Category: Celebrities

Jimmy Baseball’s Third Ex-Wife

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Jim Edmonds spent 18 seasons in the major leagues, won four Golden Glove awards, made the All-Star roster four times and helped lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series championship in 2006. Edmonds, known to fans as “Jimmy Baseball,” was already twice divorced and the father of four children and had been out of the game for four years when, in 2014 at the age of 43, he made the mistake of marrying 29-year-old Meghan King. Despite her comparative youth, she already had a track record of marital failure, having divorced her first husband in 2011.

When a middle-aged millionaire marries a 20-something blonde, a bad outcome is nearly guaranteed, but a year after the Edmonds-King nuptials, Meghan joined the cast of Real Housewives of Orange County, and I must ask: Has any marriage ever survived the “Real Housewives” treatment? Of course, I’ve never watched any of those stupid shows, which air on the gay cable channel Bravo. Oh, c’mon, everybody knows Bravo is a gay channel, right? And the whole point of “Real Housewives” seems to be depicting heterosexual marriage as a farce whereby ditzy women are indulged by their wealthy clueless husbands. The indulgent cluelessness of the husbands is more or less the punchline of the joke, and I am unable to comprehend why any man would put up with this.

Perhaps someone should give Jim Edmonds a copy of Rollo Tomassi’s The Rational Male. Given what Edmonds accomplished in his baseball career — a career .284 batting average, with nearly 400 home runs and almost 1,200 RBIs — one might think he would be sufficiently concerned for his reputation that he would refuse to let his young bride involve him in this “Real Housewives” series, which is not only a near-guaranteed path to divorce, but which is also antithetical to the personal dignity of the cast members. Everyone involved in “Real Housewives” is more or less a clown, parading their expensive follies for the entertainment of a cable-TV audience. Might as well date a Kardashian.

The Wikipedia synopsis of the Edmonds-King marriage:

Edmonds married Meghan O’Toole King on October 24, 2014. … Meghan joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2015. Edmonds himself also appears on the show. On Thanksgiving Day 2016, they had a daughter. On November 27, 2017, it was announced that the couple were expecting twins boys together due June 2018. The twin boys were born on June 5, 2018. On October 25, 2019, Edmonds filed for divorce from Meghan, the day after their fifth wedding anniversary.

Details from a contemporary news account:

After attempting to reconcile following a very public cheating scandal, Meghan King Edmonds, 35, and Jim Edmonds, 49, are calling it quits.
Jim Edmonds, a former MLB star, officially filed paperwork to end the marriage Friday, Us Weekly reports. The filing came one day after their fifth wedding anniversary following a blow-up fight with Meghan.
“Meghan and Jim have been fighting,” a source told the publication. “The latest fight began when he went to a recent hockey game and she began interrogating him about who he went with.”
She reportedly also accused the former St. Louis Cardinals player of “having an affair” with their nanny.
Meghan’s distrust likely stems from Jim admittedly sending lewd text messages and photos to a woman while the reality star was pregnant.

Far be it from me to defend a philanderer, if indeed these accusations were true, but am I the only one who sees how the intrusion of a TV reality-show gig played a role in this disaster? Jim Edmonds is a Somebody, famous for his own accomplishments, whereas Megan — what had she ever accomplished, except marrying Jim Edmonds? Parlaying that connection into a “career” (if three seasons on “Real Housewives” can be considered a career) allowed her to become a Somebody, but in an entirely parasitical way. And now, having married again (and divorced again) she’s trying to extend her 15 minutes of fame:

