Just a reminder why this person should not speak for gay people, their rights, nor their wants: “My intention – however misguided it may have been – was to stand up for myself and tell this belligerent man that I had enough of his badgering and was not going to continue to let him berate and intimidate me. I wanted to hurt him with the word I chose, not anyone else. Unfortunately, the one who got hurt was me and, subsequently, a lot of other people. I wish none of it had happened. I can’t take it back. I did what I thought was best at the moment to stand up for myself in a non-violent yet still assertive way. Clearly, I am not homophobic. Also, I am not nor have I ever claimed to be a spokesperson for the gay community. I am just speaking for myself, a gay man.”
GLAAD’s press release that demanded this person apologize and asked the media not to repeat his slur should have instead asked the media to remind viewers that, uh, we don’t want him either.
galefan2004
Sorry, but yes he is homophobic. He said that he called the dude the most hurtful vile thing he can think of and that just so happened to be the derogatory of gay. However, he is not the first gay man to be homophobic and he won’t be the last gay man to be homophobic. The truth is that its ingrained in pretty much everyone. Its something we work to overcome. Maybe this incident will help Mario realize that when you talk shit about someone on the internet then go to shake their hand in person like nothing happened it can sometimes lead to you getting your ass kicked. Hell, he couldn’t even stand up to Elizabeth Hasslebeck in person, so maybe he should just avoid getting around people he insults on his blog, but then again if he did that he would probably have to leave Hollywood or just only hang out with Paris Hilton, who in 10 years or so will be just as irrelevant as he is.
Geoff M
@galefan2004: I think you summed it up perfectly!
Cam
I think the problem with Perez is that in certain areas his instincts are right..i.e. he wants gay marriage, gay rights etc… The problem is, he is a lousy spokeperson. I’ve seen him on interviews and he isn’t sharp enough to come back and really shut down the boggots and anti-gay idiots in a way that somebody like Rachel Maddow or in a different way Ellen De Generous would.
But of course, until more famous “Public” people come out of the closet we are stuck with the Media interviewing whatever douches ARE brave enough to come out. So, Do I think Perez is a good spokeperson or representative of the gay community? HELL no! But I have to very grudgingly admit that I respect him more than closet cases like Anderson Cooper, Kevin Spacey, Jody Foster, etc…..
Ugh, I feel dirty now. LOL
Rick
NEVER underestimate the enthusiasm of the homosexual community to pick on members of it’s own kind. And i’m not necessarily talking about Perez here. >:(
C-Errors
@Cam:
This. I hate when gay people cheer off the only ones who are brave enough to be out and talk about our issues. If they’re any better and care that much they should be the ones putting themselves out there.
Cam
@C-Errors: you said “This. I hate when gay people cheer off the only ones who are brave enough to be out and talk about our issues. If they’re any better and care that much they should be the ones putting themselves out there.”
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If you read what I wrote, I said that he wasn’t a great spokesperson because he couldn’t handle himself well in a debate, however, I also said that I respect him more than closet cases like Cooper who refuse to come out.
galefan2004
@Cam: You really shouldn’t respect him more than Cooper because while Cooper has not decided not to come out (its a personal decision) he has also decided to take on the issue of gay rights head on, and in the end it will be men like Cooper that advance the movement not men like Mario that every thinks is (what he called will.i.am) because of his actions (not his sexuality).
Cam
@galefan2004: You said “@Cam: You really shouldn’t respect him more than Cooper because while Cooper has not decided not to come out (its a personal decision) he has also decided to take on the issue of gay rights head on, and in the end it will be men like Cooper that advance the movement not men like Mario that every thinks is (what he called will.i.am) because of his actions (not his sexuality).”
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By not coming out in my opinion he is saying that he feels shame about it. It is a personal decision, but I also respect him far less for it. In my opinion he is much more cowardly than somebody living paycheck to paycheck in Muncie Indianna who comes out at their sales job, or a woman working at Starbucks who comes out etc… He has the Vanderbuilt money, plus the millions he has earned and yet is still too afriad to come out.
