Category: Celebrities

Journalism Errors and Character Flaws

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It would appear that George Stark, a Hollywood-based reporter for the British Daily Mail, was mistaken when he reported that Alec Baldwin’s wife was Tweeting while attending the New York funeral of actor James Gandolfini. The three-hour time differential between the Eastern and Pacific time zones (and let’s face it, George Stark’s stupidity) caused the error. But what about Alec Baldwin’s unhinged reaction?

“I’m gonna find you, George Stark, you toxic little queen, and I’m gonna fuck…you…up.”

“If put my foot up your fucking ass, George Stark, but I’m sure you’d dig it too much.”

“George Stark, you lying little bitch. I am gonna f%#@ you up.”

Whatever one thinks of a journalist who tries to create a celebrity “scandal” because he can’t read Twitter timestamps, what are we to think of an actor who so spectacularly loses his temper, and whose first instinct is to gay-bait and threaten violence against the reporter?

Look, I lose my my temper occasionally.

I yell. I rant. I cuss a blue streak. I invoke Gaelic war oaths.

But no matter how angry I get, I have never erupted on Twitter angrily spewing derogatory slurs like “queen” and “bitch.”

Alec Baldwin has a character flaw, and the size of his enormous, entitled narcissistic ego prevents him from seeing it. 

The 55-year-old actor’s 28-year-old wife shows more maturity.

Hilaria Baldwin and her baby should be in our prayers.

Seriously.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll asks:

What’s in your wallet? Sadly, for Alec Baldwin, it’s not an emergency Prozac capsule . . .
Baldwin may or may not have fired his publicist, but he has apparently deleted his second Twitter account after his latest public meltdown. Will the company most associated with Baldwin delete its long–troubled spokes–hulk? As Twitchy notes, “Your move, Capital One.”

Don’t worry about Alec Baldwin. He is very much like Charlie Sheen — such a valuable commodity as an actor, his personality flaws are tolerated. And that’s really part of the problem, isn’t it?

 

Happily Never After

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The one guaranteed result of legalizing gay marriage: Gay divorce, which is not exactly evidence of anything in particular, except as disproving the homo-supremacist message that we’d all be happier if not for the awful oppression of heteronormativity.

In 2010, actress Jane Lynch became the “wife” (or perhaps, husband) of psychologist Lara Embry:

“It’s just the greatest thrill in the world to find somebody that you want to be with every day.”

Well, at least “every day” until you get sick and tired of putting up with their crap, which in this case was about three years:

“Lara and I have decided to end our marriage. This has been a difficult decision for us as we care very deeply about one another. We ask for privacy as we deal with this family matter,” Lynch says in a statement.

“We ask for privacy” = “The ugly details of our relationship, from our disastrously misguided decision to get together, to the acrimonious circumstances of our bitter divorce, are so embarrassingly lurid that, should it all become public, many young women would probably abandon all hope for future happiness as lesbians and instead decide to sell themselves as mail-order brides to Arabs. Therefore, in the interests of The Movement, we ask that our friends please help us by ignoring the vicious accusations that will dribble out as affidavits and discovery documents in forthcoming lawsuits. Also, please join me in hoping my ex-wife dies of cancer, and soon, that bitch.”

What’s the over/under on how many days before the “Jane Lynch sex video” shows up on YouTube?

UPDATE: Speaking of YouTube — how’s that for a smooth transition? — perhaps those unacquainted with contemporary youth culture will find this shocking, whereas people who have been paying attention will find it all too familiar in its vacuous sadness:

Ah, the shallow, selfish competition of the “notch-in-the-bedpost” mentality, now celebrated as a triumph of Equality and Progress!

 

‘Oh, My God. They Were Everywhere’

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Young stars circa 1987: Corey Haim (left) and Corey Feldman

Apropos of recent controversies, Pete Da Tech Guy quotes a 2011 interview with former child actor Corey Feldman:

“I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry. … It’s the big secret,” Feldman said. . . .
“I was surrounded by [pedophiles] when I was 14 years old. . . . Didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until I was old enough to realize what they were and what they wanted . . . till I went, Oh, my God. They were everywhere,” Feldman, 40, said.

