Perez Hilton and Demi Moore Start World War Tweet
“A flamboyant celebrity blogger, the queen of all cougars and a “Fat Actress” walk into a bar…”
The setup is joke worthy, only calling people “child pornographers” in the “bar” of cyberspace, aka Twitter, isn’t funny. If you’ve been living under a rock, you have probably missed the conflict going on between Perez Hilton and Demi Moore, with a healthy dose of Kirstie Alley thrown in for good measure. Last week, Hilton posted a picture to his Twitter account of Moore’s 15 year old daughter, Tallulah, in a low cut shirt that showed off a little too much of her Tallulahs. Moore didn’t like the picture of her daughter exposing what her hot mama gave her, and in turn, called Hilton a “child pornographer.” A tweet battle of epic proportions ensued, and it was almost as funny as an “Andy” vs. “Kelly” (Ed Helms vs. Mindy Kaling) danceoff on The Office.
To make matters worse, Kirstie Alley decided that suddenly not “everyone knows her name” anymore, so she threw her hat in the ring, threatening Hilton with bodily harm while also throwing the “child pornographer” term around.
Now I’m no expert on child pornography, but I am an attorney, and the law defines child pornograpy as any image that “depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct and is obscene” or “appears to be, of a minor engaging in … sexual intercourse … and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”. I’m fairly certain that if what Tallulah was doing in the club in which she was photographed was by definition “pornographic,” she would have been removed from the club and Perez Hilton would be the least of her worries.
The more important legal definition at hand, though, is defamation, and I think Perez Hilton has a far better case against Moore for her actions. Defamation is defined as “the issuance of a false statement about another person, which causes that person to suffer harm.” I think Hilton can fairly easily prove that he is NOT in fact a child pornographer, and may very well be able to prove that having being labelled as such has hurt his livelihood by deflecting readers from his site and causing him public embarrassment.
Legal issues aside, I think this story boils down to Demi Moore getting caught slacking on her “You Are NOT Going Out of the House Dressed Like That” duties, and looked to lash out at anyone she could, rather than being accountable for the fact that perhaps her teenage daughter was dressed a little to provocatively. As a mother, I can relate to not wanting to take the blame, but I think that Moore’s emotionally charged response is not only unfair to Hilton, but overlooks a good opportunity to use this as a teaching moment for each of her daughters and much of young Hollywood in general.
As for Kirstie Alley, I saw her BIG bikini reveal on Oprah, and girlfriend has no business getting involved in arguments about obsecene, mass media distributed images that lack value.
