Hilton (né Mario Lavandeira) is being sued for breaching a legal settlement that prevented him from mentioning Jonathan Lewandowski (a/k/a Jonathan Jaxson), the young blogger from whom Hilton allegedly solicited sex tapes in exchange for promoting Lewandowski's blog. When Lewandowski's name cropped up in a post on February 3, he claimed Hilton had violated the agreement. But Hilton was shocked — shocked! — that someone assumed he wrote PerezHilton.com. You see, it was really his sister, Barbara, who wrote the item.

A tipster forwarded us the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court and you can find in full here.

His lawyer wrote in a letter to Lewandowski's counsel that Hilton's sister wrote the post:

Hilton has hinted at his sister's involvement; he told Time that he worked on the site with his "sister, who's my assistant and helps a little bit." But this is the first time he's confirmed that he has a full-on ghost writer.

Guanabee, meanwhile, has reported that Hilton has had other ghostwriters going back to 2006.

Which wouldn't be a scandal, if Hilton were to only acknowledge the help he gets. Yet he continues to hide the making of his gossip sausage, as though his readers are deeply invested in his oh-so-elegant image as an articulate man of letters and glamorous Hollywood gentleman. Hilarious.

[Lavandeira vs. Lewandowski — court filing]

Jaxson has been a publicist for the likes of that one girl from The Cheetah Club for Girls or whatever, plus he attempted a gossip site called J.J.'s Dirt that, well, never went anywhere. He and his mother used to be professional talk-show guests (discussing Jaxson's deadbeat dad), which prompted Jaxson's fame-hunger and pushed him toward the gossip industry. Mostly he's popped up on Jacksonville, FL local news broadcasts and rehashed celebrity news that everyone already knew as if he'd just scooped it. Perhaps sensing the tidal change away from the scuzzy pink celebrity trashing of yesteryear, Jaxson has shifted his efforts toward a wiser and self-reflecting view of show business.

Because the memoir has worked so well for esteemed figures like Tori Spelling and Chelsea Handler, Jaxson is sending out a proposal for a book sadly titled Don't You Know Who I Am Yet???, a look back at his rollercoaster life and career. In the very-rough drafts of chapters he sent to us, Jaxson issues ruminative ruminations on his troubled childhood:

It was ... my obsession with the happiest hours of my life, the Rosie O'Donnell Show that kept me desiring fame, as I thought it would be my escape to always be financially secure and finally make a life of my own with friends that could last a lifetime. This is when I realized how it may be possible for me to finally meet my father on a talk show while aquiring that 15 minutes of fame I had always desired.

Then he moves on to hissy, non-scandal celebrity outings and partying stories:

Bungalow 8 was the place I met Ms. Mary-Kate Olsen. I was extremely disappointed in finding out that the Mary-Kate I was meeting was cocained up and completely wasted on booze. It was sad really. Really sad. It was during NYC Fashion Week that I was there with celebrities, Kim Kardashian, Chudney Ross, Evan Ross and Cuba Gooding JR.

Finally he urges the reader that he is d-u-n done with all that drama. Because he's been in it, man. He's been in the shit. But now he's seen the light.

Chapter 10: The 16th Minute
(Life beyond fame; making a difference; maturity)
The sucidial moments, the emptiness, the feeling of being lost, development of sever anxiety and the multiple turn of events that made an impact on my life to write this book and begin a new chapter and focus on my life.

Unfortunately for Jaxson, even on the off chance that some tiny publisher does mimeograph a few copies of this thing and distribute it at rest homes, it'd still be a few years too late. That gum bubble has burst, leaving everyone, but some more than others, looking pretty sticky.

But who can be expected to do a good job as a one-man show in the swiftly professionalizing business of pretending to be an amateur? Even the gossips aren't doing the gossiping themselves. Even Perez Hilton is too busy hobnobbing with the people he ostensibly writes about to personally deface their photos anymore. It's understandable. Being yourself online is a full-time job. Ideally, for someone else.

The notion that blogs and Twitter will replace gossip has been around for a while. What's left for the tabloids if the stars reveal everything themselves? The gossip rags ought to fade away as celebrities interact with fans directly, and tell their stories their own way. Or so goes the webheads' theory.

But as Hollywood actors and musicians adopt Twitter en masse, the theory's getting a real-time test — and proving wanting. It turns out that media gatekeepers were really saving celebrities from themselves. As anyone who's written a magazine profile knows, what editors and readers want is an appealing, well-told story — not a numbing stream of trivia. And that means discarding far more material than one can ever use.

