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Perez Hilton was a guest on The Today Show yesterday and I have to say he came across as much nicer than he has in the past. I’ve seen several interviews with him and he’s often defensive and obnoxious. This time, maybe because he had something to promote, he seemed friendly and like he really has genuinely changed. He was still a loudmouth for sure, but I was impressed with how decent he came across. Perez is promoting his new children’s book called, I sh*t you not, The Boy With Pink Hair. It’s got a cliched plot about a fat kid who used to scrawl anonymous graffiti on the walls of school about all popular kids, until they figured out who he was and then started to mock him mercilessly. Then he lost weight and said he was sorry and tried to get accepted in their club. Or maybe it’s just another book about an outsider kid. Whatever. Didn’t Madonna already do that?
Perez claimed he’s “the perfect person to write a children’s book,” not because he’s ever had children, worked with children, babysat children, said a kind word about someone else’s child, or has any nieces or nephews. Just because he used to be an asshole and changed.
I’m the perfect person to write a children’s book because I’m somebody who made mistakes in the past, acknowledged them, and has taken steps to no longer do that and I think that’s a great message for children.
In the past I was definitely meaner, nasty, give people unpleasant nicknames, draw lots of nice things on photos. But then, last year there were all these gay teenagers who were committing suicide… A lot of people were calling me a hypocrite and a bully myself. That’s not who I am in my heart.
They next showed some illustrations from the book, which were done by a professional illustrator and don’t feature crude penis drawings. Perez explained that “there’s a great message in it for parents about being accepting of your kids no matter how they are.” Kathy Lee clarified that “This is not a gay book, it’s not about your sexual orientation. It’s just about being uniquely different.”
Then Perez chimed in with “Everybody’s different, unless you’re Reese Witherspoon or Taylor Swift, who everybody loves.”
I believe that he’s changed for whatever reason, but I see it more as a public persona choice than a genuine personal awakening. It’s still really tough to buy that this guy is now putting out a children’s book. Even if you just look at the other books he’s released and aren’t that familiar with his website, there’s a mismatch there to say the least. It looks like he needed a new angle for a book and for his image.
Perez is shown at a book signing on 9/6/11. Credit: WENN.com
He’s still relevent?
Uhhh, no your not.
I realized this a long time ago– he has really softened up and become more positive. Yeah most people prefer snark and also dont forget their first impressions- but I honestly think he has grown and learned, and thats great 🙂
*puke*
Heather, my first thought was, “Wait, he’s still around?” I used to read his site a few years ago and then found first D-Listed and then this one and never went back. Plus the people who leave comments there generally have the IQ of a brick.
The perv should have a restraining order
Did you guys see the post of him trying to promote pooping instead of planking??
He had a pic of himself with his pants off pooping on Justin Bieber’s head. It was a cardboard cut-out of Bieber but still…it was beyond creepy.
@tmbg i’m with you, i discovered this site and dlisted and lainey almost a year ago, and dropped that douche. that was shortly after his transformation, he just got boring and kiss-assy
Major barf alert.
Perfect person to be beaten with a stack of children’s books, he means.
What’s with his teeth, they look like joke-shop teeth….I know white perfect teeth are the ultimate in the US especially but isn’t this a bit much. I’m now remembering the Ross sketch in friends when the lights went out…lol.
@tmbg Same thing here. Michael K is everything Perez wishes he was. He got too nasty for me and then all the ghostwriting and the GodGA crap. Ugh.
uhh, ok whatever you say dude.
I think he decided to change before the “It gets better” project.
Remember about those bullied teens who commited suicide because people didn’t leave them alone?
I think he has stuck with this “new” attitude since then.
I am surprised he kept his word.
This is the same idiot who would post stories about how ugly he thought adam sandlers 3 year old child was. Sorry, no one in their right mind would want to have their kid reading a sotry by this mean spirited douche.
And the only reason he changed publicly was because he was going on and on and how terrible that roomate was to publicly air personal details in a mocking manner about his gay roomie and the guy committed suicide over it. Um……..perez hilton did the same thing day after day for years.
It reminds me somewhat of Julianne Moore’s Freckleface Strawberry books.
The reviews on Amazon so far are not too good. Any positive message the book might have seems to be overshadowed by the public’s perception of him.
I never understand these celebrities who write children’s books. A lot of these people are just dummies with a platform.
Also, WHYY does he get coverage here?? He’s so lame.
@tmbg: Why is it that the comments at PH, TMZ and Radar always seem like they’re written by illiterates who can’t string more than three words together? Are they all 12 year olds who text their responses from class? I don’t understand how this site’s commenters are generally pretty clever, while those sites are full of idiots. Maybe they see “escapism can be smart” in the header here and run away.
