Perez Hilton upsets the Gay Community with his words against Wil.I.Am

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Blogger Perez Hilton's antics during an altercation with Wil.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas Monday morning has earned him a stern statement from The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). During that exchange, Hilton, who's Gay, called Wil.I.Am an anti-gay slur. GLAAD's calling for Hilton to apologize:

New York, NY, June 22, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today issued the following statement in response to a video posted by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, in which he made the following remarks about a confrontation with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and members of the band’s entourage.

"And that is when I made the split-second decision - that I was gonna say what I thought was the worst possible thing that thug [will.i.am] would ever want to hear. As I was standing my ground - without being violent or physical which I would never do - I told him - and you know what? I don't need to respect you and you're a f**. You're gay and stop being such a f***ot."

His statement appears in this video:




"These are vulgar anti-gay slurs that feed a climate of hatred and intolerance toward our community," said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “For someone in our own community to use it to attack another person by saying that it is, quote, ‘The worst possible thing that thug would ever want to hear,’ is incredibly dangerous. It legitimizes use of a slur that is often linked to violence against our community. And it sends a message that it is OK to attempt to dehumanize people by exploiting anti-gay attitudes.”

“We have reached out to Hilton and asked him to apologize for promoting this anti-gay slur, and we would ask media outlets to avoid repetition of the slur in their coverage of this story.”

Reuters is reporting that Toronto police have charged Liborio Molina, the manager of the Black Eyed Peas, with assault.

“While not all the facts in this case are known, the violence that appears to have been committed against Perez Hilton is unacceptable and ought to be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” said Robinson.

As of this writing Hilton's not issued an apology.

Metro train derails in DC

Perez Hilton v. Wil.I.Am | Black Eyed Peas' manager turns himself in

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According to Roger Gillies of the Associated Press, Polo Molina, the manager of the Black Eyed Peas, turned himself in to the Toronto police and was charged with assault on Perez Hilton.

 

Polo Molina 

Hilton got into a heated, verbally abusive argument first with Fergie, the popular singer with "The Peas" then with Black Eyed Peas' lead rapper Wil.I.Am early Monday morning. According to videos from both Wil.I.Am and Hilton, Hilton's verbal abuse led to his being beaten by what Wil.I.Am called "a fan" while Hilton said the attacker was the band's manager.

You can learn more with my initial video on this:



And more information's coming as the flow from Twitter is tremendous, but my estimate is it will subside by this time tomorrow unless someone from the Peas makes a new statement, Perez follows up, or another video surfaces.

This subject is now the fourth highest hashtag on Twitter, towering over Tehran; #iranelection remains at number one.

Perez Hilton says Wil.I.Am of Black Eyed Peas beat him up; lying?

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On YouTube.com



Famous blogger Perez Hilton blasted the Twitterverse just under an hour ago (in a story broke by "Tila Tequila" on Twitter) literally screaming that he was beaten up by rapper Wil.I.Am (of the red-hot group The Black Eyed Peas) and his security guards.

I was assaulted by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and his security guards. I am bleeding. Please, I need to file a police report. No joke.about 1 hour ago from Sidekick

This is the full series of Hilton's tweets starting from most recent first:

The Toronto police are here now. Thank you. Please stop calling them.34 minutes ago from Sidekick

I spoke to my lawyer. I really need to talk to the authorities. Please come to the SoHo Met Hotel. Have called the police. Need them here.about 1 hour ago from Sidekick

Still waiting for the police. The bleeding has stopped. I need to document this. Please, can the police come to the SoHo Met Hotel.about 1 hour ago from Sidekick

I was assaulted by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and his security guards. I am bleeding. Please, I need to file a police report. No joke.about 1 hour ago from Sidekick

I'm in shock. I need the police ASAP. Please come to the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel now. Please.about 1 hour ago from Sidekick

Is there a gay bar that we can go to with GaGa now that like has a balcony or some place to have fun but be safe?about 4 hours ago from Sidekick

Mission accomplished! I just got a picture with Taylor Lautner!!!! That one is for my fellow fangirls! Xoxo

But Wil.I.Am sent a text to a friend who then posted a photo of it on Twitter which read "What the hell would I be doing sockin Perez Hilton???"

So now it's a case of he-said, he-said. Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, is known for being verbally abusive and in one case was physically assaulted but not for nothing; in that case at a party at the Playboy Mansion, Hilton never reported why he got a black-eye.

Hilton's also known for being an attention hound, so many Twitterers think this is just another ploy by Hilton to get attention that leads to traffic for his blog.

UPDATE:

Wil.I.Am just created a video where he explained what happened. The rapper said that it started at an event after the MuchMusic Awards in Canada where Fergie of "The Peas" came up to the blogger and asked why he didn't like their music. Hilton explained it was just the record, but according to Wil.I.Am was "up in her face" and rude to her.

