Perez Hilton's gay witch hunt

The MSM's favorite "gossip gangsta" claims he outs celebrities in the name of civil rights. But to his detractors, he's a self-serving lowlife.

By Japhy Grant

Read more: Arts & Entertainment, Arts & Entertainment Features, Perez Hilton

Dan Herrick/ZUMA Press

Mario Lavandeira (Perez HIlton)

Dec. 15, 2006 | He doesn't call it "Hollywood's Most-Hated Web Site" for nothing. As celebrity blogger Perez Hilton -- real name: Mario Lavandeira -- walked down the red carpet of VH1's Big in '06 Awards earlier this month, the paparazzi pointed their lenses to the ground, refusing to shoot his photo. In Hollywoodland, where looks might kill but not being seen is fatal, it was as if the eye of God had turned from Perez. After two years of Hilton appropriating -- OK, stealing -- online paparazzi photos, scrawling words like "whoreanus" (a, um, "pun" on the word heinous) across them using Microsoft Paint and posting them on his site, the photographers and their agencies have finally turned on the world's most popular gossip blogger, who they claim is cutting into their bottom line.

Last month at an Xbox 360 launch event in Los Angeles, Perez got into an argument with a photographer on the red carpet over stealing photos, and when X17, Hollywood's largest celebrity photography agency, told him that he could no longer use its images without a license, he fired back: "Instead of wanting to have me as a friend or an ally you choose to be a cunt! CUNT! And I don't wanna work with cunts. And liars. And unethical people. And that's what you are!" Now, X17 is suing him for copyright infringement, and asking for $7.5 million.

The lawsuit is only the blogger's most recent brush with controversy. A few weeks back, the latest chapter in the is-he-or-isn't-he debate over "American Idol's" Clay Aiken's sexual orientation unfolded on network TV after Kelly Ripa took Aiken to task for putting his hand over her mouth, saying, "I don't know where that's been." Rosie O'Donnell thought the remark was homophobic, commenting on "The View" the next day, "If that was a straight man, if that was a cute man, if that was a guy she didn't question his sexuality, she would have said a different thing." "Good Morning America" picked up on the story and brought in Perez to comment. It was the crowning moment for the self-proclaimed "Queen of Media." Since he launched his first blog two years ago, Hilton has been vocal in trying to out gays in popular culture, and Aiken has been one of his favorite targets: Last year, he questioned Aiken's sexuality on his site, writing, "Clay may be a bottom and only 26, but he's one helluva sugar daddy." Now, with a "GMA" turn, his crusade had made it to network television.

Nowadays, you can't pass a newsstand without seeing a feature on the self-styled "gossip gangsta." He has been profiled by the Associated Press, the Guardian and Ocean Drive, GQ lavished four pages on his life story, the Los Angeles Times recently put him on the cover of its Calendar section, Details calls him one of the "Power 50," Paper shot him in his tighty-whiteys for its Beautiful People issue, the New York Post anointed him one of the "Top 25 Latino Movers & Shakers," Hispanic magazine named him one of the "Top 10 Entertainers of the Year," and MTV is going to make him a host for its New Year's Eve show. He inspired a Fergie song and appears on a track for rapper P-1. More meaningful than all the write-ups and cameos, he was the most-searched-for blogger in 2006, according to Yahoo. Mainstream media has embraced Perez Hilton as bad-boy darling go-to gay, blissfully unaware that, to the gay community, he's what Ann Coulter is to everyone else -- a crass, self-serving marketer disguised as an ideologue.

Full disclosure: Mario and I were casual friends in the late '90s, when we were both studying at NYU. We both later moved to Los Angeles, and I would sometimes hang out at his apartment, where we would sit and watch "E!" and talk about Robbie Williams' ass. When he began posting celebrity news on Friendster's bulletin board in the summer of '04, I suggested he get a blog. "What's a blog?" he asked. So I showed him Blogger, the popular do-it-yourself blogging site. Within minutes, his first blog, PageSixSixSix, was born.

At the time, not much was going on in Mario's life other than waiting for his episode of VH1's reality show "From Flab to Fab" -- in which he was given a makeover, complete with a velvet pink suit -- to air. It was pretty clear early on that he had the sort of non-ironic obsession with celebrity culture coupled with the free time necessary to make it as a professional blogger.

His blog was soon becoming so widely read that the New York Post sued him for infringing on its Page Six moniker and he was forced to rename the site PerezHilton.com. The lawsuit only made his site more popular, and employment offers from Us Weekly and InTouch followed, though he decided it was more lucrative to focus solely on the blog.

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