Stephen Colbert Walks Off The View“You understand, Bill [O’Reilly] was talking about emotion,” he said “Bill was not talking about what the facts were.”
Ivanka Trump Gives Us the FingerThe ring finger, that is. While the newly engaged heiress worked the phones at a charity event, we snapped a photo of her giant rock.
J-Vanka a Step Closer to Jew-VankaIvanka’s found a controversial rabbi to oversee her conversion so she can finally marry Jared Kushner and create perfect, Chosen offspring.
Busta Rhymes and Rob Schneider Are FriendsThe rapper and ‘Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ star hang at Marquee, Paris Hilton refuses to be photographed for the first time in her life, and Lance Armstrong and his new blonde enjoy their brief happiness, all in our daily roundup of the juice from today’s columns.
in other news
‘The View’ Darkly Celebrates Red Hook IkeaOn this morning’s show, everyone in the audience got free $200 gift cards — but the audience didn’t seem thrilled. And Whoopi was downright ominous: “Don’t forget, you’ll be putting it together, too.”
Live-Blogging Barack Obama on ‘The View’Barack Obama discussed taxes, Reverend Wright, and his inherent sexiness on ‘The View’ this morning. We followed it closely. When we weren’t being distracted by his big brown eyes.
in other news
Ladies Who LinkThose trawling for Internet porn are going to be in for a surprise in the coming months when they click on womenontheweb.com and get an eyeful of … 85-year-old gossip columnist Liz Smith. Smith and five other women — ex–publishing executive Joni Evans, advertising exec Mary Wells, political columnist and speechwriter Peggy Noonan, and 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl, purchased the domain name for a new Website directed at women over 40, and now, “when anyone looks for that porn site, they’re directed to us,” Evans tells the Times. Contributors to the site, which will combine Huffington Post–y political commentary and virtual View-like roundtable discussions, include Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, and Whoopi Goldberg. “It’s like when I used to live in a women’s dormitory 50 years ago,” fellow contributor Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners, told the Times. Although sorry, again, pornophiles: There’s no pillow-fighting in lingerie on this site, either.
Boldface in Cyberspace: It’s a Woman’s Domain [NYT]
WowOWow [Official site]
gossipmonger
Mick Jagger Is Friends With Leonardo DiCaprio and Q-Tip Bruce Willis yelled, “I’ve abandoned my son!” four times while dining at Freemans with an exotic dancer the other night, then did shots with the bartender. Mick Jagger, Q-Tip, and Leonardo DiCaprio were all hanging out at Upstairs on Monday night. Kathleen Turner’s Crimes of the Heart castmates can’t tell if she’s drunk or just tired. The Observer’s Spencer Morgan “bitch slapped” Men’s Vogue writer Hudson Morgan at the Beatrice Inn, but they made up soon after. Matthew McConaughey’s chest is at the top of In Touch Weekly’s list of Top Ten hot chests. Jason Bateman and Ricky Schroder are not working on a screenplay of Silver Spoons, although that would be awesome.
company town
Cravath’s Good Ol’ Boys Miss the Good Ol’ DaysLAW
• One old lawyer reminisces about his time at Cravath in the fifties and speculates on why big law used to be — used to be? — such a man’s world: “Obviously, male bigotry played a major role. But I think something else was involved — an attempt to protect certain values that mattered greatly to the practitioners of that time. They wanted a workplace free of the messiness of male-female relations. They liked to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ and be done with it. Women might bring distractions: flirtations, gossip, dating. No more male bonding.” Aw ! [American Lawyer]
• Everyone’s talking about Robert Morgenthau stepping down after 33 years as Manhattan D.A.— except Robert Morgenthau. [NYT]
• NYU Law School listserv smackdown! First e-mail: “I decided to compile a list of the easiest professors at NYU Law for those of us who: 1. Want an easy A, and 2. Don’t care about the grade and just want a B without doing a thing.” Second e-mail: “Does your mom still teach here? Because I heard that she’s REALLY easy.” Third e-mail: “If you came to NYU Law school thinking to take shortcuts to get easy As as opposed to taking classes that you would find challenging and helpful to your understanding of law practices, here’s my nugget of advice: save the money and go to a state law school.” Fourth e-mail: “We come to NYU to take made-up classes like ‘Jesus & the Constitution,’ ‘Inter-Animal Contracts,’ and ‘International Law.’ Coming to NYU for anything other than intellectual masturbation or an easy job is a waste of money.” [Above the Law]
intel
Just in Time for Hanukkah, Sherri Shepherd Explains Judaism AwayWe love Sherri Shepherd. Since she came on The View, the show has had more energy, more weaves, and a hell of a lot more on-camera drinking. Also, it’s had a lot more interesting Christian moments. Like today, when Sherri claimed that Jesus Christ arrived on Earth and started the Christian religion before anything else in history happened. During a discussion about the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341 B.C.–270 B.C.), the following debate popped up among a lot of cross chatter:
Whoopi: Keep in mind probably when he was around there was no Jesus going on.