Facebook, Twitter blogs, and other media of the moment are a repository for that cutting-room floor — the ephemeral discards of mostly mundane lives. One man's trash is sometimes another man's treasure. But more often, it's just trash.

"It's inherently silly and it's inherently dumb," John Mayer, the musician and former Jennifer Aniston paramour told E! last week. Wise of Mayer to figure this out, though a bit late, since his Twitter addiction reportedly spurred his most recent breakup with Aniston. Mayer's smart enough to realize that Twitter is making him look like a fool to loved ones and strangers alike — but not smart enough to stop using it.

Courtney Love, meanwhile, is getting sued by a designer, Dawn Simorangkir, whose wares she once fancied, over ranting comments the professional Kurt Cobain widow left on MySpace and Twitter. Love has never been known for her self-control: Witness her unprovoked '90s-era rant about cheese, unleashed on an unsuspecting zine editor. But media which enable her to talk unfiltered 24/7 give us all too much insight into an obviously unbalanced mind.

Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton likewise have done themselves no favors in their blogging habits. Far from correcting their louche reputations, their overshares have cemented it.

Then there's the notion that fans would just sit back and receive all this information without comment. Jamie Spears, Britney's dad, is suing BreatheHeavy.com, a Britney Spears fan site, for allegedly invading his daughter's privacy. "I will destroy your ass!" Jamie Spears reportedly told BreatheHeavy webmaster Jordan Miller. (In fact, Jamie Spears may be mad about BreatheHeavy's aggressive questioning of the conservatorship arrangement under which he controls his daughter's finances.)

What's the solution? These people all need professional help. But since they're unlikely to spend the time they need on the psychiatrist's couch, they'll doubtless end up hiring assistants adept in social media. Ghostwritten Twitters are the hot new Hollywood must-have.

Every tweet will be media-coached. Every blog will be relentlessly edited — and then have typos inserted for authenticity. (Is that why someone pretending to be Rachael Ray consistently misspelled the cooking-show personality's name on a Yahoo blog?) The kids who are pretending to be celebrities on Twitter today will no doubt get paid to do it in the future.

Hilariously incompetent flack Jonathan Jaxson, who recently settled his legal spat with client Kim Zolciak of real Housewives of Atlanta, seems to be a pioneer here — in the sense that all pioneers get arrows in their back.

(Photo of Mayer by Getty Images; Spears by X17 Online)

The tip came from a Jason Felts at Edge Productions. Edge is the PR firm of Jonathan Jaxson, the wacky publicist whose stunt with leaked nudie pics got a client, Disney star Adrienne Bailon, booted from Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. In a now-deleted post archived on The Insider, Jaxson crowed about signing Zolciak as a client.

It figures that anyone stupid enough to hire Jaxson as a flack would also be too stupid to operate her own blog. Kim Zolciak Online is hosted on Blogger, Google's free, Web-based blogging service. Either that, or she just really doesn't like blogs — even her own. From an interview with Paper last fall:

How are the blogs treating you these days?
I try to stay away from them. Initially they were great, and they just got worse and worse. I don't think people can see who you are from seven episodes that are one hour each.

Always at the ready to swat away a junket reporter when the questioning strays off movie-pimping topic, or phone in a craftily worded, 4 a.m. denial ("Not only was my client not acquainted with the dead hooker in question, he wasn't even in Las Vegas this weekend. He was shooting his upcoming guest appearance on Entourage!"), it's time Hollywood's hard-working plate-spinners get the recognition they deserve.

Without further ado, then, we proudly present The 2008 Defamer Flack Honors. Winners, please come forward to collect your trophy (a clipboard-wielding thirtysomething woman hurling herself upon a grenade, cast in the finest bronze), and say a few carefully chosen words of appreciation.

Most Loyal
Elliot Mintz
Taking on Paris Hilton as a client is not a task for the fainthearted; but doing it with the gusto and blind obedience demonstrated time and again by Elliot Mintz elevates him from the rank-and-flacky-file to the level of some kind of publicist archangel. Not only did Mintz return to his post after his client's failed attempt at tossing him under a bus during her suspended license trial, he slathered himself, for reasons still not completely understood, in orange face paint for her birthday festivities. We're choking back tears right now.

Best Liar
Liz Rosenberg
Madonna's rep Liz Rosenberg had the publicity equivalent of SoCal wildfires to contend with this year, as if dropped by parachute with nothing but a watering can and her own slippery wits to fend off the singer's raging divorce inferno. It was enough to make a flack long for the relative innocuousness of new-new-face scrutiny, tales of corset-crappings, and other assorted moustache rides.