Meghan King is taking the ultimate walk down memory lane.
The former reality star, 37, announced on Monday that she will be recapping her old episodes of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” on her recently launched YouTube channel — and Page Six has an exclusive first look.
In our clip, King reflects on her marriage to ex-husband Jim Edmonds, calling it “embarrassing.”
During a scene that aired in the Season 10 premiere, the retired baseball player appeared to ignore his then-wife as she tried to engage in a conversation.
“So rude. So embarrassing,” King says in her YouTube series, pressing her hand to her forehead.
In the episode, she also gushed over Edmonds in a confessional, “He completely respects me.”
“Denial,” she states. “I was in denial.”
Elsewhere, the mom of three — who shares daughter Aspen, 4, and twin sons Hart and Hayes, 3, with Edmonds — reacts to a younger version of herself admitting, “Oh yeah, I forgot my name is Meghan Edmonds.”
Today, King — who starred on “Orange County” as a full-time ‘wife for three consecutive seasons from 2015 to 2017 — couldn’t be happier to have reclaimed her original surname.
“Thank God it’s not [Edmonds] anymore, ugh,” she says, shaking her head.
Edmonds and King’s relationship dissolved as cheating allegations came to light. The couple finally called it quits in November 2019, after police were called over a heated argument during a custody exchange.
Their bitter divorce was finalized in May — just months before King wed President Joe Biden’s nephew, Cuffe Biden Owens, in October. (Meanwhile, Edmonds got engaged to former Playboy model Kortnie O’Conner in August, after a year and a half together.)
After splitting from Owens, 43, in December, though, King’s “RHOC” rewatch comes as she settles into another chapter as a single woman.
Discussing more than just her marital miseries with Edmonds, the lifestyle blogger says she will be spilling behind-the-scenes tea about “all of those hilarious, dramatic and sometimes cringe-inducing moments” from her time on “RHOC.”

Doesn’t that take the cake? Recycling your failed marriage — and badmouthing your ex-husband — for clicks on YouTube.

There is a word for this, and that word is trashy.

Like I said, might as well date a Kardashian . . .




 

Who Should Kyle Rittenhouse Sue First? Let Me Nominate Colin Kaepernick

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How much money does the failed ex-NFL quarterback have? Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers should first (a) research Kaepernick’s net worth, then (b) sue him for that amount, and (c) take all his money.

People are going to have be schooled about libel, and it seems appropriate that Colin Kaepernick should be front of the class.

Although I’m not a lawyer, permit me to explain the “public figure” loophole in U.S. libel law, i.e., the Sullivan precedent. This is important to know — if someone is a “public figure,” a category that includes politicians and pro athletes, you can write damned near anything about them and have little risk of losing a libel suit, because the plaintiff in such a case must prove “actual malice.” People who are ignorant of libel law (a category that apparently includes a lot of blue-check Twitter types like Kaepernick) are prone to think they have license to say anything about anybody. But you can’t lie about an ordinary citizen the way the media lied about Donald Trump, which is why Nicholas Sandmann (a high school kid, not a public figure) ended up winning settlements from the Washington Post and CNN. Anyone who thinks it’s fair game to accuse Kyle Rittenhouse, an innocent teenager who was acquitted at trial, of being a “white supremacist” engaged in “terroristic acts” needs an education, and forcing Colin Kaepernick to defend those libelous claims in court would be a splendid educational opportunity.

Whatever else the flaws of “our current system” may be, it ought to function well enough to bankrupt Colin Kaepernick.

Good luck with that jury in Kenosha, Mr. Kaepernick.




 

The Dumbest ‘Hate Crime’ Hoax Ever: Courtroom Sequel for Jussie Smollett

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You’ll recall that front page from February 2019, and the truly shocking thing about this case is that Jussie Smollett would dare go to trial claiming innocence, when his guilt has always been beyond question.

Glenn Reynolds links a story with evidence that, contrary to what Smollett’s defense has claimed, his Nigerian accomplices are not homophobes, but why is that even relevant? They are not on trial, and their motives don’t matter in determining whether Smollett lied to police (spoiler alert: he did). From the moment Smollett’s tale of being assaulted by two MAGA-hat-wearing white men made headlines, every intelligent person knew it was a lie. Two Trump supporters prowling around downtown Chicago at 2:30 a.m. in below-zero weather?

Nope. Never happened. Beyond the range of human possibility.

There were so many things wrong with this story — how many Trump supporters ever heard of this guy? how did they know what hotel he was staying in? — that one wonders how Smollett didn’t see the obvious flaws in his absurd hoax scheme. But he’s a Democrat, and Democrats have been getting away with telling blatant lies for so long that Smollett probably figured, “Why not me?” His story of being attacked by Republican haters “yelling out racial and homophobic slurs” in the wee hours of an arctic-cold Chicago night was only slightly less plausible than the Steele Dossier, and nobody’s gone to prison for that hoax yet.

Probably what Jussie Smollett is counting on is that this Chicago jury will tacitly endorse his bogus “hate crime” by voting to acquit him, because they’re Democrats, and have no regard for truth anyway.

Which is always the way to bet, in Chicago.

Probably the best chance that Smollett could be convicted is if the jury had been watching Dave Chappelle.

 

“Find out where Kanye West was last night.”




