Perez in the Springtime

Giving us the scoop and some doodles -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Why do I envy Perez Hilton? Because the nonchalant, 30 year-old publicity hound is one of the world’s most successful bloggers. His real name is Mario Lavandeira and he was born to Cuban American parents in ’78. He’s worn many hats already in his short career. He’s been a GLAAD publicity agent, actor, receptionist and managing editor of Instinct magazine. He finally struck pay dirt with his on-line gossip rag, http://perezhilton.com.

The web site leverages off of Hilton’s LA celebrity connections -- many photos are originals from events that Perez personally attends. Hilton claims the site has received 8.5 million hits in one day, a staggering number. (That would probably bring my site down). His “stage name” Perez Hilton is an obvious play on Paris Hilton -- a devoted BFF who receives a lot of promotional build-up on Perez’s site.

Others are not so fond of Perez -- his site has been drawn into much controversy. He’s been accused various things -- falsely reporting Castro’s death, playing copyrighted music of Britney Spears, and defaming an LA DJ by reporting a drug arrest. One of his biggest ongoing controversies is the outing of GLBT celebrities who aren’t ready for the spotlight. He so far has maintained that the outing is perfectly OK although civil litigation begs to differ.

The latest Perez brouhaha has been the Miss California controversy where he, as a judge, asked the perky bimbette her opinion on gay marriage. She replied that marriage should be between one man and one woman. There was a media storm that followed when Miss California lost the competition (as a result of how she answered the gay marriage question?). Perez poured gasoline on the fire by referring to Miss California as a “dumb bitch” on his blog… The controversy whip-sawed a different direction when it turned out that Miss California had posed for some topless photos earlier in her career. (“It was windy”).

The bombastic "angel of mercy" Donald Trump gave Miss California a break for her tawdriness, probably hoping to quell the prior controversy with a little after-the-fact forgiveness, letting her keep the title.

Stir, stir, stir. What have we with Perez? We have an extreme, successful far-out-of-the-closet gossip maven who knows how to “work it” from a business standpoint. Closeted gays and Christian conservative models would probably do well to stay out of his way. And 5-hits-a-day blogSpotter would do well to capture any part of Perez’s momentum or business know-how.

© 2009 blogSpotter