Scientology's Glamorous New Friends [Gossip Roundup]

• Game over, Scientology wins, they have Pete Doherty and Sumner Redstone. Viacom chairman Redstone hasn't actually converted but did have lunch with Scientology bigshot Tom Cruise, probably canceling in his area a personal and business rift with the actor and paving the way for more sweet Mission Impossible money. Doherty has been reading up on the religion and shacking up with a Scientologist DJ who probably hasn't yet mentioned the religion's stance on psychoactive drugs.
• Accidental gay porno fan (and singer) John Mayer posted a long rambly blog "about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog... who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man." Then, mercifully, "I'm going quiet now." [JohnMayer.com]
• Star overlord Bonnie Fuller said singer Britney Spears' parents are "pimps" who treat their daughters like "cash registers" and "bank machines." To back this up, the American Media editorial director has both an anonymous quote and a book-plugging psychiatrist. Air. Tight. [HuffPo]
• There's talk of a Hills movie. Well, of course there is. The question is, have they stockpiled enough stares. [MTV]
• Hills stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt "work on their relationship" by going to Vegas and staying in different rooms, in different hotels and barely talking. Actually, that is seriously a dream vacation for some couples. [People]
• Atress Lindsay Lohan will play a member of the Manson family. [E! Online]
• She's supposedly jetting off to rehab soon, but singer Amy Winehouse still can't manage to get to the jail on time to visit her husband. [Sun]

Obama Ad Seeks Dirty Mexicans, Light-Skinned Black, Authentication [Craigslist]

This Craigslist ad looks like a casting call for a Barack Obama campaign commercial in Los Angeles, though of course it could easily be a ploy by pranksters or supporters of Obama's Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton. The ad wants the whole rainbow of America, and is very specific about the composition of each stripe: "Middle Aged Hispanic Men (worker class/laborer look)... An Indian Female (From INDIA)... 3 black women, various shades... An Asian Female Thai or Philipino (darker)... (3) Caucasian girls, teen - 25." Well, this should certainly help further that substantive, stereotype-free racial discussion Obama called for! Image of the ad after the jump, and if you have any idea whether the poster is real or affiliated with Obama, we'd love to hear about it.

Just Like Tom Wolfe's Blues [Bear Stearns]

In Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man In Full, big-time real estate developer Charlie Croker becomes a religious evangelical as his once-vast wealth dissolves. The same thing seems to be happening to Bear Stearns chairman and former CEO James Cayne, who played golf and bridge and maybe smoked pot as his firm crumbled, and whose horde of Stearns shares is now worth maybe one-twentieth its value a year ago. Cayne is selling all those shares. Like Croker, he considers such worldly possessions baggage and, to hear the Times tell it, is on the verge of some kind of spiritual awakening:

People who have spoken with Mr. Cayne say that he, like everyone at Bear, was stunned by the firm’s precipitous collapse and the rock-bottom price of its sale. In the past weeks, together with his wife, Patricia Cayne, who is a student of Jewish religious traditions, Mr. Cayne has spent considerable time searching for comparable events in religious history to see what lessons can be learned from the collapse of his firm, said a person who has spoken to him recently...

While Mr. Cayne has not publicly said why he sold his shares, people who know him say that it suggests a need to separate himself, emotionally as well as financially, from the firm that for so long had been part of every fiber of his being and that now had become a source of pain and disappointment.

Here's a taste of Wolfe's Croker, from A Man In Full, after his corporate meltdown and religious conversion:

"...You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there'll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you. 'You have priceless silver and goblets of gold,' said the philosopher, 'but your reason is of common clay.' As of this morning, I am as rich as the richest of you, for I am hereby handing over anything I own, the Croker Global Corporation, every last branch of it..."

"I don't know what you're like," Croker was saying, "but if you're like most uv'us here is Atlanta, you're driving yourself crazy over possessions. Just think about that for a second..."

"I can tell you that the only real possession you'll ever have is your character, that and your 'scheme of life,' you might say. The Manager has given every person a spark from His own divinity, and no one can take that away from you, not even the Manager himself, and from that spark comes your character. Everything else is temporary and worthless in the long run..."

"But you say, 'I'd rather die than sit down beside the road with a Dixie cup, begging.' Do you realize what you're really saying? You're saying, 'It ain't what I'm gonna eat or where I'm gonna stay I'm worrying about, it's saving face, it's what everybody in Buckhead's gon' think about me..."

Times: Down $900 Million or More, the Chairman of Bear Sells

Al Jazeera Too Araby For American Anchor [Evil Corporations In Action]

The top American anchor on Al Jazeera English left the controversial Qatar-based news network because, he said, the whole thing was getting a little too Middle Eastern. According to the Times, "headquarters in Doha provided more and more direction about the assignment of stories and the point of view... the English-language channel started to more closely resemble its larger sibling, the prominent Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera, he said." Americans and Brits have been upset about funding and alleged political interference for months. Things looked much different two years ago, when the anchor, Dave Marash, braved Stephen Colbert's show to champion the channel, arguing that Al Jazeera's English-language channel was virtually autonomous from the Arabic channel in Qatar:

See also this video of Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee's Fox-style makeover of Al Jazeera English.

Subscribe with an RSS reader Older News Archive Add news to your web site