Boom Boom Pow: will.i.am & Perez Hilton’s Publicity Stunt?

It's one thing to pick a fight with the Fellowship of the Sun's poster girl, but with Mark Ronson? Perhaps noted anti-journalist Perez Hilton's got something of a personality defect. Which makes all the more incredulous cries of wolf against Black Eyed Peas frontman/friend of Girls Aloud will.i.am. Yawn!

We could pretend to be shocked and disturbed and morally repulsed. Apparently after the MuchMusic Video Music Awards in Toronto where he presented an award (O, Canada!), Hilton claims that will.i.am and his security troop slapped him around a little bit and left him for dead. Of course, will.i.am denied it because if he said, “Yes, Perez, I did it,” we would all go about the rest of our days with maybe a sliver of indignation, chalking this up to violent karma for all those penises and nose candy trails he MS Paint-ed onto celebrities over the years.

As his own vendetta, Hilton’s asked his followers to call the cops on will.i.am. Because that’s a reasonable demand to make out of legions of tweens still mourning the eventual end of Hannah Montana with no concept of “obstruction of justice.”

It’s a far far stretch, but consider for the briefest of moments that this is some sort of well-calculated publicity hoax, because such is the way we live now. The anti-journalist is currently courting advertisers—a task that seems contingent on yellow journalism. Quite possibly the type and volume that this scuffle seems to have generated. “Perez Hilton assaulted” is currently one of the buzziest terms on Google Trends. Meanwhile, Black Eyed Peas have an album and a single that, while enjoying prolific commercial success, could always use a sales spike. Sure, maybe some dudes ganged up against another dude—but if the victim didn’t sensationalize his slaughtering, we’d be more inclined to believe him.

But what makes such a stretch almost impossible is the police apprehension of the B.E.P.’s general manager. Hilton had singled him out among the few who laid down punches and the mounties wouldn’t let the band out of the country to continue their tour unless they apprehended their perp. Here’s hoping that as hell freezes over, Hilton has sense to chip off some ice, fashion a pack out of to nurse his bruised eye while popping some painkillers and then quietly puts this matter to bed.