Category: Celebrities

Hollywood Actress Urges Hollywood to Create More Jobs for Actresses

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If any misogynist is looking for evidence of female mental inferiority, the Huffington Post’s “Women” category is a treasure trove, with dumb writers and dumber topics (e.g., “Why I Hate Wearing Bras” and “I Was On Reality TV — Here’s What It’s Like To Fake ‘Real Life‘”), suggesting that there are two basic ideas behind the category:

  1. Women are too stupid to be interested in actual news, and require their own special kind of non-news reading;
    and
  2. The only people who can write this kind of meaningless drek without embarrassment are untalented women.

Bad women writers producing stupid articles for dumb women readers — that’s the “Huffington Post Women” category in a nutshell. And as if we needed more evidence of HuffPo’s belief in female inferiority, this was a feature article in the section Monday:

Cate Blanchett Lets Hollywood Know
Women Are Not A ‘Niche’ Audience
Cate Blanchett has done it again.
As if there weren’t already enough reasons for us to love Blanchett, last night she stole our hearts all over again with a gracious yet enlightening acceptance speech for Best Actress at the Academy Awards.
Our favorite moment? When she called out Hollywood’s sexist tendencies and reminded everyone that people really do want to see films with female leads:

And thank you to… those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center, are niche experiences. They are not — audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

Far be it from my purpose to defend “the industry” from any of its critics. If Cate Blanchett wants the world to believe that Hollywood is run by a bunch of sexist swine whose misogyny is so powerful as to transcend their notorious greed, she’ll get no argument from me. But everybody who follows the movie business knows that the economic challenge in the age of instant-download video and home-theater giant screens is how to create an “event” that will get people to leave home and take the kids to the multiplex. The Top 10 U.S. box-office films of 2013 were:

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2. Iron Man 3
3. Frozen
4. Despicable Me 2
5. Man of Steel
6. Gravity
7. Monsters University
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug –
9. Fast & Furious 6
10. Oz The Great and Powerful

I don’t pay much attention to movies, so I can’t say if any of those are “female films, with women at the center,” but most of them clearly are not. Cate Blanchett keeps working as Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings series, so she got a spot in the Top 10, but it’s hard to argue for The Hobbit as a movie “with women at the center.”

Why is it, however, that there is something inherently righteous about actresses demanding more work for actresses? Would we applaud Clint Eastwood if he gave an Oscar speech demanding that Hollywood create more roles for geriatric geezers?

But if you’re looking for thoughtful criticism of the self-serving inanities uttered by movie stars — or thoughtful discussion of anything, really — don’t look for it in HuffPo’s “Women” category.

 

Kim Novak’s Oscar Appearance Sparks Remarks About Age, Plastic Surgery

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People say disrespectful things on Twitter every day, but when 81-year-old Kim Novak showed up on Sunday’s Oscar broadcast to present the Best Animated Feature award to Frozen, the sarcasm about Novak’s surgically altered face was cruel: “Harsh critics took to social media to analyze her possible overuse of anti-aging interventions.”

This was unfortunate because (a) Kim Novak is a recent breast cancer survivor, and (b) Novak was one of Hollywood’s legendary beauties of the 1950s and ’60s.

For younger readers who don’t remember, there was time when Kim Novak’s name was mentioned along with Marilyn Monroe’s as the most desirable of movie stars. She twice starred with Frank Sinatra, in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) and Pal Joey (1957). While her film career was uneven — she never matched the sensation she caused starring opposite Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) — Novak continued to be a sought-after leading lady, cast in starring roles in the film adaptations of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1964) and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1965). According to People magazine, Novak “gave up the Hollywood limelight for a quiet life on a 240-acre ranch in Oregon with her veterinarian husband Bob Malloy, whom she married in 1976.”

As unfortunate as her most recent plastic surgery may have been, it was wrong of the Oscar producers to make Kim Novak an object of ridicule, deliberately creating a cruel visual pun by having her announce the Academy Award to Frozen.

Don’t tell me that was unintentional, assholes.

 


Palin Vindicated on Russia, Ukraine: ‘I Could See This One From Alaska’

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She who laughs last:

Sarah Palin may be having a bragging rights moment.
In 2008, when she was the GOP vice presidential nominee, Palin questioned in a speech whether then-Sen. Barack Obama would have the foreign policy credentials to handle a scenario in which Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
“After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence — the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next,” she said in Reno, Nevada on October 21, 2008.
The former Alaska governor was happy to highlight her prediction on Friday and scold those who criticized her 2008 comments.
“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska,” she said on Facebook. That remark was a reference to a 2008 interview in which Palin argued that Alaska’s proximity to Russia helped boost her foreign policy experience.
Saturday Night Live parodied her remarks in a now-famous sketch with Tina Fey, who played Palin on the show, saying “I can see Russia from my house.”
On Facebook, Palin continued to explain how she anticipated a growing crisis between Russia and Ukraine, where there has now been an uncontested arrival of Russian military forces by air at a Russian base in Ukraine’s Crimea region. They are believed to be Russian land forces, according to a U.S. assessment.
“I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine.”

And while Vladimir Putin was reportedly sending 2,000 paratroopers to the Crimean peninsula, what was Obama’s reaction?

President Obama himself, having delivered a limp warning to Vladimir Putin, decamped for a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, where he told a cheering crowd: “Well, it’s Friday, it’s after 5:00. So this is officially happy hour with the Democratic Party.”

 


Russell Brand Is the Patriarchy or Something, Says Katy Perry

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Celebrity news or Women’s Studies lesson?