Still, even the most gifted of professional liars are bound by human constraints. As we tried in vain to place all the appropriate pushpins in our increasingly convoluted MadgeRod CynthRavitz Clusterfuck case map, Liz & Co. themselves could barely keep track of which fibs were meant for us, and which were never meant to leave the walls of Spin Control HQ.

The Worst Publicist in the World
Jonathan Jaxson
True, we crowned Jonathan Jaxson The Worst Publicist in the World back in November, with two months and one Jeremy Piven handroll-related P.R. nightmare to go before 2008 closed out. Didn't matter. The second we met Cheetah Girl Adrienne Bailon's spokesperson, and listened to him tell an Atlanta CBS affiliate's morning show audience of his plan to fake a nude photo scandal that (surprise!) backfired, eventually leading to his client and her fellow Cheetahettes being disinvited from the Macy's parade, we knew we had met a bold new breed of publicist, far deadlier than any that came before. This is the P-2000: Incompetent Robot P.R. Killing Machine. Fight the future.

Macy's deflected blame to the group itself, with a rep telling Fox that the Girls were confirmed to appear Nov. 27, "but due to scheduling issues they could not make it." No one's sure what those scheduling issues are, though, considering that Bailon and Co. have the day off during their tour's East Coast swing — and Jaxson isn't returning requests for comment.

But that's OK! Tune in to Jaxson's next appearance on his local CBS affiliate in Atlanta, where he'll spend his weekly commentary segment once again spinning how this scenario helps his young star, as though losing an audience of roughly 54 million viewers ultimately has her career right where she wants it. Keep up the good work, Jax!

• Not Family Friendly? [Fox News]

There was that fake New York Times thing that declared the Iraq War over and the dawn of a new lefty utopia. I guess that jig was going to be up pretty darn soon (though, it wouldn't have been if the group had distributed in other cities, I don't think), but even so some crappy old blog had to go and ruin it. The reporting was there to be done, because the information was just too damned accessible.

And what about Martin Eisenstadt, that silly fake Republican guy who despite our warnings a couple of weeks ago, was treated as a real McCain adviser by MSNBC laughing stock David Shuster. So, OK, ha ha... But then the New York Times ran a whole expose like a coupla days later. It could have kept going! Why won't anyone allow fun anymore?

A couple other recent, easily-debunked snoozers have been that Disney Channel Cheetah Girl nude pic foofaraw that involved a laptop computer falsely reported stolen (or something) and the worst blogger/publicist/friend in the world, Jonathan Jaxson. I don't even know where to start not caring about that, other than to marvel at Jaxson's inanity. Plus why on earth did the Cheetah Girl and her publicist tacitly admit to semi-staging the whole thing?? They had gotten away with it (sort of)! A victimless crime! And then, I dunno, there was some lame thing about Jay McCarroll from Project Runway and a dress.

Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of ulceric cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get big 'n famous. (And some people are just dumb.)

So how does one actually orchestrate a great scheme that will enthrall and mystify, dupe and hoodwink? Well, in some ways the more outrageous the better. The more fearless the better. And, if it's a long con, the more detailed the better. As much as the New York Times trick/protest statement was a nice and funny idea, it didn't really work for long enough because they didn't do it all the way. The paper stock was way off, there weren't enough pages, etc. You really have to work for these things to stick and hold national attention. You have to go whole hog.

Or, you know, whole monster.

Here are some theories.

1. Page Six still bears a grudge; before there was perezhilton.com, the celebrity gossip maven published as pagesixsixsix.com. The Post had to threaten a lawsuit to stop Perez's joke on their name. The Post's own website, which launched late last year, is still lagging by comparison with the blog upstart; maybe the gentlemen's rule that protects print competitors doesn't apply in the brutally competitive world of web gossip.

2. When the Post's Paula Froelich is off duty, as she is this week, head honcho Richard Johnson tends to revert to old-fashioned baiting of women and gays. He's the one, after all, that made cheap digs at Vanessa Grigoriadis' supposed moustache when the New York writer dared describe Page Six as "emasculated".

3. The Post is merely pushing its own story forward. Last month, the Post's psychic predicted this turn of events for Perez: "His love life continues to suffer (no soulmate yet) but he will be in a love triangle - i.e. an affair with a very famous celebrity, making scandalous news himself."

But the most likely and least interesting theory? A crank sent in lurid chat transcript in which the world's most successful gossip blogger suffered the kind of embarrassment he's inflicted on celebrities. And that was, rule or no rule, irresistible.