 

8 Killed as Houston Hip Hop Show Becomes ‘Mass Casualty Incident’

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If you’ve never heard of Travis Scott, he’s a rapper who is also Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy. A native of Houston, his 2018 album Astroworld, which went triple platinum, was named for a Houston amusement park that closed in 2005. The title now has deadly significance:

At least eight people died and scores more were injured when chaos, including a crowd crush, broke out during opening night of rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival in Texas Friday, authorities said.
A mass of concertgoers at Houston’s NRG Park “began to compress” to the front of the stage at around 9:15 p.m., causing mayhem and some people to get hurt, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told reporters early Saturday.
“People started to fall out, become unconscious and it created additional panic,” Peña said during a press conference.
At around 9:38 p.m. Peña said a “mass casualty incident” was triggered as the number of victims grew and emergency responders became overwhelmed.
At least 23 people were rushed to a hospital, including a 10-year-old, authorities said. Of those hospitalized, 11 were in cardiac arrest. Some 300 people were treated at a field hospital on the scene.

Some 100,000 tickets were sold to the event.




 

UPDATE: Union Crew Walked Off Alec Baldwin Film Set Before Fatal Shooting

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Earlier today we told you how Alec Baldwin shot two people, killing the female cinematographer on a Western film set in New Mexico. This looks very bad for Baldwin’s legal liability:

Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.
The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and getting their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The camera crew showed up for work as expected at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and began gathering up their gear and personal belongings to leave, one knowledgeable crew member told the Los Angeles Times.
Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.
Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the production said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.
But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe.
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, the knowledgeable person said.
A member of the producer staff then ordered the union members to leave the set. She said if they didn’t leave, the producers would call security to remove them.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun on Saturday and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”

(Hat-tip: Evil Blogger Lady on Twitter.)

Baldwin was Executive Producer on this “low budget” film, so that he bears responsibility for conditions on the set. They were cutting corners to save money, so they brought in scabs to replace the union members on the crew, and this accidental shooting was the direct result.




 

Violence Against Women Update

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They’re calling this an “accident”:

A tragedy occurred on the set of the latest Alec Baldwin movie where the actor reportedly accidentally shot and killed a female cinematographer and injured the director due to a prop gun misfire.
“Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on a set in New Mexico on Thursday, accidentally killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza,” reported Variety.
The tragic incident reportedly occurred on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Alec Baldwin was shooting his upcoming Western, Rust. Hutchins, who originally remained unidentified, died after being transported via helicopter to the University of New Mexico Hospital.
Director Joel Souza remains in emergency care after being transported by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent’s hospital.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Thursday that both Hutchins and Souza “were shot when a prop firearm was discharged by Alec Baldwin, 68, producer and actor.”
Sources told Deadline, which initially reported that the incident occurred when Baldwin reportedly “cocked a gun during a rehearsal, unaware that there were live rounds in it, hitting two people, a man and a woman.” Representatives for Baldwin, a rabid anti-gun demagogue, did not immediately respond to media requests for comment.

A few more details, via Daily Mail:

Alec Baldwin allegedly repeatedly asked ‘why was I handed a hot gun?’ after he accidentally shot and killed a female cinematographer and wounded a director yesterday on the set of his new film Rust. . . .
A spokesman for the movie’s production company has insisted that only blanks were used, but the sheriff’s department is yet to confirm that. It’s unclear if this was the first and only shot Baldwin fired, or if others had been fired safely.
Immediately after firing the fatal shot, Baldwin asked why he’d been handed a ‘hot’ gun, according to Hollywood gossip site Showbiz 411. . . .
Mike Tristano, 60, a Hollywood armorer with 30 years’ experience . . . said ultimate responsibility for gun safety on movie set rests with the armorer. . . .
‘There should have been blanks in the gun, the on-set armorer’s job is to check that before handing the weapon over,’ Tristan said.
‘They then make sure that the actor stands on a mark and never points the gun at the crew or cast… the editing makes it seem like they were pointing at their co-actor.
‘That’s why everyone in the industry is very confused. How this happened is a total mystery at the moment.’

Total mystery, as well as a tragedy, but the fact that Alec Baldwin, an outspoken opponent of Second Amendment rights, shot and killed a woman is also deeply ironic. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: Union Crew Walked Off Alec Baldwin Film Set Before Fatal Shooting




 

Whither the ‘Ahoy’ Coalition?

