Perez Hilton Falls Victim To His Own Hatred & GLAAD’s Wrath
Pereze Hilton, whose real name is a far less glamorous Mario Lavandeira, has learned one of life’s more important and bitter lessons: claiming minority victim status doesn’t protect one from another group claiming minority victim status - as a punch to his face recently demonstrated.
Adding insult to injury, a number of Gay groups have sided with his attackers.
Mario Lavandeira, the mean-spirited impresario behind the celebrity- obsessed mega-Web site PerezHilton.com, was left scratching his pink-tinged pompadour last week, wondering aloud in a campy cry-baby YouTube classic why, after being physically assaulted in public, he is now universally scorned and widely considered the villain of an incident that left him appropriately “black eyed.”
Aside from the basic rules of karma, here’s why: The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the “rock-paper-scissors” game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.
Even though it is obviously worse to punch someone in the face than to hurl an inartful slur, Mr. Lavandeira made the fatal mistake of choosing to verbally berate a man with darker skin than he. By the next day, the event was publicized around the world and Will.I.Am and Mr. Molina were being universally treated as heroes.
Which leads us to the greater story that is not being told: “Perez Hilton” is suffering the delayed effects of what he did last month to former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean.
While Mr. Lavandeira was busy plotting and executing the Christian beauty contestant’s downfall, much of America was silently taking account of the beauty contest judge’s relentlessness in destroying a woman whose crime was politely expressing the same opinion on gay marriage held by the president for whom Mr. Lavandeira campaigned.
Mr. Lavandeira was not satisfied with simply making sure Miss Prejean lost the Miss USA pageant. He needed to humiliate and destroy her publicly. He not only called her a term used to describe a female dog but also used a word that, by comparison, is akin to a nuclear attack. Yet no media outrage followed.
Mr. Lavandeira has used his sexual orientation as a shield to deflect criticism. But in the process he has hurt the cause of gay rights. That is why the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation took the Black Eyed Peas’ side. When GLAAD is at the forefront of a movement that actively scorns “hate” - or, as the bumper stickers call it, H8 - it’s impossible to defend the behavior of a gay activist who so actively practices it.
If as a society we are to continue making strides towards tolerance of all people, GLAAD has taken an admirable step in condemning hate’s most avid practitioner of hateful speech. While the Black Eyed Peas showed us that we can fight fire with fire, “Perez Hilton” has exposed the paradox of the activist left’s tolerance movement: You can’t fight H8 with H8.
Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy… ehr… gal? gay? Whatever…