In that interview, Feldman was talking about his former Lost Boys co-star: “There’s one person to blame in the death of Corey Haim. And that person happens to be a Hollywood mogul. And that person needs to be exposed, but, unfortunately, I can’t be the one to do it.” I reacted to Pete’s post with my habitual sarcasm:

But then I realized: Corey Haim can be reached for comment, via the “Corey Haim’s Notes on the Afterlife” series at Protein Wisdom. The dearly departed even offered his perspective on “Free Kate”:

I don’t usually weigh in on terrestrial politics, but the truth is, if  I’d been arrested every time I got a hand job from some underage kid who wanted me to sign his Lost Boys t-shirt, there would be no Dream a Little Dream, much less its (in my opinion) criminally underrated sequel.
Sometimes the law is just stupid — especially when it threatens to get in the way of art. . . .
American society really needs to get over its sexual hangups.

Please excuse “Corey’s” attitude. Sometimes dark sarcasm is the only sane alternative to screaming rage. As to this oft-heard argument — that “hangups” about sex are our real problem — it was in a 1999 interview that A Return to Modesty author Wendy Shalit offered the best rejoinder: “I don’t have hangups. You’re just a pervert.”

 

 


Rush Limbaugh: Still Winning

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On Thursday, Professor William Jacobson called attention to evidence that the “Stop Rush” boycott campaign has failed. Meanwhile, one of the leaders of the “Stop Rush” campaign, Matt “Shoq” Edelstein, had his lawyer send a cease-and-desist letter to his ex-girlfriend, who had been saying some unflattering things about Shoq.

So the anti-Limbaugh forces are failing and in disarray, while the man they sought to destroy is more relevant than ever:

Even before I heard about Prism, I am hearing from the intelligentsia in Washington that there’s nothing to be really concerned about here with what we had learned, the NSA demanding and getting every phone record from Verizon. And, by the way, we now know T-Mobile and AT&T have been added to it.
But the intelligent people were saying, “Nothing to see here. The reaction is way overblown.” Those of us who think there’s something worrisome here are overreacting and we’re too oriented in politics. . . .
I’m saying, “Do these people not realize what we just learned in the last three weeks?” We got the IRS starting in 2010 taking action to suppress the political involvement and ultimately votes of Tea Party people and conservative Republicans. This regime, this government, on the orders of the highest level. In fact, that investigation is ongoing. We have Fast and Furious. We have Obamacare. The evidence of the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration is on display undeniably every day and yet in the midst of this, “Well, don’t go off half cocked on this, Rush. Be very levelheaded. Nothing really to see,” as though there’s no context here.

Read the whole thing, because he really rips it up:

More than two decades since he invented modern talk radio, Rush Limbaugh is still changing hearts and minds. Mega-dittos, Rush!

UPDATE: You have to be careful when joking about the Obama administration, because the punchline is usually all too true:

 


Why Did Fox News and Townhall Scrub the Todd Starnes ‘Saudi National’ Story?

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Let me start by saying that I consider the obsession with the “Saudi national” — a student who was questioned after the Boston Marathon bombing — an annoying distraction from the main story of the terrorist act committed by the Brothers Tsarnaev.

This is not to say that the story isn’t interesting in its own right: Why would authorities be so hasty to turn Abdul Rahman Ali Alharb loose, at a time when the actual perpetrators were still at large and it was impossible to rule out a larger conspiracy?