Again, it’s nice of him to have gay issues on his program but every Ellen De Generous, just being herself and putting a face on gay America is worth 20 Anderson Coopers presenting the stories as if they are happening to somebody else.
MR
@Cam: You weren’t talking about Ellen vs Cooper. You were talking about Perez vs Cooper. A lot of people know Cooper is gay. If they like him they are almost sure to discover that in short order. Cooper IS putting a face on gay America to all the people who know he’s gay. It’s a face straight people find classy, attractive and respectable. That’s worth about a 100 out Perez Hiltons acting as a public confirmation of the negative stereotype straights have about gays. The decision to come out is admirable but it does not make you overall an admirable person or outweigh everything else.
Cooper can be a better face for gay America to other gays if he comes out. Straights don’t really care about the subtleties of degrees of outness or have the same automatic reactions we do. They’re more likely to assume a celebrity lke Cooper or Foster who lives openly gay but doesn’t publicly discuss it values his job and and privacy and doesn’t want to risk them than that he’s embarrassed. No matter what he’s a better face than Perez. I would also say a gay man calling someone a faggot because it’s the worst insult you can think of indicates a deep level of self-embarrassment and homophobia that in this case neuters the presumption of out indicating pride and self-acceptance.
sam
@Cam:
But of course, until more famous “Public” people come out of the closet we are stuck with the Media interviewing whatever douches ARE brave enough to come out.
That’s only because we are stuck in this stupid celebrity worship mindframe. The women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement took strong passionate intelligent excellent activists and made them famous. Instead of learning from that we are obsessed with taking already famous people who can be completely reluctant, stupid, uninformed and/or poor debators and transforming them into activists willing or not.
Concentrating on making people like Lt. Dan Choi famous and putting them before the media as our representatives makes a lot more sense and will be more effective than continuing this business of getting Melissa Ethridge to moderate LOGO debates and deciding we should make do with Perez Hilton while we fruitlessly try to force unwilling Jodie Foster or Kevin Spacey to take to the public podium for gay rights.
People don’t take celebrities very seriously when they talk politics anyway.
Matt
Hello… I thought we had reclaimed the word “faggot” just like lesbians reclaimed the word “dyke.” It is okay for a flamboyant gay man to call a closet case a “faggot.” There’s no reason for GLAAD — or anyone else — to get their knickers in a knot over that word. Do you think the NAACP condemns Chris Rock every time he says the n-word?
sam
Chris Rock isn’t calling a white man the N-word as an insult and then explaining he did it because it was the worst insult he could come up with.
If Perez thought will i am was a closet case he would have outed him and included the closet issue in his explanations. He’s outed lots of people and right people now he’s emotional and outraged and spewing everything he has.
sam
That should read “and right now he’s emotional and outraged and spewing everything he has.”
sweetdog
@Cam:
Didn’t Jody Foster come out about a year ago? I believe she has a partner.
sam
@sweetdog: No, Jodie didn’t. She said an ambiguous thank you to a person (gender unspecified) called Cydney among a list of thank yous at a minor untelevised award show. Cydney was in fact her partner of about 15 years and co-parent who she was about to dump and on whom she was reportedly cheating on. Some people who were desperate to think she’s out interpreted that as a coming out but in any normal way of thinking it isn’t.
Cam
@sam: you said “Concentrating on making people like Lt. Dan Choi famous and putting them before the media as our representatives makes a lot more sense and will be more effective than continuing this business of getting Melissa Ethridge to moderate LOGO debates and deciding we should make do with Perez Hilton while we fruitlessly try to force unwilling Jodie Foster or Kevin Spacey to take to the public podium for gay rights.”
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Ugh, thank you for reminding me of that Logo Debate. That underlines the problem exactly!!!
Cam
@sweetdog: You said “Didn’t Jody Foster come out about a year ago? I believe she has a partner.”
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She sorta/kinda came out. She was accepting an award and was thanking people and then thanked “My beautiful Sydney”. Of course it turned out that she was cheating on her and left her soon after, now has returned. Not really coming out, but at least peaking her nose out of the door.
