TORONTO – Perez Hilton isn’t finding many shoulders to cry on in Hollywood.
A day after the celebrity blogger issued a teary video accusing the tour manager for the Black Eyed Peas of punching him in the eye after a verbal dust-up with group frontman will.i.am, many celebs had less-than-sympathetic reactions.
“I gotta be honest with you, he’s gonna get a lot of flowers – I’m not talking about Perez, I mean the manager,” said former “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson during an appearance on Toronto radio station CKIS-FM.
“I do not think violence is the answer, but what did you expect?
“You cannot talk that much crap about people without being able to take something.”
Black Eyed Peas tour manager Polo Molina faces an assault charge and is due in a Toronto court in August.
Will.i.am has said that a fan was the one who got close to Hilton during the alleged incident, which occurred after Sunday’s MuchMusic Video Awards.
Celebrities who have been targeted by Hilton weren’t exactly rising to his defence on Tuesday.
The women of “The View” chatted about the situation on their “Hot Topics” segment Tuesday, with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck – whom Hilton has referred to as “Elisabitch” – noting that she considered hitting the blogger when he was a guest on the show.
“It was tempting when he was here,” she said.
Added co-host Whoopi Goldberg: “When you get clocked by the pen, it’s never fun, and some people, you don’t know how they’re going to respond to you, and you might just want to take that into consideration.”
Hilton – whose real name is Mario Lavandeira – has said that tensions began early Monday when he had words with Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie, who was upset about some of the things he’d written about her on his website.
Then, he said, at an MMVA after-party, will.i.am approached him “like a heat-seeking missile” and asked him not to write about the Black Eyed Peas again.
Hilton, who is openly gay, has said he then called will.i.am a “faggot.”
He said he left the club, but was met outside by will.i.am and his entourage and alleges he was subsequently punched in the eye.
The incident has raised the ire of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which said Hilton’s use of an anti-gay slur feeds a climate of “hatred and intolerance” toward the gay community.
In an email to The Canadian Press, Hilton – who says he’s a former GLAAD employee – said he was upset by the organization’s reaction.
“I am saddened GLAAD chose to victimize me further by criticizing me for how I non-violently dealt with a very scary situation that, unfortunately, turned violent,” Hilton wrote Tuesday.
But some celebrities didn’t seem overly fazed by the incident.
“When you get rich saying hateful things sometimes you ask for it,” actor Josh Duhamel, Fergie’s husband, told “Entertainment Tonight.”
Hilton can be notoriously nasty in his popular blog.
He routinely calls Fergie “fugly,” and likes to deface celeb pictures by doodling distasteful images over their faces. He has also made a point of trying to “out” celebrities he believes are in the closet.
Of course, the well-connected Hilton does have some friends in Hollywood.
Singer John Mayer went so far as to offer Hilton some cryptic advice via Twitter.
“From the heart, what you experienced these last 24 hrs is a profound lack of control,” Mayer wrote. “You can’t blog the world, my friend. It’s like ‘The Matrix.’ You live in the Perez Matrix. You wrote the program, you can fly. Then you leave the Matrix, and oh, what the hell, you’re not gonna get it.”
