Perez Hilton has recorded an emotional video and has gone on The Ellen Degeneres show to swear that the recent spate of gay teen suicides has so affected him that he’s no longer going to bully celebrities on his blog. Hilton has been instrumental in outing several gay celebrities against their wishes and regularly mocks celebrities in a juvenile fashion. It’s hard to imagine how he’s going to proceed and continue to write if he’s trying to be “nice” all the time, or as he explains it “sassy”. When pressed about this by Out magazine, he said that he would still publish what is possibly his most egregious privacy violation, the private sex photos of gay Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. There’s no way this guy has suddenly grown a conscience and gotten a clue. That was the worse thing he’s done and he says he wouldn’t change it. Gawker has a very good overview of Perez’s promises, and I guess we’ll soon see if they’re empty or not:

Blogger and face scribbler Perez Hilton is taking to Ellen DeGeneres, YouTube, and Out magazine today to say that he’s not going to bully celebrities on his website from now on. Is he serious or is this a PR stunt?

Perez Hilton (AKA Mario Lavandeira) claims that he will no longer bully famous people on his eponymous website, which became popular thanks to Perez drawing semen and cocaine on stars’ faces, calling them names, and generally defaming anyone famous that he didn’t care for. From the various statements he’s made so far, here are the changes we can expect:

No more mean names for celebrities (like calling Jennifer Aniston “Maniston” or Sienna Miller “Sluttienna”)

No more making fun of children

No more “cheap jokes”

No more outing gay celebrities

No more drawing inappropriate substances or phrases on people’s pictures

The impetus for the decision, he says, is the media attention that’s been given to gay teen suicides following incidents of bullying. Perez has been speaking out against the bullies who caused these tragedies, although critics have pointed out that he is just as much of a bully as the people he decries. (That just shows how popular a bully can be.)

I’m not that cynical to suggest that Perez is manufacturing his emotions to generate some publicity. But it certainly won’t hurt his image. If he makes changes to his website, he’ll likely engender a lot of good will from the gay community and from media outlets that have dismissed him as nothing but a name-caller with rudimentary Photoshop skills. And this is the perfect time to make the switch, when he can get the most attention (and get a talk show appearance) out of his actions.

But what happens after this initial wave of attention has passed? Perez says he doesn’t care if his traffic goes down, but will anyone want to read his website when he’s not exercising his patented brand of school yard “journalism?” Will he start to freak out and go back to his old ways when his traffic (and his ad revenues) start to dip?

Perez tells Out that he will no longer out gay public figures who are in the closet, like he did to Lance Bass once upon a time, but that he also would have still run pictures of gay writer Dustin Lance Black having unprotected sex with another man. How is outing off the table but posting private pictures still within the boundaries? It’s OK to post those pictures because he’s already out? Just what are the rules, Perez?

He also says that from now on he’s not going to be “mean,” but he’s still going to be “sassy” and “have opinions.” We guess the only difference between “mean” and “sassy” is how an opinion has been expressed, but it is sort of an invisible and subjective divide.

[From Gawker]

I don’t think he gets it. It’s like he realizes he has to change for his image, but can’t even form the words to explain himself and has to resort to platitudes like “I have to be the change” and “I want to be part of the solution not part of the problem.” At least he realizes that there’s a problem, but he still says he doesn’t see himself as a bully and that there are things he wouldn’t change. It’s more like he wants people to stop ragging on him, and is trying to establish that he’s not a creep that would drive someone to suicide. However I distinctly remember him saying on The View in early 2008 late 2007 that if Britney killed herself it wouldn’t be his fault. Barbara Walters asked him iif he ever feels bad for ragging on celebrities, and he said “If Britney committed suicide tomorrow and died, she would be the only one to blame I think.” Perez wants to seem like a decent guy, but we already know how he is, he’s shown us for years, and it’s going to take a lot more than talk to redefine himself.