Perez Hilton Is Sorry-ish

Perez Hilton learned two hard lessons over the past few days, two that most of us picked up in middle school.  The first is that when you whine for sympathy, it tends to generate the opposite effect.  The second is that you can’t be both the good apple and the dirtbag – or at least, not as public figure.  I think the man is genuinely surprised that he has taken the brunt of the ill-will in this Will.i.am catfight debacle, despite that he was on the receiving end of it.

But now he has apologized, specifically for trotting out the insults “gay” and “f@ggot.”  His statement, after the jump.  

People make mistakes. I have made many in my life, but this past week I have made more than I can count on one hand.

I am sorry. And I mean it. No one is forcing me to write this. I am not feeling pressured to say this. I am speaking out because I realize that the last few days have been more hurtful to me – and many others – than the repeated blows I suffered to my head in Toronto this past weekend.

I have been filled with incredible sadness and regret.

I am sorry that any good work I have done for promoting equality may be tainted by me reclaiming a hurtful word – that’s been personally used against me and the gay community – to hurt someone that was verbally attacking me. It was stupid.

Apologizing for me is not easy. Writing this was not easy. Life is not easy. But everything happens for a reason and I will take away a lot of valuable lessons from this experience.

Now, up to this point, what I’m getting is “I’ve done a lot of good things for humanity, and I really wish I didn’t have to apologize here.”  He goes on to say that “violence is never the answer,” that he is not apologizing to GLAAD (the gay rights group) specifically – because they can go to hell as far as he cares – but gays in general.  Also

Hindsight is always 20/20, they say. I should have been the bigger man and walked away from an unfortunate situation. Instead, I chose – in a very misguided way – to stand up for myself and only made things worse by how I – under pressure and diress – handled the situation.

In other words, “Sorry I was drunk and stood up for myself.”  You can tell this is an unnatural place for Perez to be; he probably almost wishes that he hadn’t taken such a righteous stand during the Carrie Prejean debate.  But it’s a tradeoff: when you make yourself the face of a gay rights struggle, you don’t get to call people f@ggots anymore.  That’s what sacrifices are, Perez.

However, Perez has pledged to donate any money he receives in damages from the assault to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Source: Gawker.