At any rate, thanks CB, Kaiser and Bedhead for attracting such lovely and hilarious commenters 🙂
@mj I feel the same way. Sometimes i get seriously disturbed reading the comments on other websites. Its good this website is mostly troll free.
He is still a perverted a-hole that needs to disappear already. I don’t understand why his blog is popular. His writing is atrocious and not even funny or remotely witty.
Someone’s trying to stay relevant. Besides his website is old hat, how does one transition from being a famewhore to a normal job? Guess with the presenting not working out (probably because no one likes him), he had to come up with something.
I’ll never think that this douche is anything more than a really terrible person and famewhore. He makes Kim Kardashian, getting used as a urinal and pimping out her life to E! in search for fame look sympathetic. This guy is famous drawing on pictures of celebrities and then saying mean (nonconstructive) things about them. All he’s interested in is self-promotion.
Bullies have no right to write books especially for children. Perez is nothing but a hateful pig who thinks he is a gay activist but does more damage towards that cause. Perez cannot change because the spite in him runs too deep.
Celebrity suck up.
It appears Perez’s web site is now used for paid pr/ promotion for celebrities -(GaGa, K. Perry, K. Graham, Kim K) he is definitely on the take. I believe the disingenuous promotional posts, along with his supposed confrontation with Jenifer Aniston, may have a lot to do with his serendipitous “transformation”.
I find the promotion without disclosure insulting and that’s one reason I can’t be bothered to go to his site anymore.
I still believe him to be a disingenuous twit. Like another poster said, I found D Listed and never looked back.
It irritates the shit out of me when “celebrities” write books, or rather put their names on ghostwritten books. I make my living as a writer, and the amount of work that goes into writing a full book is completely insane. I mostly write textbooks, which are of course even more work, but any book is going to be an incredibly long journey from conception to production. This includes children’s books, and I know this because I have a story that will eventually be turned into a children’s book. Even though it’s a short story, it took so much time and thought to write, and has gone through a zillion rounds of editing. Basically, what I’m saying is writing is really hard work — I work 70-80 hours per week — and these silly celebs (e.g., Snooki, Perez) with their ghostwritten books make it look like any moron can produce a book. It’s an insult to writers everywhere.
Oh is he still around??
You know who needs to write an awesome kid’s book? Michael K from dlisted. Now THAT is something I’d buy for my kids..well, maybe more for me….lol
Wowzers, you all don’t like Perez!
First off, I’d be willing to bet some of those illiterates posting over there post here. I’ve run into a few blogs where people talk about posters on the blog posting at ROL or Perez, and it’s like two different worlds. One where they call people poopy pants or something, and on the blog they post eloquent (or at least something with thought that went into it) responses.
He’s no idiot. He’s made boatloads of money off his site doing what people want to read. And he’s stayed true to what he said he’d do re bullying. And I think he credits Jennifer Aniston for it.
So, yeah, I read him (with a big chunk of salt), and I read here. Two sides of the same coin.
I used to go to his site, years ago, but it obviously became ghost written and I couldnt stand the posts being only one of two lines long :/
Celebitchy rocks anyway!!!!
Also—this is basically his life story. he used to ahve pnk hair when he started his site, he wrote things mocking other stars he wanted to be like (He was a bit actor n that one Sopranos episode, remember) and then he said sorry to all the stars he mocked because he really wanted to be accepted by them, lost weight, yada yada.
PUKE.
People get SO HEATED about Perez. Please, he runs a gossip website that’s really popular. And I LOVE D-Listed and Celebitchy because I think it’s great writing and it’s funny (which Perez is not, always), but I think Perez still “breaks” gossipy-news first. If he wants to write a book who cares.
Well, he DID used to dress like a clown version of Elton John (which is saying A LOT), so I guess there’s that.
@Emily: Perez doesn’t “break” anything first. I stopped reading his site years ago because all he (or his ghostwriter) did was copy and paste from other sites and pass it off as his own. He puts in an obscure link for legal reasons, which is really a complete middle finger to the other sites.
DListed, Lainey, and Celebitchy are so much better because they give proper credit and have original opinions and thoughts on the stories they post.
It is not fair to say all comments at his site are from idiots, sometimes I post there, and I am not even close to being illiterate! Eighty percent are idiots, but please take me out of that equation.
Well, I changed his site for this one, I still check it sometimes, but not every day like I used to…I really love my celebrity gossip 😉
I can’t believe this guy has a children’s book…ugh, what has the world come to? I also think it’s all an act, ha hasn’t changed at all, he is the same nasty guy, pretending to be nice…but still full on envy.
