Is Kelly Ripa A Hypocrite?

Kelly Ripa made a stink several months back when Clay Aiken co-hosted Live with Regis & Kelly and (in a failed attempt to be funny) covered her mouth with his hand.
“I don’t know where that hand has been,” shouted Ripa to the Gayken.
Her comments drew much controversy, and she eventually called in to The View to defend herself, saying that she has three kids and was concerned about germs.
Interesting thing happened, though.
On Monday, July 9th’s episode race car driver Jeff Gordon was the co-host.
He accidentally drinks from her cup and apologizes. Her response? “Oh, that’s ok,” as she takes a sip.
So Gayken’s hand is too germy, but Jeff Gordon’s spit is just fine?
Seems like a double standard to us.
Rosie was right!
from PerezHilton.com

Reichen Speaks Out On Attacks By Perez Hilton

Mario Lavendeira (PerezHilton.com) is a Big (blank) Ugly Liar, an Accused Thief and Criminal

All,
From the Horse's Mouth: Just a friendly reminder that when you read websites like PerezHilton.com, you are reading lies and are being taken advantage of as you make more money for a person who does nothing but fabricate storeis to make his site look interesting.
That anyone would trust someone like Mario Lavendeira (PerezHilton.com) who STEALS from photographers, bloggers, and the general population, is beyond me, really. This person is a common criminal.
Contrary to what this ugly wind-bag has reported, I have not broken up with my boyfriend. I did not go home with anyone from "Survivor" from any party. I have not "made out with" anyone at a party while I have been with my boyfriend. The opposite has been written on his site. It is all a complete and blantant lie. This person is a liar. Period.
My book was done before I ever met Lance. I do not date people so that I can "use" them. I'm self-sufficient and happy to be that way. I have served my country, I have made my own money, my own career, written my own books, bought my own homes and other possesions, and I'm proud to be this way, on my own. I am not broke. I am individually financially sound. I date people because I happen to love them. Period.
I will only post this once. This disgusting person and his site makes up blatant lies to create interesting stories. I am one of this criminal's targets. Understand that. So know, from here on out, that if you read anything about ME on PerezHilton.com, you are 99.9% sure to be reading a lie or an exagerrated, incorrect version of something that is 0.01% true.

Merry Christmas Everybody!!

Love, Reichen

P.S. Here is some information on "Perez" and how he stole a check from a friend and deposited into his account while he was using CRYSTAL METH. This guy is a drug addict, criminal, and thief.
"Perez Hilton, of PageSixSixSix fame--but whose real name shall remain verboten because, unlike him, I have some tact--is a total thief.
He got run out of L.A. because he is a meth addict and a thief. The boy had the gumption to steal a check from a friend's apartment and then deposit it into his own account as a third-party check. Like his ass wouldn't get caught.
But tina makes you do stupid things. He did get caught, though I'm not sure what happened with his court case. This happened like eight months ago.
Check fraud, forgery, theft. Then his blog takes off and people in L.A. started posting comments to it about the theft. He deletes them all.
So you heard it here first. If he gets any more famous, tell people not to let Perez get too close to your dresser drawers, because if he is cracked he will steal from you regardless of the consequences."
from Reichen's MySpace

