I hate Perez Hilton.

*I've been debating on posting this because it's not exactly edifiying. I am extraordinarily cranky right now. But. . .I'm also too cranky to think of a different blog post. I promise if you come back on Wednesday, I'll post about puppies or something.

If you don't know who he is, do me the favor of NOT checking him out. I refuse to even link.

Now, let me confess before this rant continues: I like celebrity gossip. I have no idea why. I don't even mind a little snark mixed in with said gossip, which is why I check TMZ.com regularly. (I'm not going to embarrass myself by telling you how often.) I also wander over to the home pages for Us Weekly and People. Oh, and PopSugar.com.

There, I said it. You may sit in judgment on me for the rest of this post.

Back to Perez Hilton.

I CAN'T STAND HIM.

He's a blogger that runs a celebrity gossip site and I'm pretty sure nothing can make me angrier in a shorter amount of time, which is why I quit reading him shortly after I started reading him. Let me be clear: I saved some brain cells that way.

He is poisonous.

It's one thing to take jabs at people, but this guy is the biggest hypocrite EVER. His site goes way beyond the wink-wink, nudge-nudge of who is dating who or whatever. It goes all the way back to middle school, which is the last place I remember seeing those "slam books" where people wrote insults about each other and then passed the book around. He rips on people for their clothes and hair, sure. But he usually goes past that to ripping on their looks and weight.

That stuff's just mean. (Have you seen this guy? 'Nuff said. I'm not trying to be mean, too. It's just a fact.) So are the obscene words and drawings he makes on their photos, like an emotionally stunted sixth grader. It's never been funny. Not once.

But that's not the really hypocritical part. (Um, okay, it's actual pretty hypocritical). THAT comes in when he sets himself up as some sort of truth-saying moral conscience. He rails against bad celebrity behavior and claims the moral high ground in his diatribes against people like Chris Brown. Fine. Whatever. That guy deserves some abuse of his own.

But Perez Hilton has also taken it upon himself to "out" several celebrities who had chosen to remain closeted until he made that decision for them.

???

He considers it his duty because he's openly gay so he's acting like he's doing the gay community and society in general a favor by doing this. I won't even explain his logic because it's stupid. And it's just a lame cover for him and his efforts to get more page hits. At least be honest about that, you know? Anyway, that's hypocrisy example #1.

Next is two highly publicized recent dust-ups. The first was the whole Miss USA kerfuffle, where he again decided to be an activist for gay people everywhere whether they want him to be or not, by going on a rant against (the admittedly idiotic) Miss California for her pro-Prop 8 position. I can't stand the girl myself, but she does get to say what she wants to about her opinions and her opinion happened to accurately reflect the majority of the voters in her state. But as a judge at the pageant, when he got the answer that wasn't what he wanted versus the contestant's honest opinion, he blew up. He recorded and posted his rant the next day, and sounding belligerent and inarticulate with his name calling ("You're stupid and ugly"? THIS is how you make your point?), proceeded to ream her and cause a media firestorm.

I have zero problem with him having his opinions and wanting to be accepted as a gay man, no matter my own political views. But to seize for yourself the title of spokesman for your cause and then use the spotlight to defend it with first grade schoolyard insults?

Really?

Ignorant, but not hypocritical. Until...

You factor in last month's debacle where at a party, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas confronted him and asked him to stop insulting Fergie on his blog (and Perez is mean about her--very mean). Perez couldn't handle being called on his stuff and responded by calling Will.I.Am a (insert ugly homophobic slur here). Oh, the irony.

No, oh...the complete hypocrisy.

He got punched for it. You know what the public reaction was?

Um, Will.I.Am gained a whole new fan base. (Although he didn't throw the punch).

Perez, being the socially tone deaf individual that he is, took to his blog again in a lonnnnnnng video rant the next day talking about how violence is never the answer.

I guess he never got that lesson about how words hurt worse and all that.

Anyway, GLAAD, the organization that most media outlets turn to when they want a REAL mouthpiece for the gay community, issued a statement saying Perez Hilton needed to apologize for his slur. And it STILL took him days to publicly back down. I think he only did it because he was getting torn apart in the media and on the internet, not because he really saw anything wrong with what he did.

Then he committed a huge gaffe after Michael Jackson died, announcing the news on his blog and then speculating that it was a ploy to drive up ticket prices for his concerts. Yeah, lots of people none too happy about that.

I read an Entertainment Weekly article a couple of weeks ago that analyzed the sensation that is Perez Hilton and they couldn't find ONE person to go on record to defend him publicly, even among his so-called friends like Lady Gaga. One famous New York gossip columnist called him a parasite. Even his own kind can't stand him.

Here's the thing. I don't mind celebrities getting called out for idiotic behavior. It actually doesn't bother me in the least and in general I find it funny when people expose those folks' emperor's new clothes foolishness.

This Perez guy, though...

Look. I know it probably wasn't easy for him to grow up as an overweight, Latino homosexual. There are three fronts right there that people will come after you on, and it's wrong. ALL of it. And I realize that artists will often mine their pain for material, turning it outward as comedy or using it to fuel artwork or as a well they tap when acting. But Perez isn't an artist. He's a punk kid who calls people names for a living BUT has the nerve to act like he's providing some sort of public service in doing so.

My beef with him isn't that he's mean or petty. It's that he's NOT HONEST ABOUT IT. You don't see any more clearly than the rest of us, Perez. In fact, I'd say your perspective is severely JACKED.

That's why I quit reading him months ago. I don't hang out with people like that in real life, and I refused to be one more hit on his stat counter. I just wish the rest of the media would ignore him too because I am so tired of this guy.