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“Questions of policy — is Bill Kristol in favor of enforcing our immigration laws, or not? — were ultimately less important to the fate of the Weekly Standard than their intellectual pride. Neoconservatives decided in 2015 that Donald Trump should not be the Republican nominee and, when their advice was rejected by GOP primary voters, the neoconservatives doubled-down and decided that Hillary Clinton should be president. When that didn’t happen, they doubled down again, and declared Trump’s presidency illegitimate. At no point, apparently, did it ever occur to them to ask, ‘What if we’re wrong?’ The possibility of error was not something Bill Kristol (Harvard, Class of 1979) was willing to consider.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Dec. 6, 2018

Kurt Schlichter popularized, if he did not invent, the use of “ahoy” as a jab to make fun of the “cruise-ship conservatives” (e.g., the staff of the defunct Weekly Standard) whose #NeverTrump politics led them sailing off into irrelevant oblivion. That 2018 Weekly Standard cruise which they advertised as “coming soon” never happened, because anti-Trump “conservatism” represented only a disaffected handful of writers, and had no substantial following among GOP voters in general.

The appeal of “cruise-ship conservatism,” really, was to affluent old people who paid for a chance to get up-close-and-personal with political celebrities they recognized from watching Fox News. Probably 90% of Americans couldn’t pick Stephen Hayes out of a police lineup, but to habitual Fox News viewers, Hayes was once a superstar.

And then Trump broke their minds. He completely wrecked the Standard — or rather, they wrecked themselves, by their seething hatred of him — and once he beat Hillary, the handwriting was on the wall. So now Hayes is doing Jonah Goldberg’s Dispatch newsletter with David French (similarly mind-broken by Trump) and Kristol’s name is attached to The Bulwark, the title of which is said by some to be a pun alluding to the depraved sexual kink of its proprietors and staff. (“Bull Work,” get it?)

Earlier this week, The Bulwark published a genuinely obnoxious attack on the conservative Claremont Institute, and this prompted Steven Hayward to reflect on what happened to Kristol & Co.:

Trump is gone now, and his opponents can claim a large measure of vindication in the ignominious end of his term. Yet the Never Trumpers seem by degrees to have become Never Republicans. Bill and several of his colleagues at The Bulwark seem to have decided that throwing Trump over the side, and Trump-friendly Republicans with him, isn’t enough: they now seem to be throwing aside conservatism itself, suddenly attacking conservative views on climate change, health care, and many other issues. Is it now Never Conservative?

It’s not about ideology, just like it was never really about policy, as I explained in December 2018. No, it’s about ego, about the imagined entitlement of the Harvard-educated Kristol and his influential friends to act as the de facto Membership Committee of Conservatism, Inc.

In this context, think about Nicolle Wallace. How is it that this erstwhile Republican operative has gone so far Left that she’s ideologically indistinguishable from her MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow? The answer, I would argue, is that Wallace — like Hayes, Kristol, et al. — is essentially a careerist, who was always more concerned with maintaining her membership in a certain socioeconomic class than with politics.

Such people will always be found scrambling to climb aboard whatever political bandwagon seems most likely to deliver them to the upper echelons of prestige and influence, where they can rub elbows with the rich and famous or, better yet, become rich and famous themselves. From the time Republicans took over Congress in 1994, until Hillary lost in 2016, Bill Kristol exercised an enormous amount of control over who was allowed to ride aboard the bandwagon of Conservatism Inc., and it was this extraordinary influence which was most important to him.

Far be it from me to speculate on what role, if any, psychosexual deviance may play in all this — I’ll leave that to Ace, who’s pretty sure that the third Mrs. Charlie Sykes is a “hot wife,” IYKWIMAITYD — when the real crux of the matter is how to prevent the “Ahoy” Coalition from regaining its former power over the conservative movement in the future.




 

Pics or It Didn’t Happen, Sophie

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What is the point of “coming out” as bisexual? For a long time I’ve been asking this question because, on closer examination, the word “bisexual” turns out to be endlessly elastic and is nowadays claimed by many young women who just want to be trendy by showing LGBTQ solidarity. Sort of the way young Democrats call themselves “progressive” or “socialist” rather than merely liberal — it’s about branding and image, really.

