incompetents?

Whatever the case, it's both ludicrous and sad when the pompous narration on "I Want to be a Hilton" tells us Kathy is "the matriarch of one of America's richest and most envied families."

Rich, yes, But envied? Oh, I'm certain a lot of parents want their daughters to turn out just like Paris.

Kathy Hilton seems nice enough in the show, but it's just another ripped-off reality program. The contestants compete in various challenges; one is eliminated each week; the winner gets an apartment, clothes, jewelry, a $200,000 trust fund and "access" to the Hilton rolodex and contacts.

Oooooh. Just sends a chill up your spine, doesn't it?

"I Want to be a Hilton" is lame and stupid. And the thought of Kathy Hilton teaching anybody to be classy is beyond ludicrous.

LEAVE IT TO NBC and Katie Couric to pretend this year's least-newsworthy story still has life in it — "The Katie Couric Special" (Tuesday, 7 p.m., Ch. 5) features the morning maven interviewing "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks and her fiance, John Mason.

Gag.

Wilbanks — who has admitted she made false statements concerning her disappearance — sold the rights to her story for $500,000 (after repaying her hometown just $13,249 of the $43,000 it spent looking for her after she faked her disappearance) — deserves not one second of TV screen time. NBC and Couric are enabling her continued bad behavior.

And if you watch, you're enabling her, too.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com