Later, Wil.I.Am encountered Hilton at another club and requested that he not treat the group in such a rude way as he did on his website. But rather than apologize, Hilton said "I don't respect you" to Wil.I.Am, who said "OK. That's cool." But then Hilton, who's Gay, called Wil.I.Am the "F-Word" but even then the lead lyricist for the Black Eyed Peas held his cool and backed off; but an unknown fan didn't and accordind to Wil.I.Am "got all up into him". So it was the fan that assaulted Hilton, not Wil.I.Am; if Wil.I.Am's story is accurate, Hilton lied about the incident.

My read on this is Hilton may have been drunk and a bit out of control of himself, which explains his behavior and the case of mistaken identity.

Hilton didn't stop tweeting. His last posts as of this writing said..

I won't be talking about this any further. It is in the hands of the authorities.22 minutes ago from web

Thank u all from the bottom of my heart for ur concern. The police are investigating the assault now. I did the right thing by reporting it.22 minutes ago from web

For his part Wil.I.Am said "It's all cool; it just got a little crazy."

No kidding.

Iran Elections: reporter reportedly shot in Tehran; bloggers arrested

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I was skimming the Twitter listings under the hashtag #iranelection and this came up:

charmedguy18 @liviarierref Do you know which reporter, representing what news agency was shot dead minutes ago? #iranelection #helpiran #tehran

It's difficult to get more reliable information on this tweet as the information flow is really too fast to deal with. And while that was happening, there were reports of others being shot as well. Meanwhile there are some writing "not to trust" Twitter, and undoubtedly agents of the Iranian Government. But it's clear that today is not a good day to be a reporter or a blogger in Iran:

RadoxTheGreen RT @dcb23: 23 bloggers/reporters known arrested in #Iran http://tr.im/peVi #Neda #IranElection #Tehran #gr88

CNN iReport a good source too

While everyone raves about Twitter, and rightly so, CNN's iReport website's also a great source of video and photo news and I don't write that because I'm an iReporter. The idea of the program has been and is to give people on the scene who have camera a camcorders a fast way to report the news as they see it and many are doing so in Iran. While the flow of content to the iReport has been slow of late due to the Iranian Government's crack down on all things Internet, there's still material, like this video posted just five hours ago as of this writing:



And this photo shows police actually smashing a car! You'd think they'd not even consider such actions, but this pict proves otherwise.




There are other videos, including many too ugly to post here; you understand the story by now, I think.

iranian protesters after the helicopters released some sort of chemical (ITS NOT TEAR GAS)

From YouTube.com

WSJ: WSJ's Kara Swisher attacks Zennie on Twitter

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YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, StupidVideos, Sclipo and Viddler



So a few days ago I wrote a blog post with a vlog about the Iran Elections or given what's going on over there the "Iran Revolution" and in preparing for it ran across an article who's take on Twitter, the main event in the Iran uprising, I disagreed with. It was written by Kara Swisher, the semi-well-known Wall Street Journal vlogger who covers "All Things D" or "Digital" as her blog site's called.

I wrote:

The amount of information communicated through Twitter has been of staggering proportions. While Kara Swisher may write that it's "inane and half-baked", the fact that Iranians can use their cell phones to tweet information and share photos has done more than the mainstream media in telling the World what's happening.

Well that sent her into a tizzy. She got on Twitter and publicly blasted me, writing things like:

karaswisher@zennie62 "inane and half-baked" were NOT my words and you said they were. I said it was simple which is different. Are you all-baked?

At first, I looked at her words with empathy and offered to make a correction, even though I totally disagree with her take. As a response, she wrote:

karaswisher@zennie62 it is not a favor to me for you to make an alteration. You attributed a quote to me I did not say. You made an error, so fix it.

After that, I reconsidered. After all it's my view, my opinion, and it's not against her at all. I like Kara's work and her -- not met her yet. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with everything she writes. In this case, no the words were not Kara's but she used them as a device to make a point and it's the use of the term I take issue with, as she didn't back away from it in her blog post.

And her title did use the words Inane and Half-baked. Maybe she'll go back and change it (please don't), but that's what was there.

So Kara, it wasn't personal. Ok? Twitter is a complex system to me. The rules of engagement on how to gain followers, following the right people, improving one's reach; that's a complex set of relationships in my view.

Twitter's not simple, and it's indeed revolutionary.

Facebook: Use It to Get a Job, Not To Say You're Fired

There's a great article in the SF Chronicle's website about how to use social networks if you've been fired. My advise? Just plain use them to introduce yourself and show your experience and give expert opinion, and then send private messages about job leads; don't advertise that you've been fired.