An interesting question, and Tiffany Gabbay at the Blaze reports that Glenn Beck is trying to get some answers about it:

While Alharbi has gone from a person of interest, to a witness, and now to someone deemed unimportant to the case, sources have told TheBlaze that there is more to this story than is being told by the media or the government.
“We let everyone have all of the other information because we care more about the truth, more about you getting the news,” he said before explaining that since he owns TheBlaze outright, readers and viewers needn’t worry about the network being beholden to outside interests or foreign (i.e. Saudi) money.
“There is not ever going to be a member of CAIR crossing this threshold to have a private meeting with me to tell me exactly what would be in my best interest. I’m not taking the meeting. We move differently here. We are an American network, owned by an American. I am sick and tired of being told there is nothing left to see, move along,” he added.

Ah! This is it, you see? Glenn Beck (and others) believe the “Saudi national” story is being suppressed because Certain Unnamed News Organizations — which might sound like Nox Fews — are beholden to Arab money  and being intimidated by Muslim Brotherhood pressure groups. And who am I to say they’re not?

More likely, however, I think the bosses at Nox Fews and other organizations share my newsman’s instinct that this “Saudi national” angle is a distraction, a detour from the main story, and quite possibly a snipe hunt — a complete waste of time and energy. But if you think the Saudi national story is important, your paranoia about it being deliberately suppressed by a CAIR-directed conspiracy is likely to be stoked when you discover that a Certain Unnamed News Organization deleted Todd Starnes’s article about it.

Fair and Balanced. We Report, You Decide. IYKWIMAITYD.

GO, NICK SEARCY, GO!

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Because I seldom watch TV except for news and documentaries, when Ace of Spades started going on about Justified star Nick Searcy, my reaction was like, “So what?” My indifference ended today when I saw how Searcy opened up a giant-sized can of whupass on pro-choicers claiming to be shocked by the Kermit Gosnell case:

Formerly Relevant Celebrity News

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You know how there are some people who seem really important or popular for a while, and then their 15 minutes of fame expires? And then, in a desperate bid to recapture their former glory, they engage in some kind of cheap publicity stunt? “Pay attention to me!”

So, anyway,  I guess there was actual important stuff happening last week when the “news” broke that Meghan McCain is going to become a grown-up Honey Boo-Boo, and I missed an opportunity to make fun of that shallow narcissistic bitch.

Meghan, I mean, not Honey Boo-Boo, although the resemblance is kind of remarkable, if you think about it.

Speaking of remarkable resemblances to Meghan McCain, Michael Moore says only right-wingers think he’s fat.

And speaking of people who have been failing predictably since the early years of the Bush administration, Jim Carrey.

Do you realize that it’s been nearly 20 years since Carrey starred in Ace Venture: Pet Detective, arguably the only really funny movie he ever made? And I say “arguably” because some people didn’t think it was very funny at all. But it was certifiably popular at least, grossing $72 million in 1994, when $72 million was pretty good money.  It was considered successful enough that the next year they made a sequel — not as funny — that grossed more than $100  million.

Carrey’s career since then has been erratic, and by “erratic,” I mean he’s been stinking it up for the past 10 years, playing cartoon characters in Seuss-themed kiddie flicks and bombing like the RAF over Dresden every time he tries to do anything aimed at an audience old enough to drive.

Who remembers Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The Number 23 (2007), I Love You Phillip Morris (2009) or The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)? Nobody.

Heck, Burt Wonderstone has only been out four weeks and to say it has been forgotten would be a misstatement because it disappeared like a fart in a hurricane. It made back about two-thirds of the $30 million it cost to make it, and everybody who saw it — that is to say, a total audience measured in the thousands — left the theater telling all their friends to stay away from this cinematic turd. This is obviously why, in a desperate bid to seem relevant, Jim Carrey lashed out at the gun industry, which created a brief bubble of attention and — we might assume — signaled to liberal directors in Hollywood, “Hey, I’m one of you guys, so please consider casting me in your next movie.”

This is sad, because it’s not as if Carrey were Warren Beatty or Sean Penn or some other Hollywood guy who’s been doing the celebrity-leftist trip for decades. Just out of the blue one day, he decides to grab himself some “Courage Points” on the cheap by Standing Up to the NRA, as if that were some kind of rare and risky move in Hollywood.