Katy Perry has said she thinks ex-husband Russell Brand wanted to have kids as “a way of control”.
The Roar singer, who reportedly recently split from fiance John Mayer, told Elle magazine that while the comedian wanted children, she wasn’t ready to make those sacrifices yet.
She explained: “When I decide to have a family, I’ll just want to be Mom for a little bit… [Brand] really wanted me to have children, and I knew I wasn’t ready — I think it was a way of control.
“I think it was part of thinking, if I have a kid, then I would have to sacrifice. I’d have to be at home more. I really wanted to, but I knew I wasn’t ready for it. It wasn’t like, “Hey, let’s have a kid because we’re in love.'”
Russell was said to have ended their 14-month marriage via text on New Year’s Eve in 2011.

So, she’s 29 years old now. Russell Brand dumped her. Her rebound romance with John Mayer is over. If she “wasn’t ready” for motherhood circa 2011, when does Katy Perry suppose she’ll be ready? Does she have any prospective sperm donors lined up?

Katy’s fear and loathing of motherhood — it requires “sacrifice” and is “a way of control” — indicates either a selfish disposition or an emerging feminist consciousness. She’s a victim of the oppressive heteronormative patriarchy. “PIV is always rape, OK?”

 

Alec Baldwin Hates Fox News, Breitbart.com and His Own Children

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As far as I’m concerned, it was the “rude, thoughtless, little pig” episode — the angry voicemail message he left for his 12-year-old daughter Ireland in 2007 — that ruined Alec Baldwin’s reputation.

What kind of father talks that way to his daughter? It’s one thing for a father to chew out his son (“D in biology? Are you on drugs? Get a haircut! And clean up your room!”) but who ever heard of a father berating his 12-year-old daughter like Baldwin did?

Despite his reputation as a sadistic self-absorbed bully, however, Baldwin seems more worried about the “homophobe” label:

I flew to Hawaii recently to shoot a film, fresh on the heels of being labeled a homophobic bigot by Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice.

He goes on for a while in this vein and doesn’t help himself when, in the seventh paragraph, he uses the word “tranny.”

Baldwin recounts a previous episode:

In my rage, however, I called him a “toxic little queen,” and, thus, Anderson Cooper, the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture, suggested I should be “vilified,” in his words. I didn’t feel bad about the incident. He lied about my wife. They say this is what comes with stardom — I don’t agree with you. A journalist isn’t supposed to write a lie about you. If he was in New York, I might have had the impulse to beat the shit out of the guy. At the time, I didn’t view “toxic little queen” as a homophobic statement. I didn’t realize how those words could give offense, and I’m sorry for that.

“I didn’t view ‘toxic little queen’ as a homophobic statement”?

You’re kidding me, right? Here’s the thing: Suppose I get angry at a guy and call him the first random cuss words that pop into my angry mind, for example, “Goddamned son of a bitch.” Now, this is a very rude thing to say, and conveys the sense of my anger.

But a phrase like “toxic little queen” is rather specific, isn’t it? To come up with a phrase as specific as that requires a lot more premeditation than does “Goddamned son of a bitch.”

No, “toxic little queen” insinuates weak, effeminate homosexuality. And the quick resort to such a label tells us more about Alec Baldwin than it does about the target of the slur: Alec has “issues.”

Ace called attention to this part of Baldwin’s latest rant:

There is a core of outlets that are pushing these stories out. Breitbart clutters the blogosphere with “Alec Baldwin, he’s the Devil, he’s Fidel Baldwin.” . . .
The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred. Who would ever dream that Obama would deserve to be treated the way he has been? The birth-certificate bullshit, which is just Obama’s version of Swiftboating. And all for the electoral nullification that seems like a cancer on the American system. But this is Roger Ailes. And Fox. And Breitbart. And this is all about hate. It’s Hate Incorporated. But the liberals have taken the bait and run in the same direction—and it’s just as corrosive. MSNBC, in its own way, is as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.

OK, so what’s really going on here? Narcissism.

Nothing is ever the narcissist’s fault. Protecting a fragile, damaged ego requires a scapegoat for every failure. A hallmark of narcissism is the desire to be seen as the victim in every conflict — sending out invitations to your pity party. This is the flip side, the psychological obverse, to the domineering impulse that takes pleasure in humiliating a 12-year-old girl as a “thoughtless little pig.”

Anybody can lose their temper. Anybody can unintentionally offend people. But a narcissist like Alec Baldwin can never accept that he is responsible for his own problems and failures, and so he must blame, inter alia, “a cancer on the American system.”

TheWire.com offers,”A List of the People Alec Baldwin Blames For His Personal Failures.” It’s a long list.

 

Quote Of The Half-Decade @TedNugent

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by Smitty

Bad Ted; bad (emphasis mine):

“I do apologize – not necessarily to the President – but on behalf of much better men than myself, like the best governor in America, Gov. Rick Perry, [and] the best attorney general in America, Greg Abbott [of Texas],” Nugent said.

“I apologize for using the street fighter terminology, like ‘subhuman mongrel,’ instead of just using more understandable language such as ‘violator of his oath to the Constitution,’” Nugent continued. “I apologize for using the term. I will try to elevate my vernacular to the level of those great men that I’m learning from in the world of politics.”

Yeah, I’m Sure @Denise_Richards Won’t Have Any Problems With This

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So, imagine you’re the ex-wife of Charlie Sheen, the mother of his two young daughters, and your ex-husband just announced plans to marry a 24-year-old performer known for her roles in such “adult” video productions as Seduced by Mommy 2, Bondage Tongue Bath, Lesbian Workout, Lesbian Romance, etc. How would you feel about Charlie and his new squeeze having visitation with your daughters?

My guess is, lawyers for Denise Richards are going to use this as a reason to make sure Charlie never gets to see those kids.