LeAnn Rimes wonders how celeb bloggers can sleep at night

It makes me sick when gossip bloggers post photos of LeAnn Rimes and damn her to celebrity hell for being thin.

Here's a hardworking, exquisite singer who had to sue her dad, manager and label over child-labor contracts and money management dating back to when she was 13.

Bloggers should be happy Rimes didn't turn out to be a suicidal armed robber, as other child stars have become.

Instead, Rimes sings, works with homeless children and fights for gay rights.

I've repeatedly interviewed her in person for a decade, and I've never seen a star interact with fans backstage nicer and more generously than she does.

When she's on her tour bus, she responds to fans constantly. One day last week, from the bus, she wrote 117 posts on Twitter. Most of them were responses to fans.

Oh, but she's thin! The horror! And if she puts on 10 pounds, then she'd be fat! Why oh why can't LeAnn Rimes be the perfect weight? The fate of democracy hangs in the balance!

So I was interviewing Rimes the other day, since she's singing Saturday at Santa Fe Station -- benefiting StandUpForKids.org.

And I pretty much told her what I wrote above. She says she's not going to let tabloids and bloggers define her, not after "everything I've gone through."

"I mean, my God, I've gone through lawsuits with my father," she adds. "Everything is water under the bridge. It's time to move on. I'm in a really good place in my life. I don't like to drag it up and talk about it very much.

"But when you start so young, people want to see you as America's sweetheart. They forget you're human."

She thinks any cruel blogger who has that much time on his hands to "spew hate is a bully."

"They obviously have issues of their own," she says. "They have to take it out on someone else that they do not know.

"As you've said, you've met me and I'm not anything but nice. ... I'm not faking it. That's who I am. I have great respect for fans and people in general. My mom raised me that way."

She's not saying she's faultless. (She did, after all, marry Eddie Cibrian after they had an affair while both were married.)

"Hell, I'm human. I make mistakes. I get over them. I move on. I learn from them and don't make them again."

But it's as clear to her as it is to me that celebrities are treated in blogs and tabloids like punching bags when they don't deserve it. (I'm all for treating celebrities like punching bags when they behave like jerks to other people.)

"Unfortunately, we are in a world where people can sit behind a computer screen and there are no repercussions for what they say," Rimes says.

She insinuates some bloggers need to man up.

"God knows most people would never say anything that they say on a blog to my face."

She has perspective. She stresses it's not the whole media that attacks her, just the meanest at certain blogs and tabloids.

She wishes those writers would actively work on their own happiness and find more hope in humanity.

"People don't want to believe the good in people, sometimes. It makes them feel better about themselves to believe that someone is worse than they are -- whether they're mean-spirited or mean-hearted.

"I wonder how a lot of people in tabloids and things like that sleep at night. ... It's all such lies."

Is she jaded? No, she says. That partly comes from the joy of working on behalf of gay rights (which isn't exactly the cause celebre of most country artists).

"I think it's completely wrong as human beings for anybody to tell you who you can't love."

And it fulfills her and keeps jadedness at bay when she works with homeless causes and then sees many other people helping needy people.

"The biggest accomplishment I've felt most proud of is seeing that something you're doing makes a difference in someone else's life."

Now, this is me talking: If you think it's corny and too earnest for a celebrity to help homeless kids and then talk about it, go take a flying leap.

If you're a celeb blogger: Hey, I love it when you call out stars who deserve it for their behavior, but not when you vilify them as evil incarnate for their weight and couture. This makes you seem like a chirpy, brainless, fop twit.

So the next time you pillory a star for being thin or wearing a dress you don't like, challenge yourself to hit the bricks to campaign for human rights, or to work with homeless groups or some other charity. Yeah, do that, please, thanks.

Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.