He Said / He Said

One of my guilty pleasures is reading celebrity gossip. I know, I've slipped a notch in your esteem with that confession. But everybody needs something mindless in which to indulge now and then, and I always thought of it as a harmless, albeit superbly shallow diversion.

Until now.

I've been considering boycotting one particular source of celebrity gossip; rather, THE source of celebrity gossip for some time now. At first, it was because the ads were becoming way too numerous and pervasive and, with the new addition of pop-ups, completely unavoidable.

We all know how I feel about ads now don't we?

But more importantly, the writer of this blog has become increasingly mean-spirited and unnecessarily insulting. One does not have to be defamatory to be entertaining. For a long time I simply ignored the bodily fluid drippings with which he sophomorically defaced some photos and turned a deaf ear to the vicious pot shots he took at his most reviled celebs. I ingorned the rumors and innudendos and even the more blatantly libelous proclomations.

No skin off my nose, right?

Except that it is.

Why? Well, because, I think we all, as human beings, have a responsibility to treat one another with grace and dignity. And I think we have a responsibility to put a stop to the bullying, the belittling, the deprecation and the humiliation of other human beings. To do this, we not only have to practice grace ourselves, but we also have to stand up to say "this is wrong" when someone else is not.

Now this person is painting himself as the hapless victim of a vicious assault at the hands of another high profile individual. He is outraged, insensed and self-righteous because of the violence that he suffered. He asserts that it is never okay to resort to violence.

But you know, violence can be a spiritual thing as well as physical. As I've said many times in the plethora of posts about bullies, words can often wound far more deeply than fists. This man perpetrates spiritual violence upon people every day; people who have never harmed him, people he doesn't even know.

Even more upsetting is the fact that in this latest instance, he used hate speech to characterize the person with whom he was arguing. He called the man a "faggot". Coming from anyone this word is offensive, coming from a gay man, it's inexcusable. And I don't buy this "I am one so I can say it" bullshit. Hate speech is hate speech and if we're going to erase hate, we have to abolish the vernacular as well. For everyone.

I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. I've read the many and varied accounts of course, including his own. But it all really comes down to is one person's word against another's, and by the time it's all straightened out, some other dust-up will be grabbing headlines. I think what happened is that a mean, insecure, black hearted little man said something hateful and got punched in the mouth for it.

Quelle suprise, eh?

Anyway...I've decided I'm done with Perez Hilton. I can't stop him from making his little pee dribbles or his insulting remarks. I can't stop him from making wild accusations or starting vicious rumors. I can't diminish his scope of influences in the media.

But I can stop being a party to it. I can stop being a silent witness. I can stop putting money in his pocket with my page views. I'm just one person, so I don't expect this to have any kind of substantial impact. He has millions of readers, legions of fans. My lack of readership will go completely unnnoticed. But I'll feel better, knowing that I have done something to engender the grace and dignity that I advocate.

Even if it is a very small thing. Because I tell myself that it's the many small things that make a difference to every day people in every day life.

Right?