'Wedding Wars' Shines Dim Light On Gay Marriage

There aren't many good gay-equality films in the world, and now "Wedding Wars" can be added to the list. Its best effect is it spawned the fabulously gay celebrity site PerezHilton.com to drool over stars John Stamos and Eric Dane. They're, like, attractive or something.
Perez may be happy to find out there is a Stamos-on-man kiss in "Wedding Wars," but no tongue. Wimps.
Tongues would be real, and "Wedding Wars" never goes for realism. Take, for instance, James Brolin, who plays an anti-gay governor of Maine. Brolin is married to Barbra Streisand, godmother of gays. This is wink-wink casting, but you know during the whole movie Brolin would never upset his wife's gay applecart, nor would he want to.
The movie is a topical farce. Dane -- the shirtless guy from the towel scene in "Grey's Anatomy" -- plays homophobic Ben. Ben works for the governor and is engaged to the governor's daughter.
Stamos plays Ben's gay brother Shel; Shel is an event planner who is prepping Ben's wedding.
Then everything goes gay all of a sudden. Two weeks before the ceremony, the governor decides to ban gay marriage. Straight Ben supports this supposed defense of traditional marriage. Gay Shel goes on wedding-planning strike, pickets the governor's mansion, and nets media attention.
If this were one of those overearnest indie films you see in the caffeinated multiplexes these days, there'd be gay crying and perhaps gunfire, and hopefully no self-hating meth-snorting. Movies can be overblown.
But this light gay romance is underblown. Shel's picketing spurs other gay Americans go on strike, leaving old ladies with perm foils in their hair from coast to coast. Also a-striking they go are gay meteorologists, limo drivers and housewives.
The story itself is just fine and dandy, and smidgens of it are charming. "Wedding Wars" just isn't very good. It's slapdash and looks like a quickie cable movie, as if it were written and filmed too fast or breezily to create magnetic characters and memorable dialogue.
The stereotype of the debauched gay parader is skewed, old hat, and "Wedding Wars" avoids it, except when it doesn't. There's one pool party where Shel pours booze down the throats of fatless boys while Stamos gays it up.
There is one half-adequate use of the phrase "you bitch," and Shel is a big fan of CNN's Anderson Cooper, which is funny because Cooper won't discuss his dating life publicly.
You can be sure much of the movie is guess-able. Wives and fiancees are pro-gay marriage and can't believe their knuckleheaded men are passe Neanderthals. A mother asks her son if he's gay "because I made you watch ice skating with me?"
Some of it is not predictable. Only one briefly shown homophobe is an ass; the rest are nice people with the stupid viewpoint that America needs an indefensible defense of marriage act to destroy Americans' constitutional rights.
I get the feeling "Wedding Wars" wants to sway hearts and minds. But homophobes probably won't be convinced to overturn the brainwashing they got from whomever it was that convinced them gay people are subhuman. Their beliefs make homophobes seem subhuman to me. And for me to say homophobes are subhuman makes me look subhuman. See how hate heals America?
"Wedding Wars" does open my eyes to one thing that has nothing to do with gaiety. It's that Ben and Shel are Lutherans. Lutherans named Ben and Shel? I feel like I've been so sheltered.
from The Chicago Sun Times / Doug Elfman

Wedding Wars airs Monday night on A&E

Perez Hilton Reports That Lance And Reichen Have Split

It saddens us to report this, but....
PerezHilton.com can exclusively reveal that Lance Bass and his boyfriend, Reichen, have decided to end their relationship.
The split - which happened very recently - was a mutual decision, pals of the couple tell us.
"They had been fighting a lot lately," says one source. "They tried a lot of things to make it work - even opening up the relationship - but they would just fight all the time towards the end. It wasn't working."
How sad! Goodbye to one of the few high-profile gay couples we had!
At least we still have Do Me Howser.
from PerezHilton.com