Carrey’s celebrity-politics blip has come and gone, but for some reason (I don’t know why) Ace of Spades decided today to give Carrey a few punches on Twitter:

Nobody really noticed this, of course, because Jim Carrey isn’t really much of a celebrity any more. He’s actually on the verge of becoming more like Farrah Abraham. And I’m sure you’re like me: “Farrah Who?”

What the reality-TV industry has spawned is the phenomenon of micro-celebrities, people who are “famous” to a comparatively small audience of people who are fans of one or another series on one of those cable channels that are lucky to get a half-million viewers for one of their “hit” shows. I honestly don’t know how many people watch MTV any more,  but watching the petty misadventures of a bunch of trashy knocked-up high-school girls and their baby-daddies isn’t really my idea of entertainment. So I kind of get annoyed when a “celebrity” site puts Farrah Abraham’s name in a headline as if everybody knows who Farrah Abraham is, which we don’t.

It’s the “famous for being famous” syndrome, except that we’ve devalued “fame” to the point that it applies to people who aren’t actually famous in any sense other than “they used to be on a cable TV show watched by less than 1 percent of the U.S. population.” In a nation of 300 million people, 3 million isn’t a lot of TV viewers and I don’t think more than 3 million people know who Farrah Abraham is.

Maybe she should make a sex tape with Jim Carrey.

 

‘Billions and Billions and Billions’: Biden Has No Comment on Fisker Failure

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“This is seed money that will return back to the American consumer in billions and billions and billions of dollars of good new jobs.”
— Joe Biden, Oct. 27, 2009

“With the help of UAW lobbying efforts for advanced vehicle manufacturing and federal dollars, the plant will become a production facility for Fisker Automotive, a new American car company that plans to produce 100,000 electric hybrid vehicles per year by 2014.
“GM’s former Wilmington [Delaware] assembly plant was selected for its primary global production facility based on its size, production capacity, access to shipping ports and rail lines, and skilled workforce.”
— United Auto Workers, February 2010

“Once again, the American public lost when the Obama administration attempted to pick ‘winners and losers’ in the free market. Today the electric car company Fisker Automotive, which received nearly $200 million in taxpayer money, is laying off three-fourths of its U.S. workers.”
— Sarah Palin, April 5, 2013

When Democrats piss away taxpayer money on useless boondoggles, they always do so while proclaiming their noble intentions, and the credit they get for their good intentions is sufficient to excuse their failures in the eyes of media stooges who consider it a career duty to help elect Democrats. It was therefore a rare moment in October 2011 when ABC News reported that Fisker — the company that Biden declared would bring automaking jobs back to Delaware — had instead pocketed its taxpayer-subsidized federal loans and was building cars in Finland:

But two years after the loan was announced, the company’s manufacturing jobs are still limited to the assembly of the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car in Finland.
“There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. “They don’t exist here.” . . .
Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware.

Friday, we got the inevitable denouement:

Green Jobs: Taxpayer-Funded Fisker
Will Lay Off 75% of Workforce

Really, this is a drop in the bucket, compared to the “punch to the gut” unemployment situation, for the simple reason that Fisker never employed many Americans: Its U.S. workforce was only 200 people, of whom 160 got laid off Friday.

Twitchy is on the story, as are William Teach at Right Wing News, Rick Moran at American Thinker, Paul Swansen at Liberty News and the Washington Free Beacon. Yet when we consider the laudatory media fanfare that accompanied Biden’s 2009 promise of “billions and billions and billions of dollars of good new jobs” for his UAW buddies in Delaware, it’s strange to notice how the usual suspects of liberal journalism show no interest in following up on the story. Has anyone in the White House press corps bothered asking the obvious question?

Not that Joe Biden could actually answer any such questions — the man is a complete ignoramus about economics — but why won’t the media at least ask these questions, and get his stupid self-serving excuses on the record? Well, heaven forbid that the media should ever be honest enough to acknowledge that Sarah Palin was right . . .