Perez, all too Perez

Perez Hilton gets assaulted and the world laughs. Justice you might say. Maybe. The most interesting thing about the incident is Perez's video statement, which you can see here. Other than the fact that Perez is just so stupidly over the top, "I thought my eye was going to fall out!" what's striking about it is how he keeps referring to himself as "a human being". His argument is pretty much, "I am a human being and as such do not deserve an act of violence to happen to me." This "I am a human being," argument is quite unusual in this context. Firstly and, and most obviously, is he suggesting that if he was not human (a dog say, or a seal) there is a chance he would have deserved it? Secondly, when the phrase is generally used it is to denote that one has failed, that one isn't perfect - "what could I do? I'm only human after all." Shouldn't this have been the guy who punched him's line? "I know I shouldn't have hit him, but come on, he was winding me up, and I'm only human after all..."
And the way he makes a big point that it's never happened to him before. He's lucky then isn't he? Given the hateful nature of his site. At least his utter spitefulness comes across in the video statement pretty well.
His argument that he should be able to say what he likes without being hit, may well be accurate, but it veers very close to saying that he should be able to say what he likes without consequence, which he probably thinks anyway.
His argument that he doesn't need the publicity is also a little spurious. He may well have a huge amount of visitors to his website, but he, apparently, wants to start a new, more upmarket one; plus publicity needs constant feeding, he does have to keep himself as much as possible in the spotlight.
An even stupider response than Perez's own is this, which places Perez Hilton in the same camp with victims of domestic abuse:

This whole discussion is just a 21st century version of what women and assault victims have been hearing for years. The logic that it falls on the victim to prevent irrational actions of the assailant is really outdated and really, really dangerous. Many victims of violence—and especially domestic violence—will tell you that the slaps, punches, and shoves perpetrated upon them didn't happen when they were just sitting their minding their own business. It came during some sort of disagreement. Maybe she snapped at him out of frustration. Maybe she hit on a particularly sore subject. These are all things that happen during the course of an argument—we're never at our best when tempers are inflamed. But that doesn't make it right, ever, to take the fight from cutting remarks to physical violence.

Yeah. Comparing what basically amounts to a bit of a drunken scuffle outside a nightclub at 3 in the morning to the continued beatings of domestic violence (what about psychological abuse? Would admitting that words can be a form of painful abuse muddy her argument) seems such a ridiculous leap that I'm surprised anyone would make it (I almost said shocked but stopped myself before falling into Perezesque hubris). Yeah, Perez got hit, he's a victim in that sense, but the damage (assuming his eye hasn't fallen out yet) was minimal and to watch Perez go on (and to see others join him) like he's had someone try to shoot him is an appalling sight. Everyone's a victim.
I attempted to look through his site to catch him in an act of hypocrisy, laughing at someone else getting smacked, but if you do a google search of it you basically just get page after page of comments from people saying they would like to slap him (and he wasn't surprised that it's taken this long for someone to do it?). So I gave up, but I did find this, where he's at least flippant about someone being hit: "Don't fuck with the Osbournes!" Perhaps he shouldn't have fucked with the Black Eyed Peas.

On second thoughts, perhaps the funniest bit of the video is where Perez goes "They followed me back to my hotel!!" and tells us how scared he was, before saying, "they were staying in the same hotel," and then screams, "but they followed me back!" Genius.