Sherri: No, they had Christians back then.
[Cross talk]
Sherri: They had Christians, they threw them to the lions.
[Cross talk]
Whoopi: I think this might predate that.
Joy: They believed in polytheism.
Sherri: I don’t think anything predated Christians.
Joy: No, the ancient Greeks were earlier. It went Greeks, Romans, then Christians.
Sherri: Jesus came first before them.
Whoopi: [Gently, bless her] Not on paper.
Now, Sherri is not wrong about people in the Bible being thrown to the lions way before then. But people called them Jews then, because Jesus didn’t come until 300 years later. All in all, probably a fair mistake. Just not one we expected to hear in the same episode as Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul talking about aborting an 8-month-old baby.
The View [ABC]
gossipmonger
Lindsay Lohan Gives ‘Page Six’ the Chance to Use a ‘Retail Therapy’ Pun
Lindsay Lohan spent her Thanksgiving shopping in therapy and shopping in New York with her mom and sister, while her boyfriend spent it partying. David Wright bought jewelry for his mom for Christmas. Tory Burch has been dating both Paramount head Brad Grey and Katie Couric’s ex, Tom Werner. Whoopi Goldberg, who supports Bill Richardson for president, slammed John Edwards and Michelle Obama for canceling appearances on The View. Hayne Suthon, the owner of Lucky Cheng’s, has finally made peace with ex-husband Robert Jason. Jerry Seinfeld is planning to stick to stand-up, not movies. Alec Baldwin bought the cast of 30 Rock mozzarella sticks after their show at the Upright Citizens Brigade.
gossipmonger
It’s His PrerogativeBobby Brown beefed up security in Australia because he still thinks Osama bin Laden is after him. Former party girl Taylor Stein, who just had a baby with William Lauder, has dated a lot of very, very wealthy older men. A documentary producer claims Bobby Kennedy got into a shouting match with Marilyn Monroe the night she died, and not in the bedroom where her body was found. Mom of the Year Dina Lohan is being sued for allegedly failing to pay back a $400,000 loan she used to jump-start Lindsay’s music career. ABC misspelled Whoopi Goldberg’s name in a press release announcing her as the new host of The View. Rudy Giuliani made up for the fact that the Yankees lost Eric Gange to the Red Sox by raising $350,000 at a Greenwich fund-raiser. Chelsea Clinton tried, and failed, to quietly read Harry Potter on the 6 train. CBS News execs are not pleased with the performance of some of the company’s interns. Tyra Banks attended a party for her Air Force cadet brother, who is going to Iraq.
new york fugging city
Whoopi, Paris Win Fug Girls’ Real-Life Daytime Emmys
Friday’s Daytime Emmy Awards telecast will honor soap-opera actors for so artfully telling tales of babynapping, tainted face cream, faked deaths, and secret cancer. As a tribute to those invaluable contributions, we’d like to acknowledge some of their real-world counterparts, the hard-luck celebs starring in their own melodramas.
party lines
GLAAD Media Awards: A Night of Confusion
Cynthia Nixon showed up at last night’s GLAAD Media Awards as an out-and-proud lesbian — a big step, given her involuntary outing by gossip columns a few years back — but her showy $50,000 donation to the LGBT cause, announced by GLAAD president Neil Giuliano in front of a capacity crowd at the Marriot Marquis, came as an even bigger surprise. Particularly, as it turns out, to Nixon herself. “I don’t know if it was a joke or a case of mistaken identity,” she said when we bumped into her later. “I donated $1,000.” (This morning we were greeted with a voice message from a GLAAD flack setting the record straight, as it were.)
gossipmonger
Reliving HistoryJeff Gerth and Don Van Natta’s Hillary bio will come out in August and may cause ethics problems for her in the Senate. Bonnie Fuller worried she showed too much chest on TV; also, she was cold. Hooters won’t host a PETA book party, prompting bad jokes from a PETA exec. Newt Gingrich and Lally Weymouth ate lunch. Thora Birch’s dad watched her shoot sex scenes. Martin Scorsese wants Leo DiCaprio to play stock swindler Jordan Belfort. And he’s also making a movie about Queen Victoria, says Liz Smith, with Sarah Ferguson as a co-producer. Sean Penn spoke at an antiwar rally in Oakland, didn’t make much sense. Whoopi Goldberg and Kiefer Sutherland had brunch.