I’m with most of you guys – I started my gossip-reading career with Perez, then transitioned to Dlisted and Celebitchy and never looked back.
It’s kind of a shame, because books like this are important.
Many of the reviewers on Amazon pointed out that if he was serious about turning over a new leaf, or whatever, she should have published it under his real name, rather than hitching this wagon to the Perez Hilton brand. And I tend to agree.
It’s hard to swallow a book about acceptance written by a man who made his career, reputation and millions of dollars by bullying and name calling celebrities and their children. Even if he has changed…
He’s a horrible excuse for a human being, and he’s exactly who shouldn’t be near children, because he’s an example of how not to act towards others. He’s openly called his young women readers the c-word, these are high school kids, that happened when he was a clothing designer for hot topic and he got caught talking smack about them. He’s not making the money on his blog he used to as no media companies want to associate with a person relentlessly tries to out their talent. Clothing designer failure, decided to become children’s author? I don’t think so – hopefully he reign of terror is over and he can crawl back to Miami and be a club promoter only coming out at night like the cockroach he is.
Yeah, he’s the person I’d think of first when I think of someone writing a children’s book. Please.
He’s an assclown and I would never purchase anything “written” (read: ghost-written) by him. He’s vile.
This man is vile and if I had children I wouldn’t bring them anywhere near his book. This is the same man that draws semen on pictures. He may have changed, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever like him.
Say what you want about him but he has changed, (I actually read his blog). What I find surprising is that he has been criticized mercilessly, by this website, for his bad behavior. However, those people that criticized him are still guilty of being aholes to those you hate, i.e. Megan Fox, Kat Face Kardashian, I know you know who you hate. So shut up and let people be, don’t hate!
I know when Perez had his moment of clarity.
It was when Will.i.am’s, body guard or manager(?), punched Perez in his mouth.
After spending years talking shit about Fergie on his site. He made the mistake of saying something tacky one night, on a red carpet in front of Will.i.am and his friends.
So Perez got a nice pop to the mouth. In front of a lot of people.
And no one cared. Not even the police, whom he called, to cry about it.
Practically everyone sent the man who hit him, flowers for having done it.
So no, I do not believe Perez had a change of heart.
He just decided he needed a new image.
So the next time he gets punched in the mouth. Someone may care enough to listen.
Urgh, I can’t stand Perez. At least he used to have an incisive bite back in the old days — ever since he started partying with Paris Hilton and the Hollywood crowd, he’s been a major suck-up in order to keep hanging out with the cool kids in the backyard.
I agree with poster #20: the guy is so irrelevant, he shouldn’t get more coverage than necessary for his book promotion. Celebitchy is too good for him!
i dont like Reese Witherspoon or Taylor Swift
I don’t like reading news about people like him and lindsay lohan- it feels like feeding an alley cat or something. I don’t want to contribute to this person’s dreadful excuse for celebrity.
But I decided to comment anyway, just to say how distasteful I find him. I’d like this person to go away.
Also, @Geek Chic,I write too, and I totally agree. It makes me sick to hear a celeb taking credit for a ghost written memoir of their career.
he’s just as irritating as chelsea handler….posers!
i don’t even go to his blog anymore because lately his “news” are other showbiz blogs’ poop from previous days.
annoying!
Well, good for him, sincerely, if as he says he’s turned bad into good.
That doesn’t excuse the blog though…bloody tedious, often revoltingly sycophantic. Dumped it.
I agree with the naughty person who suggested Michael K as a kids’ author….heh heh heh.
DListed and CBy are the only ones I dig.
I hate to jump on the bandwagon here but I do check over a vast amount of celebrity gossip blogs and such, and I do find that he is one step behind other sites quite a bit, but now and then he gets it first
I was trying to figure out who he looks like in these photos – Steve-O from Jackass yes?? Or is it just me
Just 3 words Lol !
Read his site once. Thought it was lame. Never went back.
*EYEROLL* Perez, an author of a children’s book? Well the only positive spin I can put on this is that somewhere in North Carolina a little pig is flying 😀
major eyeroll at perez’s defenders here.
CB is not sexist, homophobic, or cruel to children. CB does not try to “out” people who want to stay private.
And CB does NOT claim lesbians are really males or use male nicknames for women.
Nor does CB draw crude male genitals on female pictures.
Do i really need to go on?
perez didn’t have a change of heart. he’s just trying to stay in the public eye.
Hautie is right.. perez only “changed” because he thought it might benefit him. he has no heart.
Any blogger who draw cums on the mouth of any celebrity he hates is a scum of the earth and shouldn’t be allowed to blogged anymore let alone write a childrens book,bitch please!!
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