Greg in the Afternoon: Newsom for governor! Enough already from Perez Hilton on Miss California thing!

Good afternoon all. Am coming to you from the Newport Beach bureau of Greg In Hollywood where a nice cool breeze on the Balboa Peninsula is making this mini-California heatwave quite bearable.

I drove to the OC this morning to pick up my freshly-painted car. For my birthday (it’s tomorrow), my dad had it painted and it looks good as new!  I’ve owned my Toyota Camry for nearly seven years and was planning to get a new car this year – then I got laid off!

So this paint job makes keeping the car – which still runs like a dream – a few more years not so bad at all. And the rejuvenation (Dad also had the cracked windshield fixed for me) also means no longer having to park blocks away from glitzy events because I had grown too embarrassed to use the valet!

Okay, a few news items to comment on this afternoon. First: Gavin Newsom announces he’s running for governor! I’m not so shallow that I’m going to support him because he’s so darned good looking and sexy. He’s smart and passionate and as far as elected officials go, he is one of the biggest straiught allies the LGBT community has ever had.

The 41-year-old mayor of San Francisco took a page out of President Barack Obama’s campaign playbook and made his announcement via You Tube, Facebook and Twitter.

“There will be legitimate questions nationally—is change an affectation of the personality of Barack Obama and is it exclusive to Washington D.C. and the occupant of the White House? Or is that change, that generational mind-set, going to take shape across the rest of the nation, starting with the most populous state?” he told The Associated Press. “We’ll see.”

Here is the video of his announcement:

WHEN WILL THE MISS CALIFORNIA CRAP END? Okay, here’s the deal: she said she was against gay marriage. It was not a popular answer with a lot of folks but, excuse me, this is America where we have freedom of speech.

Apparently when blogger Perez Hilton asked Miss California Carrie Prejean at last weekend’s Miss USA pageant if she thought same-sex marriage should be legal in all 50 states, he would only accept one answer. So she’s anti-gay marriage and she’s annoying but Perez did not have to immediately make a video blog calling her a dumb bitch or something to that effect. Then instead of apologizing, he goes on MSNBC and says he meant to call her “the C word.”

Miss California says she would have won had she not been asked the gay marriage question which is kinda tacky and on MSNBC Tuesday she said: “I can only say to him that I will be praying for him. I feel sorry for him, I really do. I think he’s angry, I think he’s hurt. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. He asked me specifically what my opinion was on that subject and I gave him an honest answer.”

This whole war of words has only helped her visibility – and Perez Hilton’s! He’s been on CNN and CBS Early Show and who knows what else.

I think a little bit of either of them goes a long way.