mean girl

Warning. Warning. This is a rant. I repeat, this is a rant. But it's about Perez Hilton, so it's a fun one.

I didn't like Perez Hilton from the start. I was always much more into the everyday person-created and maintained Oh No They Didn't. I say "was" like I don't check it anymore. Like when I went to go look up the exact web address to link it in this blog, I didn't spend 30+ minutes reading every single entry. I like Oh No They Didn't because depending on who is posting the information (anyone can post, moderators decide what gets through), you get a different perspective. For instance, it's always funny when a Beyonce post comes along, because it either hails her as the queen, complete with hilarious .gifs or someone will post a super close up of her wig glue. Fascinating stuff, you guys.

Even still, don't read the comments. They literally hate every single celebrity that's mentioned on there. They probably don't truly, but it's like a bunch of middle schoolers trying out their best insults, and they're always horrible. It can be maddening.

Kind of like Perez Hilton. Or as I like to call him, the Giant Stain on Humanity. The GSH, Perez, is a tool. This is something I think we all know. However, some of us know this and still visit his website. I hated him way before the incident where he called Will.I.Am a "faggot," because it was the worst thing he could think of to insult a "thug" like that, too. But now, shit just got real serious. I'm going to curb stomp his ass.

First, you'll need to catch yourself up on the drama by reading this article by The Advocate. Seriously, read it. It's stunning. The shit that comes out of his mouth is unbelievable. A little roundup for you (my commentary is in bold):

• “My whole life has been a quest to be happy,” he says, adding that he feels a kinship with Oprah Winfrey, who he suspects is on a similar life quest. Unlike Winfrey, though, Perez says he doesn’t read self-help books -- or any books, for that matter. A kinship with Oprah Winfrey. Except he's the antithesis of Oprah Winfrey. She became famous, an icon, a trusted public figure through promoting an atmosphere of understanding and positivity. Not by drawing cum bubbles on people's faces. I suspect Perez's quest for happiness will take him many, many more years if it remains so genuinely misguided.
  
• Emmy Rossum, an actress and singer who considers Perez a close friend (many of his friends refer to him as Mario), tells me Perez gets genuinely offended when people deny who they really are. “I think he’s so proud of who he is and he’s so unabashedly himself that he doesn’t tolerate hypocrisy or people who pretend to be something they’re not,” Rossum says. “It’s no wonder that he’s so taken by people like Katy Perry, Madonna, and Lady GaGa. They’re all talented people who speak their mind and are real people.” Clearly, by this standard, he should like someone like Carrie Prejean, the ex-Miss California who spoke her mind and remained true to her [bigoted] beliefs, right? More on Perez's hypocrisy later.
• [Perez has an] earnest belief that one of his true callings is as a civil rights leader. This is so unbelievably laughable and disgusting. It's like having Hamburger Helper for Christmas dinner.
• “The city was being really brutal toward him at the time, and you could tell he wasn’t happy,” Grant says. “He was on that VH1 show From Flab to Fab, and he was scarfing down laxatives. He was really struggling for direction, and one day I said, ‘You should start a blog.’ He was, like, ‘What’s a blog?’” I kinda wish Perez would have stuck with the laxatives and not tried his hands at blogging.
• Or, more accurately, he never apologized at all. When I ask Perez if he’s ever written anything he’s regretted, his answer is emphatic. “No, never,” he says. Not even when he incorrectly reported the death of Cuban president Fidel Castro? “OK, I do regret that,” he concedes. “I’m never going to live that one down. Of course, I regret when I get things wrong, but fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often. I’m very careful about what goes on my site. Unlike a lot of other [tabloid media outlets], I don’t make shit up. I don’t have anything if I don’t have the trust of my readers. I always tell the truth.” He's so full of shit his eyes are brown.
  