YouTube As-One Meetup in San Francisco

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On YouTube.com

A few months ago, a few vloggers (that's video-bloggers), most located in the SF Bay Area, and a few from other parts of the country came to meet in North Beach for the San Francisco YouTube As-One Meetup.

Now you're probably thinking "What's the heck is that." Well, the idea was started in 2007 by Cory Williams, AKA "Mr. Safety" who's current claim to fame is something called "The Mean Kitty Song" and who's knack for making viral videos has earned him celebrity status in the vloggerverse, if there is such a thing.

Ok. There is. The vloggerverse.

Anyway, the idea is for YouYube vloggers, or YouTubers, to get together at one place and get to know each other in a real-time physical environment. Mr. Safety organized the first one of these at Pier 39 in San Francisco and included then then major star of YouTube, Renetto, who flew out from Ohio to be a part of the event.



That gathering, helped along by YouTube's marketing staff, attracted about 200 people, 60 of them YouTubers, and was a ton of fun. There have been "As-One" meetups in New York, London, Australia and other cities I'm not aware of. (But frankly it hasn't really caught on as I thought it would for reasons I'll get into later in this post. ) The San Francisco As-One held in March was a new stab at re-establishing the trend of events like this. The organizers even made a cool video:



Personally, I really loved meeting all the vloggers and the wanna-be vloggers, but something's missing from the concept.

I think that something is a thing to do other than just standing around. The first As-One was really cool because the YouTubers that arrived really just re-started online conversations offine before the cameras, thus putting them online again. For example, Renetto's great at talking about race without bringing his emotions into it. He's a talker and an idea exchanger; that shines through in his videos. But a lot of that conversational activity that used to gain viewers has been replaced by fake sex tape videos, music videos, the Associated Press, and Oprah.

For Renetto, YouTube adding Oprah was the last straw. He helped start a new vlogger community of which I'm a part called Vloggerheads. There, the kind of conversations Renetto enjoyed on YouTube before it got big have been replicated on Vloggerheads. So now, the kind of community energy once there has gone to a degree and that's reflected in the As-One meetups.

What's the answer?

Well, having something to do is one. That could mean having the events at restaurants or bars which helps market those places. The As-One concept's also perfect for events, too (especially street fairs). In other words, when we YouTuber's come to As-One's the producers should have a plan for us. All that camcorder firepower's a waste just pointing them at each other.

So, if you're getting the view that I have a plan of my own, I do.

Something completely different.

Stay tuned.

Facebook was down;; was it an Iranian government plot?

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YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Sclipo and Viddler


I was just heading to Facebook to test a theory on profile settings for a friend when I noticed the page wasn't coming up. I got the famous "the connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" message, so I refreshed the screen and the same thing happened: nothing. Still I had to make sure it wasn't me, so I sent out a tweet on Twitter (see the video). @egratto responded experiencing the same problem. We're both located in California, but I'm in Georgia, so location wasn't the reason.

Facebook was down.

Facebook has about 175 million users so for that five to ten minutes of time communication stopped a lot of people were impacted, which leads to this question: Was it an Iranian government plot? I mean think about it. They want to get Twitter but maybe, just maybe someone over there tried to take down Facebook too?

Considering the historic importance of Twitter and Facebook in communicating what can be called the Iranian Revolution, having either system malfunction would really make the hard-liners happy. But it raises another question: have Twitter and Facebook now become too important to have just one of their kind? I'm guessing there's a redundant system somewhere for both, but is that the case?

We're entering a new era of World communications where what was once considered a hickup could now impact national security and personal freedom.


UPDATE: I checked further and determined that the message regarding the connection happens to some who try to use Facebook from the Mozilla Firefox browser, which I was using at the time, but not frequently. In other words its not an everyday happening. But that problem is generally related to internet connection problems; I had none and was on six different sites at the same time. But I can't yet confirm the use of that browser for anyone else at the time and it's never happened to me before.

Over at my YouTube page a viewer commented:

Facebook and Yahoo was down yesterday for me for an hour and I was told by my IP that they were having technical problems.

Just my luck I had spent a good amount of time writing a message when it failed. ARGH !

Also, I learned that CNET reported a similar problem last year, when Facebook was having what they called "outage issues" experienced by their editors in San Francisco, Boston and New York, so it's not something that's a one-time glitch but that it happened today on this important week in Iranian history is worth conversation and investigation.

DN! Obama Proposes New Regulations of Financial Industry

Iran: A Nation of Bloggers - Vancouver Film School (VFS)

From YouTube: Created by Vancouver Film School students Aaron Chiesa, Toru Kageyama, Hendy Sukarya, and Lisa Temes through the VFS Digital Design program.
See: Iran Bloggers