Choire Sicha: That can be overcome. Avatars can expire.

Tom Scocca: Wow, that is great. Now Sandra Franklin is a name in boldface. But Perez still put the strikethrough on "This is so tragic!"

Choire Sicha: In this respect he is perhaps more journalistically advanced than the New York Times, which apparently simply removes untrue stories.

Tom Scocca: But by keeping it up, with Sandra Franklin now as the name involved, Perez makes the untrue story a true story. There is an event that did happen, which eventually made its way into the post. The first AND second drafts of history, right there for you.

Choire Sicha: The Internet wins again!

Tom Scocca: I'm hung up on the tragedy thing. It's not a tragedy if it didn't happen to a famous person, but if the person is now being written about on the Perez Hilton site, doesn't that person become an entity in the gossip-sphere and therefore famous? Perez Heisenberg!

Choire Sicha: I believe that is correct actually. She has been enfamed. For instance there may be tabloid follow-up! (This is not so dissimilar from how Lady Gaga came to pass.)

Tom Scocca: Maybe the avatars can die over and over again.

Choire Sicha: Well. Do you really think we are rid of Paris Hilton? Of course not.

Tom Scocca: That is the other assignment we have, naturally, for a publication too squeamish to plaster Perez's mug on its front cover (though one could of course rationalize up a design for a cover about the fact of Perez surpassing Paris in which Paris was in the foreground–one could do it with a wee, darkened, troll-like Perez lurking in the shadow cast behind a big cardboard cutout of Paris, with eye-friendly breasts and everything–or, hey: Perez's face all but hidden in the iris of that eye of hers, the one she shelters from the camera ).

Tom Scocca: (Perez staring out of Paris, if you look too closely.) But the other assignment: yes, what is Paris Hilton doing? Is her absence part of a long-term plan to establish herself as a new and better brand? Or to establish herself as a human being? The where-are-they-now story has not really adapted to the pace of the contemporary news cycle.

Choire Sicha: That's right.

Tom Scocca: Where is Joe the Plumber now? Where is that Cambridge cop now? Where is Michael Bay now?

Choire Sicha: Editorially, purely, what Paris Hilton is doing now–spreading her brand throughout non-American parts–is actually far more interesting than paying attention to her when she is being shoved down American throats.

Tom Scocca: Is that what she's doing? Taking a Continental tour?

Choire Sicha: She is apparently back now in Los Angeles, taking voice lessons, after an extended trip to points foreign. Milan! Frankfurt! Venice!

Tom Scocca: Is that like how Gwyneth Paltrow had a completely different persona in that British magazine profile you showed me?

Choire Sicha: Everyone's different in Europe. Ask Madonna! Oh also Paris went to the U.A.E.

Tom Scocca: Poor Madonna got it backwards, though, and chose a less vivid persona abroad. And I say this as someone who has found Madonna's U.S. persona as boring as boring can be for two and a half decades now.

Choire Sicha: And then there is this Perez Hilton takedown in... Newsbusters: "The mainstream media aided Hilton's rise to the top of culture corrupters. Since 2006, he has been the focus of 49 television news reports"

Tom Scocca: Forty-nine! In more than three years. This piece is a thrilling bit of contortionism.

Choire Sicha: It's most impressive in that it is laying out a bunch of "facts" that are actually "interpretations" and critiques.

Tom Scocca: He is a misogynist because he allows Sarah Palin to be attacked by . . . Margaret Cho.

Choire Sicha: Well that's just outright distortive, yes.

Tom Scocca: That is not to say that he is not a misogynist! Nor to say that a misogynist man (or woman!) cannot use a woman's attack on another woman–even an attack from a feminist perspective–to indulge in misogyny.

Choire Sicha: Well this is also dishonest from the first sentence. "Perez Hilton has proved that demonstrable talent or skill is no longer a prerequisite for fame." In fact, didn't he do the opposite by taking the fame mantle from Paris Hilton? His talent was creating an editorial product that succeeded. Her talent was... ?

Tom Scocca: It seems very important to this person to establish a victim-class of right-wing women, attacked for their gender by this distasteful and bullying person.

Choire Sicha: But also lumping in those poor closeted gays, who are also victims! That's unusual.

Tom Scocca: Well, OK, but let's back off from the question of what it says about a person that the person has produced an editorial product that succeeds (Tucker Max? Michelle Malkin? Andrew Sullivan).

Choire Sicha: I will happily back off!

Tom Scocca: What is this underlying premise, that until horrible Perez Hilton came along, it was still possible to believe that one needed a talent or skill to become famous? Perez Hilton isn't–I don't think?–drawing semen dribbles on pictures of Stephen Hawking.

Choire Sicha: Not yet!

Tom Scocca: Carrie Prejean is famous because of what talent or skill? And don't say tits, because she bought those, didn't she?

Choire Sicha: I believe she is famous only because of Perez.

Tom Scocca: Yes. They had a little culture-skirmish, and everyone won, except gay people, only maybe also gay people too, who knows? Sad face versus angry face, which makes angry face sad, which shows how bad the enemy is, so let's fight this thing, the intolerance. How can you tolerate what this person is doing to us?

Tom Scocca: And Elisabeth Hasselbeck?

Tom Scocca: Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a poor dumb animal who is put onto a fame-pedestal strictly for the sake of having a dumb animal say dumb things in public, on television, to upset or rally other dumb animals. PETA should storm the set and rescue her and let her paddle out to sea with a friendly lobster.

Choire Sicha: But that animal is famous.

Tom Scocca: Because it whimpers in a crowd-affecting way when it trembles helplessly in the light of fame. They could have got a baby llama, if they could have taught a baby llama the right political talking points.

Tom Scocca: Speaking of confused whimpering, this piece! She's trying to posture as feminist from the right culture-flank, and so she has no idea what sort of authority she should be appealing to.

Tom Scocca: As far as Hilton's rage at Prejean went, CNN's Kurtz echoed exactly what Ficera said three years ago about where Hilton should direct his efforts if he was truly interested in change.

Tom Scocca: Kurtz told him, "Your anger and your emotions should be directed toward the politicians and the judges who make these laws, not necessarily at one beauty pageant contestant, who happens to have an individual view that you don't agree with."

Tom Scocca: Howie Kurtz! I am not confident in this writer's ability to accurately render the thoughts and arguments of others, but if that is an accurate rendering of Kurtz's position–why, yes, Perez Hilton should be angry at the California legislature and judges for passing Proposition 8... Oh, wait.

Choire Sicha: Well, yes, it is sort of down a remarkable rabbithole isn't it

Tom Scocca: The enemy of my enemy is just another asshole.

Choire Sicha: I think that actually articulates Perez's working theory as well.

Tom Scocca: And though we wish Perez Hilton really stood for everything that's wrong with America, clearly he only stands for some of it, because look at these other people.

Previously: Hands Off That Rumpus, Dave Eggers