Perez Hilton's Open-Closet Policy

The white-hot center of the celebrity gossip world is currently a back table at a heavily trafficked Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Sunset Boulevard, just west of Fairfax. There, Perez Hilton, a slightly pudgy, recently blonded 28-year-old Cuban American blogger, has leveraged his reign as "queen of all media" to become a one-man celebrity outing operation, doing his best to uncloset as many gay celebrities as he can, because, as he sees it, they have forfeited their right to privacy on that point.
"In American culture, a lot of people still think that being gay is bad, and that being gay will hurt your career. I generally don't think that," said Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira. He began using his made-up Web moniker full time after getting death threats from Clay Aiken fans who didn't appreciate Hilton's calling the singer Clay Gay-kin. (Aiken has denied being gay.)
Styling himself a "gossip gangsta," Hilton picks heroes and villains (Angelina Jolie = good, Jennifer Aniston = bad), elevates obscure figures to fame (the bodaciously endowed British model Jordan) and never tires of ragging on Lindsay Lohan, of whom he delights in posting vulgar photographs.
But it is the absolutely brutal way he demands that gay actors avow their sexuality, coupled with the huge readership of his site, that is something of a departure, even in the rough-and-tumble world of celebrity blogs.
"I am not some safe, cookie cutter, queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy homo," said Hilton, who pings between comedy and gross vulgarity on his site. "I am dangerous. I am gonna push the envelope. I am gonna be who I am: a loud, gay Latino that has opinions and in my own way, subserviently, I am trying to make the world a better place."
It is true that Hilton does not take credit for the recent spate of revelations by the actors Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight and the former 'N Sync band member Lance Bass. But, at least with Bass and Harris, Hilton kept up a drumbeat about their sexual orientation. Some think the relentless attention may have played a part in their decisions. He agreed, up to a point.
"I am never gonna take ownership of someone's coming out — that's their moment, and their decision," Hilton said Tuesday evening, twisting his baseball cap around as he sat at his "desk" in the Coffee Bean with his indispensable laptop and pink Sidekick. "I will say that I may be leading the conversation, and I might grease the wheel and make it easier for them."
Even serious-minded thinkers on the subject do not disagree. "Nowadays, it's the blogs that get it going," said USC professor Larry Gross, author of "Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing." "In the previous round of outing in the early '90's, everybody wanted to be first to be second. No one wanted to take the heat for starting it, but the blog phenomenon has changed that by lowering the threshold to the point that other media can't avoid it. What we are now seeing is Outing 2.0"
This year, Hilton practically trilled, "there have been six — well, 5 1/2 if you count Ted Haggard — notable people that have come out as gay or lesbian, by choice or not." In addition to Knight, Harris and Bass, he cites ex-Florida Rep. Mark Foley and a TV actress who has not publicly acknowledged she is gay.
In 2004, Hilton added, there was only one notable gay person who stepped out of the closet: James McGreevey, who resigned as governor of New Jersey when he came out. "It's gone from one to 5 1/2 ," said Hilton. "Wow, wow, wow. That's progress, whether we like it or not."
With more than 2.5 million hits a day on the site, Hilton wields tremendous power. "I don't want to sound full of myself, but if I had not been talking about Lance Bass as much as I was before he came out, there is no way he would have gotten the cover of People magazine. He would have gone about it the traditional way, coming out on the cover of the Advocate, which is read by 70,000 people instead of the 3.4 million who read People every week. So I offered him this silver platter, you could say."
Still, in the arena of true breakthroughs, said Gross, the gay world is still waiting for its Jackie Robinson equivalent, an A-lister who would make it OK for others to come out. In that regard, he said, Hilton's efforts are "salutary, because we are still living in a double-standard world ... where there is something shameful about sexuality. The fact that someone is gay only will become neutral information when it's treated that way, not as a bombshell revelation or a dirty story."
Hilton already operates as though that is the case. He wishes that gay celebrities who don't want to talk about their private lives could just say, "Yes, I am gay and I don't want to talk about my private life."
He does not own a TV or read books and has no Internet at home. He is a voracious consumer of magazines, though, and has a network of trusted friends and tipsters who, he said, have yet to lead him astray.
He starts work around 6:30 a.m., sometimes posting 30 times a day, a far more prodigious output than many fully staffed sites. By sheer energy and personality, his site and he are rapidly evolving into a brand. He is in demand by radio and TV outlets as a celebrity commentator. He recently taught a Learning Annex class, "How to Blog Your Way to Fame and Fortune." ("I inspired myself!" he said.)
Collaborating with the production company World of Wonder, Hilton will star in his own reality show. He is the subject of a four-page layout in December's GQ, will co-host MTV's New Year's Eve special, will appear on the cover of the Advocate next month and was just named to a list of 25 powerful Latinos by the New York Post, which sued him in May 2005 for trademark dilution, among other things, prompting him to rechristen his original website, Pagesixsixsix (it's now called perezhilton .com). "I guess they didn't find the name funny," said Hilton.
Hilton is also smart enough to know that his current good fortune could be fleeting and is working 19 hours a day to make sure it stays. After all, it was only last year that this lower-middle-class, Jesuit-schooled kid from Miami was unemployed, $60,000 in debt, in bankruptcy and deeply depressed. Today, he said, he earns six figures. He has agents, a lawyer, a manager and a public that, despite its craving for the content he provides, can be vicious toward him in comments on his site. Which he loves. "Every time they leave a comment, it's a page view," he said. "I'm laughing all the way to the bank."
He moved to Los Angeles full time in 2002, after graduating from New York University, where he studied acting. While looking in vain for acting gigs, he was hired as a publicist, but didn't like the clients. "The last straw was this 40-year-old single mother who came out with a mermaid bikini calendar. It was her in a mermaid tail, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, this lady is like too old for this. But hey, I was resourceful…. I booked her at Long Beach aquarium!"
He was hired by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, overseeing newsletters and annual reports. "I don't think I am their favorite person right now," he said.
A spokesman for GLAAD was diplomatic. "Media speculation about a celebrity's orientation is not something we support and it can be problematic," said Damon Romine. "Whether you are a celebrity or not, coming out is ultimately a personal process."
After Hilton left GLAAD, he freelanced for gay publications and found work at the Star briefly before being fired. Combining his three failed occupations — actor, publicist, journalist — he has struck gold.
"Next year will be one of two things," he said. "I am gonna fall or it'll be even bigger and better and crazier than this amazing year has been. I am hoping bigger and better, but I'm prepared for the other one too."
from The Los Angeles Times

Gay Actors To Face Straits?

