Tattoo oooooh!

Ab-tastic Celebrity Big Brother's Gladiator flashes almost everything.

Sexxxy military men. WOOF.

America panics over 3 cases of Ebola. 2nd infected nurse goes to MD.

Lance Bass wants you to see his boyfriend's A+ ass.

Scott Walker might lose his governship to Mary Burke.

Entire Love Boat cast is alive, is reuniting!

Straight alley Ashley Parker Angel grabs a handful vs. cancer:

This former O-Town member is attempting to tease out your O face...

Glenn Close: Former cultist.

Hillary is pro-Net neutrality.

Magic Mike XXL. Needs. Women.

Floridians are split on Crist vs. Scott, but most think Scott will prevail.

Charming PA teens chant about Ebola to West African rival.

Anti-IRS, anti-millennial & pro-fetus Ernst leads in Iowa Senate race.

Madonna goes Inside the Actors Studio with Perez Hilton.

Madonna ain't no florist.

Former Disney queen Demi Lovato—whose grandpa was gay and who has dated at least one gay dude—has a new break-up song called “Really Don't Care,” but she's used its music video to make a statement about LGBT rights. Lots of bubbly fun...

I was pleasantly surprised to see Buzzfeed throwing its weight into investigating the identity of Examiner.com's notorious “Angela Cheng,” a figure who has written some of the most vitriolic (and untrue) garbage about celebrities that I've ever read.

“She” is unfairly mischaracterized as “anti-Gaga,” however. “Angela Cheng” and her ilk at Examiner.com are not anti-Gaga, they are pro-click. In fact, as I wrote last year, Cheng was previously a rabidly pro-Gaga fan who was hellbent on defaming Madonna. She was, you may recall, the person who popularized the sentiment that Madonna “helped spread AIDS.”

I wanted Madonna to sue “her” back then. Madonna is not litigious—ain't nobody got no time for that—but if she'd sued over Cheng's wildly libelous statements, the suit may have at least forced Examiner.com to admit that it has very little control over what its uniformly untalented, incurious “writers” post. I was most shocked, in Buzzfeed's piece, to discover that Examiner.com even has a policy against defaming people. That would seem to directly contradict its business model of the past few years. It took high-profile goading from Buzzfeed for Examiner.com to finally remove Cheng's entire oeuvre...but, of course, the damage has already been done.

It should be embarrassing for Perez Hilton that he congratulated “Cheng” on a job well done. I think the theory that “Cheng” = Hilton is not without merit, though he has flatly denied it.

The Internet is already rife with idiots malevolently and anonymously slurring anyone and everyone, we don't need a massive Web site encouraging and profiting from it.

I wish anyone defamed by Examiner.com (Bill Werde of Billboard is an individual unjustly maligned) would unite and sue it back into the Stone Ages. Or at least back to the print days, when people were held accountable for the information and misinformation they chose to put out into the world.

Bottom line: Lady Gaga's biggest troll is actually just a click-happy hack...and one who's probably making a living, albeit somewhat meagerly, off of your outrage.

Pedals on the wind

ABOVE: Tab Hunter exercising is another reason to get this book.

PICTURED: Chip Duckett DJs Perez's Madonna-themed b'day in NYC.

Ronan Farrow at NLGJA.

Best celebrity-sibling quiz. The. Best.

Anita Hill now: "I am not going to stop."

Veep Biden speaks out on passing ENDA.

You won't believe this Caesar cocktail.

Because gay people are cool like that.

Aaron Tveit in South Beach.

Familiar actor James Rebhorn dies @ 65.

Best twink butt EVER? (Work Unfriendly)

Is Gaga's latest extravaganza too much, too late?

Russell Adams's cuteness is far easier to locate than MH370.

Gallery from the party above, plus tons more photos of Madonna & others below.

A few hours ago, I was lucky enough to attend the launch party for Madonna's secretprojectrevolution, a 17-minute short film made in conjunction with Steven Klein that's meant to address discrimination and injustice in the world.

I arrived around 9 for the event, then had to kill time until 10 before the doors opened. The e-mail containting the invite had stressed promptness, warning we may not get in if we arrived past 10:45. But too early was no good either. How would everyone get into the Gagosian Gallery between 10 and 10: 45? Turns out the guest list was just that small, maybe 250 people.

I hope Mario will read this all the way through without overreacting to the title; I know he reads my stuff and I've sent him words of encouragement from time to time, so I trust he will. And in truth this is less about Perez Hilton than it is about what he has come to represent, in both meanings of the phrase.

Long before my recent seeming defense of Perez Hilton on several issues (here, here and here), I wrote a lot about the culture of negativity in celebrity journalism and the at times hatred the public feels  toward its anointed stars, specifically throwing my hands up at the popularity of his site, which was built up as quickly as it could tear others down. I did not always "get" Perez; I still am not so much a fan as I am an admirer, and there is a difference. I used to resent his power (he steals ideas and images, he can't spell), but now I think I understand what fuels it and I do see his work as a whole, with its plusses (stars should not go unchallenged, he's funny, he's pro-gay) and minuses (that use of faggot was pretty stupid, who is he to act like the death photo of Jacko was beyond the pale compared to what he's done?). I can sometimes be a black-and-white, love-or-hate person, but I am nothing if not against irrational, unparsed stances.

Actually, the negativity of which I speak struck me before I'd ever heard of Perez, but I found it in the same place I found Perez—on the Internet. Make no mistake—I am a viper. I have joked about death, about maiming, about others' misfortunes. I have done it both out of a lack of sympathy depending on the subject, out of political competitiveness and for less dishonorable reasons, such as a desire to break the tension, gallows humor. I am capable of saying almost anything and thinking even worse. But even I was shocked at the things I saw on the Internet when it came into being because people—anonymously—began to make public forever the kinds of heinous comments that previously had rarely if ever been unleashed except in private. They were called trolls, but to me they were worse because trolls are imaginary.

 

 

The bile was aimed not only at celebrities, but the worst of it seemed to plague the famous, who if they were considered beautiful would be savagely criticized for every minor flaw, if they were considered elegant would be dragged through the mud. Even deaths were mocked before bodies were cold.

 

This should not have surprised me. Throughout entertainment history, there has been a cutthroat media thriving on negativity as well as positivity. The negativity didn't come out of nowhere; it was actually conjured up by the celebrities themselves, though without their knowledge.

 

In order to capitalize on a star in the biggest possible way—a necessity since stardom is based on commerce—all of their positive attributes had to be blown out of proportion by their promoters. This was resolved via a new invention: publicity. Which can mean spreading the beneficial truth (she donates to charity!) but more often has meant spreading bald-faced lies. Tell the people what they want to hear—he's not gay, she's not promiscuous, they're not divorcing, he never did drugs, there was nothing suspicious about her last husband's death—and they will love you for it.

 

And they do.

 

Until they hate you.