When Perez Hilton is the MOST ethical participant in a chain of internet lies, spin and deceit, you know you’re in trouble.

The dishonesty in the world of blogs and partisan websites is so pervasive, the determination to deceive so great, and the willingness to distort, confuse and misinform so ingrained and shameless, that an objective understanding of some politically-charged events become literally—and I mean literally literally, and what Joe Biden means when he says literally, which is “figuratively”—impossible. Does this fuel the destructive partisanship that causes public discourse to be about “gotchas” and point scoring rather than collaboratively addressing societal problems? Absolutely.

I fell into this muck today when I made the mistake of visiting the Breitbart website for the first time in months, to see what it was evolving into now that Andrew has left us. Eureka! Here was a post by Ben Shapiro saluting Perez Hilton, the petty and reliably ethics-challenged gossip columnist (there is no such thing as an ethical gossip columnist) for breaking ranks and criticizing Dan Savage for his anti-Christian, abusive rant to high school journalists in what was supposed to be a speech about anti-bullying initiatives. This signaled to me that Hilton had an Ethics Hero designation in his immediate future, for properly chastising unethical conduct by an ally: like Savage, Hilton is gay and active in anti-bullying efforts.

Shapiro wrote:

“Hilton has long been an advocate of anti-bullying, and it is heroic of him to stand apart from the rest of the media, which has buried Savage’s bully tactics or brushed them off as unimportant. Savage, as Hilton points out, has lost his credibility as an anti-bullying advocate with such actions. And yes, Hilton has cut a video on behalf of the It Gets Better Project.

“It wasn’t any of the big time celebrities who have endorsed and supported Savage’s It Gets Better Project who stood up against him. It wasn’t folks like Jane Lynch or Neil Patrick Harris or Josh Duhamel or James Marsden or Janet Jackson or Jennifer Love Hewitt or any of the dozens of other stars who could have done so. It wasn’t the folks in the mainstream media, who have completely ignored the story, or justified Savage’s behavior. It wasn’t the elected leaders who have used government resources to direct traffic to Savage’s program who stood up to Savage’s bullying here. It wasn’t President Obama or Vice President Biden or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack or the Department of Justice or the White House Staff or Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

“It was a gossip columnist.”

The Perez quote cited by Shapiro to justify this extravagant praise was this:

 “UGH ….Savage later called the walk-out “pansy-a**ed” which, from someone who helms an anti-bullying campaign, is obviously a very negative thing to say ….Can’t we just be good and kind to each other? Isn’t faith in love and honesty and kindness all any of us really need?” Continue reading →