Jack
Why do you have to use the word “repulsive” in this argument? Shouldn’t the action and not the person be labeled here? Perez has done many things good for the gay community, including reminding people of the discrimination the GLBT community faces, reporting on awful incidents of violence, and celebrating gay pioneers (eg Ellen and Portia).
There’s a lot of room in our GLBT community, and I don’t think that now is the time to be kicking people out when they do good things, too. I am fine in allowing this gay person to speak for me.
Let’s always remember that Perez Hilton is a character played by Mario L, too.
Dray
Perez said he wanted to call his aggressor something he thought HE would dislike the most. And we all know straight guys believe the F word is the lowest thing to call another male. Don’t we?
Celia
I still don’t know what Will.I.Am did to make Perez so angry in the first place.
Shannon
If I was Perez I would’ve called GLAAD a bunch of overly sensitive homos and then told them to go eat a bag of dicks 🙂
sam
I LOVE Perez Hilton. He’s unorthodox but effective. GLAAD, on the other hand, are selective in their outrage.
Perez got gay-bashed by a member of The Black Eyed Peas entourage. Nuff said.
sam
So it’s OK for The Black Eyed Peas’ manager to punch a gay man in response to the gay man’s use of the word “faggot” but it’s not OK for us gay men to punch straight men who call us “faggots”? Seems to me there’s a double standard here.
GLAAD effectively victimized Perez further. For Pete’s sake, the man had already been bashed.
persnikety
wil i am called Obama his “homey”
i fucking hate him for that
angry in la
Repulsive is the perfect word for him. With his vanity and self-absorption, simple-minded spite and vindictiveness, he embodies the worst stereotypes of gay men. Apart from his sexuality, he presents himself as a base human being overall and it’s unfortunate that he is identified as a gay man before he is a depraved one.
He makes his living playing to human being’s basest impulses, those of ridicule, creating little and destroying far more. He is as vain and irrelevant as the trashy people he heaps insults upon. Given his own state, it’s unbelievable he feels he has a place insulting anyone, or taking any high ground in any moral issue.
If Hilton was talking smack about this guy on his website, I do not pity him. He didn’t deserve to assaulted, but did this guy deserve to be vilified or publicly humiliated? Did Hilton get what was coming to him?
Given the above, Hilton is a bad spokesman for anyone, but especially the GLBT community. We are trying to convince the general public that we contribute equally to society, and so should reap the rewards equally. Someone like Perez Hilton, who does not seem to contribute anything, is the last person to make this argument.
Alexa
@Celia: Supposedly it started because either Will.I.Am or Fergie confronted Perez about why he hates Fergie so much and is always picking on her, and from there a war of words started, which escalated into the name calling and punching.
No, violence was not the answer, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that Perez is a famewhore and bully, who sucks up to celebs when he sees them and then attacks them from behind the safety of his computer screen. Something like this was bound to happen eventually, and he’s just lucky it was only a fist he got attacked with.
geoff
Somewhere, Avril Lavigne, Samantha Ronson, Jessica Alba, and Roseanne Barr (all previous victims of that idiot Perez) are toasting each other over a bottle of Dom, I just know it. When bad things happen to bad people,and when bullies finally get what’s coming to them…….awesome.
Jason Chan
So now he has an apology up, and I am loathe to commend him but it is a good one.
Still slightly self congratulatory but written as if it was a different person than the one that did that horrendous video 2 days ago.
mb00
Can’t we all just click our heels in unison and make this person go away?
I don’t feel any sorrow or pity for this man. He got what he rightfully deserved. Actually, had he called me a faggot to my face, he would’ve gotten a super brutal beating courtesy of my steel-toed boots.
I could never and would never take him seriously as an LGBT advocate, he’s a celebrity gossiper for fuck’s sake.
Celia
@Alexa: Well, that makes some kind of sense, although Perez’s name-calling still seems deeply unwarranted. I should say, of course, that hitting someone for calling you a faggot is probably not really going to help anyone in any way either, so I don’t support the other side. But I don’t think this was a “gay bashing” so much as an overblown pub fight between two big lunks. You might see something similar tonight if you decide to go to a more “adventurous” part of town at chucking-out time.