So the latest example of this trend is British actress Sophie Turner, who rose to stardom playing Sansa Stark on HBO’s series Game of Thrones. Two years ago, she married singer Joe Jonas and last year gave birth to their first child, a daughter. Thus, as far as any actual proof of her sexual preference exists, Turner is . . . heterosexual. But that would be too ordinary. too boring, insufficiently progressive for a 21st-century starlet:

Did Sophie Turner just come out as bisexual? That’s what many of her fans online seem to think, at least! . . .
[S]he posted a message on her Story earlier this week celebrating the start of Pride Month. . . .
[Her Instagram post] included a heart with the words “bi pride” on it that featured the colors of the bisexual flag!
She also included a GIF that says the phrase “time isn’t straight and neither am I,” and because of that, many [Gamer of Thrones] fans are freaking out at the prospect of Turner possibly coming out of the closet publicly.
This isn’t the first time Sophie has opened up about her sexuality, though.
In a 2019 cover story for Rolling Stone (an honor she shared with fellow Game of Thrones cast member Maisie Williams), the Dark Phoenix star talked about how she knew she was ready to marry her husband, Jonas Brothers heartthrob Joe Jonas, and she had this to say:
“I was fully preparing myself to be single for the rest of my life. I think once you’ve found the right person, you just know. I feel like I’m much older a soul than I am in age. I feel like I’ve lived enough life to know. I’ve met enough guys to know — I’ve met enough girls to know.”
And when asked further about the girls she’s met in her life, Turner then said:
“Everyone experiments. It’s part of growing up. I love a soul, not a gender.”

“Everyone experiments” — I’ve always been amused by this use of the word “experiment” to describe behaviors as if they’re being conducted in a scientific laboratory. In the 1970s, I was “experimenting” with drugs, like Oppenheimer building the first atomic bomb or whatever.

Never do psilocybin mushroom tea and Bolivian flake cocaine together — such is my immortal contribution to pharmacological science, so that spending a month in the psych ward at age 19 wasn’t a complete waste of time, I guess. Having earned my credentials as an expert on crazy (just ask around), it would perhaps be too much to claim scientific expertise in the field of sexuality, but I know a little and, baby, I can guess the rest.

Let me throw some logic at you, Sophie Turner. If we stipulate it is true, as you say, that “everyone experiments,” then what exactly distinguishes the self-declared “bisexual” from . . . well, everyone?

Gotcha.

This whole rainbow-flag alphabet-soup 21st-century trend where practically everyone can claim to be part of the acronym has the effect of making it impossible to know what is meant by the word “bisexual,” when a woman with a husband and a baby, who has never been publicly involved in a homosexual relationship, decides to celebrate her “bi pride.”

On the one hand, I could see Sophie Turner’s statements — “Everyone experiments. It’s part of growing up.” — as intended to reassure young people experiencing confusion: “Hey, don’t sweat it. Look at me — I’m kind of a weirdo, too, but everything turned out all right.”

On the other hand, however, it’s kind of like my psilocybin “experiment” back in 1979: “Hey, kids, don’t even think about it. Just say no.”

That is to say, if the end result of your experimentation with “bisexuality” is to discover that you’re straight — ordinary, boring, vanilla — then what’s the point? Instead of wandering through the marketplace of “sexualities,” you can just skip all that and be normal.

To quote a legendary philosopher: “There is no bisexual. You either [perform fellatio], or you do not [perform fellatio].”

Let’s assume that we know where Sophie Turner stands on that issue. What we need to know (and I mention this only because she herself has made it a matter of public knowledge) is the extent of her own “bisexual” experimentation. How old was she? Who were her partners? Exactly what did they do? Was it her and Maisie Williams? Because I think I speak for millions of guys who could imagine that scenario in cinematic detail.

However vivid our imaginations may be (and trust me, I’ve got the whole gauzy, soft-focus Guccione-photographed scene in my mind), it’s really unfair for Sophie Turner to hint vaguely about her “bisexual” experimentation without offering details. And pictures, preferably. It might be too much to expect “SOPHIE TURNER GAY SEX TAPE” headlines from TMZ, but don’t tell me she didn’t at least get some pictures of her sapphic episodes. “Kids these days,” eh?

How many teenage boys have gone to jail because they decided to record cellphone video of their gang-bang? This use of cellphone images as sexual souvenirs, so to speak, is now commonplace, yet you expect me to believe Sophie Turner has no pictures to prove she’s “bisexual”?

No way. Give us details and photos, or we don’t believe you.

Pics or it didn’t happen, Sophie.