Is Perez Hilton Going Down?

Readers Call for a Boycott of Perez Hilton

Many of Perez Hilton's readers began to turn against him Monday, calling for a boycott of his celebrity gossip site perezhilton.com. It all started when Perez Hilton posted a picture of Alexa Ray Joel, the musician daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. Alongside the picture was the caption "How Do We Say This Delicately?" and the photo was filed under "icky icky poo." Underneath the photo, Perez wrote that "it must suck when your mom's a supermodel, talk about high expectations," and "she's not that bad, actually, she's just no supermodel."

When Alexa Ray Joel saw the blog post, she railed back with a heartfelt blog entry of her own on her myspace page. In it, she called Perez Hilton "cruel" and "bullying," and questioned the integrity of his entire business - that of making money off of calling people terrible names and publicly humiliating them.

In her blog post, Alexa Ray also questioned how six million readers a day can patronize a site the sole purpose of which is to make money off of hurting others. She spoke eloquently about the dangers of ruining people's self esteem and encouraging eating disorders in young girls.

Even though she has been in the media spotlight for some time, both due to her famous parents and her own music career, this blog posting is likely the first introduction to Alexa Ray that many people have had. Judging from the responses in the comment section of Perez's post, she has gained herself many new fans through this impassioned writing.

After Alexa Ray posted the response on her blog Monday, Perez Hilton must have either been somewhat convinced by her arguments or been feeling guilty. He posted Alexa Ray's blog entry on his own site, for all of his readers to see. And what's more is that he posted it free of commentary, as if to concede that she is right in what she has said.

While most of Perez's blog entries receive one to two hundred or so comments from readers, the re-posting of Alexa Ray's blog entry had received a startling 976 posts by 11 p.m. Monday evening.