In the 29 years since Billy Crystal outraged — and later won over — critics with his mostly sympathetic portrayal of a gay man on the sitcom "Soap," prime-time audiences have come to accept straight actors playing gay parts, in everything from groundbreaking hits (Eric McCormack in "Will & Grace") to all-but-forgotten flops (John Goodman in "Normal, Ohio").
But will viewers prove as welcoming toward gay actors in straight roles, especially — and this is the heart of the issue — as romantic leads? Several high-profile cases in the news lately suggest that we may be about to find out, as Americans continue to grapple with their conflicted and ever-evolving views on gays and lesbians.
Last month, T.R. Knight, who plays the romantically yearning and unquestionably heterosexual Dr. O'Malley on ABC's smash "Grey's Anatomy," came out as gay with a statement to People magazine, adding somewhat forlornly, "I hope the fact that I'm gay isn't the most interesting part of me." Knight's real-life sexual orientation evidently was a factor in a now-notorious on-set altercation; Isaiah Washington, who tussled with costar Patrick Dempsey, reportedly directed an anti-gay epithet at an unnamed actor believed to be Knight. (Washington later apologized.)
Then, two weeks ago, another coming-out message landed on the editor's desk at People, this one from Neil Patrick Harris, who plays the womanizing cad Barney on CBS' comedy "How I Met Your Mother." "I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest," Harris wrote, after his publicist at the time initially denied Internet rumors that the actor is gay.
Last week, the Advocate, a gay and lesbian magazine, published an interview with Kristanna Loken of "Terminator 3" and newly of Showtime's "The L Word." In it, she talked playfully of her relationship with another actress.
Television industry insiders agree that in just the past few weeks, gay actors in Hollywood have reached a critical new turning point, one that will reveal what restrictions may or may not be placed on their careers if they brave coming out of the closet. Ultimately, what happens next is up to prime-time viewers.
"This is new territory," said Damon Romine, entertainment media director at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an advocacy group. Harris and Knight in particular, he said, "are doing something that's not been done before: Come out when being on a TV series."
Ron Cowen, executive producer of Showtime's drama "Queer as Folk," said Harris, known to millions from his years on "Doogie Howser, M.D.," is furnishing "a test case" for other gay performers.
"If not a big deal is made out of it, Hollywood will adapt to it," Cowen added. "But if it turns out it's not a good thing — if the ratings for 'How I Met Your Mother' drop, for instance — people will say, 'That hurts shows, that hurts the business.' "
Fear of sexual disclosure is among the most persistent of the terrors that govern Hollywood's upper echelons. Trying to cover up a gay star's romantic life has been a frequent obsession of publicists and agents. In one of the most famous examples, Rock Hudson married his agent's secretary in 1955, when his movie career was rapidly ascending, largely to shield his homosexual affairs from tabloids and the public. The thinking was that mainstream viewers would never accept a gay actor as a romantic lead. As a result, while his sexuality was an open secret in Hollywood, Hudson never confirmed publicly that he was gay, even when he revealed he was dying from AIDS in 1985.
For all the advances that gays and lesbians have made on other fronts, some facts remain unchanged since Hudson's day.
Sarah Warn, founder and editor of Afterellen.com, a lesbian entertainment site, said she knows of one top Hollywood handler who tells her gay clients never to discuss their sexuality publicly.
"She tried to spin it as 'It's nobody's business,' " Warn said. And when rumors crop up, "most publicists deny those kinds of claims without even checking with the client."
Indeed, while top straight-identified actors have for years received praise and prizes for playing gay characters — Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia," for example — executives, casting directors and maybe mass audiences still seem to have a block when it comes to gay people in straight parts.
Rupert Everett, who's been out since 1989 and has played both gay and straight characters in major films, admitted in one interview that viewers may wonder "if a queen like me can butch it up enough to play a convincing straight man." But several factors are conspiring to change things, albeit more slowly than some activists hoping for A-list gay role models might like.
The legislative and court battles over gay marriage have increased general popular awareness, if not acceptance, of gays and lesbians, much as the initial AIDS crisis did 20 years ago. Then too entertainers such as Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres have come out and watched their careers soar, which may help embolden younger performers.
"You can use it to your advantage in a lot of ways," said Howard Bragman, an openly gay man and veteran Hollywood publicist who helped former sitcom stars Dick Sargent and Sheila Kuehl when they came out of the closet.
Meanwhile, Internet gossips such as Perez Hilton — whose notoriety depends largely on outing celebrities — have made it tougher for stars such as Harris to keep their private lives under wraps. (Through a spokesman, Harris declined to comment.)
"Celebrity rumors that used to be spread around by phone or tabloid are now online in minutes," Romine said.
All that leads some to believe that a renaissance in attitudes is underway. When it comes to stars' sexuality, Bragman said, "It's a generational thing. Kids do not care." He predicted that in another decade, gays playing straight characters won't even be an issue.
Others aren't so optimistic. Cowen pointed out that in Hollywood, no issue can be separated for long from the core concerns of ratings and box office.
"The question is, how liberal can Hollywood afford to be?" he asked.
from The Los Angeles Times