• “Do I really think Miley is a slut? No. But I am going to call her one because it’s fun! I don’t claim to be objective. I don’t really believe everything I write. What I write is an exaggeration of what I believe. It’s heightened reality. I write a lot of things just to piss people off or get a laugh." So, he always tells the truth, but sometimes he doesn't tell the truth. This is the trend of hypocrisy I'm talking about. He always tells the truth because his reality changes every five minutes. In one instance, it's the truth, in the next it's not because it's almost like the past never existed to him. He literally says what he wants, whenever he wants, and escapes responsibility or consequences by talking his way out of it or creating a new reality for himself. The everlasting child.
• “The word ‘bitch’ has no meaning to me,” he says. “It’s just a word.” But how would he react, I ask, if a celebrity publicly called him a “dumb faggot” -- or some other derogatory word that did mean something to him -- while they claimed as a defense that the word meant nothing to them? Perez either doesn’t understand the question or doesn’t want to go there. ...“This whole idea that I’m a misogynist who is really mean to women is silly to me,” he says. “I love women. I worship women. Hello? I’m all about divas, remember? I bow down at the feet of women. Unless you’re a dumb bitch, in which case I’m going to call you one." WHAT. DID. HE. JUST. SAY!?
• Perez tells me that, in the heat of the moment that night, he almost chose to use a different word. “I thought about calling him the n word,” he says over the phone a week after the incident, “but I thought the f word was even worse. I was so filled with hate at that moment because I was hated on so much, and I reacted in the worst way possible. Then I went on to make a bunch of other mistakes. I shouldn’t have made the video. I shouldn’t have released so many statements. But what’s come out of all of this is that I’ve learned so much about myself, and I’m in a much better place. I’m actually thankful that it happened. As cheesy as it may sound, I had almost a spiritual moment when I just let all of the anger and worry go and am now filled with peace, happiness, and wisdom. So, the word "bitch" has no meaning to him. "Faggot" and "nigger" do, though. And so, here, Perez almost begs us for congratulating him for not stooping so low as to call Will.I.Am a "nigger." How someone in the gay community can not understand that those two words are generally equivalent, just referring to different communities, is beyond me. And what really, really is outrageous is that he uses the "I'm in a much better place." If there's one thing Perez knows, it's celebrity behavior. And he obviously knows that by him saying that (only a WEEK after it happened - nowhere near long enough to absorb the depth and complexity of the situation), the public will see him as "off the hook." If there was a search engine database that I could look through celebrity interviews and search that exact line, I'm sure you'd find: Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Mike Tyson, Phil Spector, OJ Simpson, and practically every other celebrity that's been rocked by scandal who uses that measly phrase as a way to get away with it.
• “In times of doubt I ask myself, What would Madonna do?” he says. “For the majority of her career, she was as equally hated as she was loved. She went from one controversy to another, but she just worked through it. She didn’t let it affect her. And that’s what I’m going to do. Even if I feel battered and hopeless and that the whole world is against me like I did during the week after this happened, I’m just going to soldier on.” Except Madonna didn't actively seek to turn the entire world against her. She found an art form worth expressing for her, had a desperate need to share it with the world and make herself powerful so that her voice could shed light on things she thought was important. Perez, I guess you could say, does the same thing. Except it's based on negativity. It's based on tearing people down, where Madonna's was to build people up. I think, more than I hate his website, I hate that Perez does not have the self-awareness to get simple things like that.

Those are just the highlights. The entire article is full of great nuggets.

So, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, who Perez wanted to donate any proceeds from his lawsuit against the Black Eyed Peas Manager (who punched him), refused to accept his donation. In a statement: "We very much appreciate the generosity of the offer to support our continuing work to memorialize Matthew through activism in defense of sexual minorities and in favor of understanding, compassion, and acceptance. But because so much of our work involves education to reduce the use of hateful language against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, or those so perceived, it would be inappropriate for us to benefit financially from circumstances in which such a verbal attack was involved.

"...We also feel compelled to point out that use of epithets can often lead to physical violence, as it appears it may have in this case, and that the Matthew Shepard Foundation has worked for more than 10 years to bring to people's attention the consequences of hateful or inolerant language."

They're doing the right thing. I don't want Perez Hilton to be a civil rights leader. I don't want him in gay marriage PSA's, I don't want him doing anything on behalf of our community because I'm absolutely sure it will be just as misguided and uninformed as his entire life seems to have been. Besides the fact that he used the word 'faggot' to insult someone else - he regularly attacks communities, such as women. The only equality he truly believes in is everyone has the right to be slandered equally.

I wish him luck on his diet, on his future nonsensical endeavors to find happiness. Cause let's face it - he will need a fucking dump truck of luck. We all know who he is - the most insecure girl at school, vaulted to the height of popularity because she's so cold and so good at being cold that it creates an immature sense of respect. In middle school, you just want to be good at something, anything that will get you some friends. Anything to cover up the acne, the backne (acne on yo back!), the braces, the innertube permanently strapped around your waist. And you know, it just keeps coming until she learns from it or she self-destructs. So, I can't wait for Perez to graduate, but really, I'd rather him just drop out.