In a statement released Wednesday,
celebrity blogger Perez Hilton admitted “words hurt” but refused
to apologize to Black Eye Peas frontman Will.i.am for calling him a
“f*cking f*aggot.”
“Words can hurt,” Hilton, whose
real name is Mario Lavandeira, writes on his blog. “My intention –
however misguided as it may have been – was to stand up for myself
and tell this belligerent man that I had enough of his badgering and
was not going to continue to let him berate and intimidate me. I
wanted to hurt him with the word I chose, not anyone else.
Unfortunately, the one who got hurt was me and, subsequently, a lot
of other people. I wish none of it had happened.”
The thirty-one-year-old blogger – who
has landed at the top of the Hollywood gossip heap with his
take-no-prisoners blogging style – claims he was punched “two or
three” times in the right eye after an altercation with members of
the Black Eye Peas after the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto.
In fact, Reuters reported that group
manager Liborio Molina has been charged with assault by Toronto
police.
On Tuesday, Hilton scoffed at a request
by gay rights group GLAAD to apologize for using the anti-gay slur
against Will.i.am.
“I am saddened GLAAD chose to
victimize me further by criticizing me for how I nonviolently dealt
with a very scary situation that, unfortunately, turned violent,”
he said.
Hilton, however, was not apologizing
but merely admitting to a poor choice of words, insisting he was only
defending himself, and bitterly complaining he remains the victim.
“[W]ords should not provoke someone
to violence. Stripped away from the mask of Perez Hilton, I have
been extremely bothered by the public reaction to my assault.
Violence should never be condoned with such statements as 'It's
Karma' or “I don't believe in violence but … ',” he wrote.
Hilton was not only criticized by the
media but also many of the personalities that appear in the posts of
his snarky gossip blog.
Singer/songwriter John Mayer took a
swipe at Hilton's 13 minute video post on the altercation: “Perez
Hilton's video statement is so long that by the end of it his cut
healed,” he tweeted.
And Josh Duhamel, husband of Peas
singer Fergie, told Entertainment Tonight: “When you get
rich saying hateful things, sometimes you ask for it.”
Hilton said he would move forward with
a civil lawsuit against Molina. He is seeking unspecified damages of
more than $25,000.