That Time Paris Hilton Sounded Like a Homophobic Dolt
Oh hi, Paris! Long time no see.
For the youngsters out there, Paris Hilton was the first rich bored socialite to achieve celebrity stardom via sex tape, but maybe you've never heard of her because she's been largely forgotten ever since something shinier and more Kardashian-ier came along.
Now everyone's paying attention anew, because Paris was caught on tape saying mindbogglingly ignorant things about gay men -- a group to whom she owes a good chunk of her "fame."
A cab driver hauling Hilton and a friend around in New York last week captured her remarks on audio and released (read: sold) them to Radar Online.
On the tape, Paris and her pal, an openly-gay male model, can be heard talking about Grindr, a popular social app for gay men. And after her friend briefly described how the app can be used to find casual sex, Hilton loudly said, "Ewww. Gay guys are the horniest people in the world ... they're disgusting. Dude, most of them probably have AIDS."
"I would be so scared if I was a gay guy," she continued. "You'll, like, die of AIDS."
In fairness, those snippets are presented somewhat out of context, but the cabbie who recorded them said, "I couldn't believe what was coming out of Paris' mouth and the way she was talking about gay men."
For her part, Hilton's rep released a statement that said only part of the conversation was recorded, and explained the tape thusly:
"Paris Hilton's comments were to express that it is dangerous for anyone to have unprotected sex that could lead to a life threatening disease ... [Her] friend discussed a website that encourages random sex by gay men with strangers. As she was being shown the website her comments were in reference to those people promoting themselves on the site.
"It was not her intent to make any derogatory comments about all gays. Paris Hilton is a huge supporter of the gay community and would never purposefully make any negative statements about anyone’s sexual orientation.”
We actually buy what she's selling here, mainly because it makes sense that it happened the way she said it did.
But for a chick who's famous thanks to a sex tape, and whose hook-ups with guys of questionable provenance have been frequent, it seems a little judgmental -- and a lot ignorant -- for her to imply that just being a straight woman gives her some sort of magical invincibility shield against AIDS. Because it really doesn't.