Here's former political person Sarah Palin continuing her weird quest to endorse Newt Gingrich without really endorsing him, telling weekend Fox News muppet Jeanine Pirro that Republicans should vote for Newt Gingrich now to "rage against the machine" and "annoy a liberal."
Dating Drew Barrymore isn't the only thing that Fabrizio Moretti and Justin Long have in common. They also share a birthday. Fabrizio is turning 29 today, while Justin is turning 31. Others celebrating: Times columnist Frank Rich is turning 60. American Express CEO Ken Chenault turns 58. Princeton professor Cornel West is 56. Westchester DA-turned-TV judge Jeanine Pirro turns 58. Hairdresser-turned-movie producer Jon Peters is 64. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is 57. Dana Carvey is turning 54. Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts turns 68. Dennis Haysbert is 55. Nikki Cox turns 31. And comedian Wayne Brady is 37 today.
♦ Don't get your hopes up, but supposedly Madonna and Guy Ritchie are hoping to settle their divorce by early next week. Until then, though, we'll be treated to lots more gossip about their wacky marriage, including the set of rules Madonna posted on the wall of their Central Park West apartment and how she wanted to fill up their Olympic-size swimming pool with Kabbalah water. [NYP, Daily Mail]
♦ You think your house is complete chaos? For their stay in Berlin, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have six full-time nannies and a fleet of 20 Volkswagens (provided to them by the car company gratis, of course). [NYDN]
♦ Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former presidential contender John Edwards, was spotted without her wedding ring at an event Monday night. Now the talk is that the couple isn't living together anymore either. [P6]
♦ Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are supposedly feuding because Ashley wants a boob job, but doesn't want to get one unless Mary-Kate goes under the knife at the same time. [Star]
♦ NBC's Ben Silverman says he hasn't managed the "unrelenting press attention" as well as he could have, and he's doing better than most people assme, a sentiment echoed by his close pal, Donny Deutsch. [TVDecoder]
♦ Harbinger's Phil Falcone says he has no plans to dump his investment in the New York Times. [Reuters]
♦ MTV is pulling the plug on TRL. [WSJ]
♦ Mark your calendars: Jeanine Pirro's court show debuts next week. [HuffPo]
♦ Current and former staffers at the LA Times are planning to file suit against owner Sam Zell. [LA Observed]
♦ How writers in Hollywood are dealing with the "new comedic landscape." [NYO]
♦ Product placements have earned less airtime on network TV compared with the same period last year, according to Nielsen. [AdAge]
♦ How the financial meltdown will affect Hollywood. [THR]
♦ Jeff Zucker, Mel Karmazin and Steven Rattner weigh in on the state of the media biz. [Portfolio]
Tax-evading wiretapper Jeanine Pirro, who might have knowingly tried to put an innocent man in jail this one time, lost a tooth on Geraldo last night when God became tired of her relentless lies and decided to punish her live on Fox News. The tooth, or maybe it was some sort of cosmetic cap designed to fraudulently misrepresent her evil-infested mouth, fell off right when she was saying something about how Democrats aren't really democratic because they have superdelegates. Geraldo just laughed at her and pretended to listen as she kept talking, but then later he said she had "consulted her dentist and is now back from the break ." You'll probably laugh too, at her and not with her:
Pirro is Westchester's former district attorney, a perpetual candidate for political office, TV personality, and walking trainwreck.
When we last saw Jeanine Pirro, she was in hot water over a jewelry business she had set up with taxpaying-averse husband Al. Now the former Westchester D.A. has bigger fish to fry: Turns out that while she was still in office, she secretly recorded her on-the-job conversations, one of which suggests that she "failed to disclose evidence that could have helped a man whom Ms. Pirro subsequently charged with murder." Oh, also, she asked an investigator to destroy them. And now a federal jury wants to hear more. This brings the number of investigations concerning Pirro up to seven thousand and forty-two (figure accurate as time of writing; there may be a couple more by time of publication). The more we think about it, the more we are starting to regret not electing Neaner as state district attorney. Secret taping, financial shenanigans, withholding evidence, destroying evidence... is there anything she can't do? (Maybe hard time.)
On the heels of good news about her TV show, former politico Jeanine Pirro must now face an bead investigation. As part of a wider probe into her potential wiretapping naughtiness as Westchester district attorney, Pirro's embarrassing hobby of crafting beaded necklaces and selling them to acquaintances has also drawn the feds' attention. (This is, for our money, potentially an even more embarrassing personal quirk than her husband's yacht-bound ass-fingering.) So what's the story on those beads?
If you want something badly enough, you'll put up with any amount of humiliation to get it: That's the lesson to be drawn from former Westchester D.A. Jeanine Pirro, who suffered through two humiliating statewide campaigns last year in which her incompetence, arrogance, colorful marital life, and association with shady underworld figure Bernard Kerik were put on display so frequently that even some of her greatest detractors had to look away. No matter. The Post is reporting that Neaner has gotten what she wanted all along:
We'll miss you, Jeanine Pirro. You lost the New York attorney general's job to Andrew Cuomo, who's just garden variety sleazy on occasion. How could anyone compare to your wire-tapping amore? Your relentless belligerence when caught in impropriety? Your weakness for man about town and fellow disgraced politico Bernard Kerik? You even inspired us to song. Despite a wooden attempt at reconcilation with her estranged nutty husband, most predict at least a future in TV for Pirro. She's brave enough to wear red, so anything is possible.
Yeah, okay, that Cindy Adams piece on Neaner: We didn't want to read it any more than we wanted to read the New York piece, but you people can be so damn insistent. So here you go: Cindy is friendly with the Pirros. She knew a lot of stuff that she wouldn't print because she's a good friend. Then Al went and blabbed to New York, so now she can tell you everything that New York told you, i.e., the Pirros have a troubled marriage, Neaner worries that Al is "doing it" to his lawyer's wife, Al swears a lot, mostly while he's eating dinner alone. You can sort of tell that Cindy's pissed, but not pissed enough to give you anything good. In fact, there are exactly two interesting things about this piece: One, an agitated Jeanine apparently speaks in the exact same clipped-sentence manner in which Cindy writes most of her items. ("I was a kid from Elmira. He was president of his law-school class. Won competitions. Made everybody laugh. We all knew he was a superstar. Dashing, charming, smart, brightest guy I ever met. And generous.") Two: The logo that they break out for a Cindy Adams exclusive is scary as shit.
The hits just keep coming for the Pirro campaign: Today's Post reports that she was instrumental in steering "a no-bid contract to Bernard Kerik and Rudy Giuliani's security firm, rebuffing protests about the arrangement." Pirro's spokesman rationalizes the sweetheart deal: "In order to guarantee that A & P met her high standards, she wanted to use a best-in-class firm to monitor A & P's compliance with the law." We're inclined to accept that account: when it comes to monitoring, Kerik is clearly Neaner's go-to guy. Elsewhere, Ben Smith notes the following quote Pirro delivered at a recent fundraiser: "I will not be bowed, I will not bend over...", which, if nothing else, goes a long way toward explaining why Al would want to fuck that other broad.
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You'll have bad times
And he'll have good times
Doing things that you don't understand
But if you love him you'll forgive him
Even though he's hard to understand
And if you love him
Oh be proud of him
'Cause after all he's just a man
Stand by your man
Give him two arms to cling to
And something warm to come to
When nights are cold and lonely
Stand by your man
And tell the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man
New York's two major tabs rarely agree on anything but, in a heart-warming moment of unanimity, they're in accordance on one issue this morning: Lisa Santangelo, the woman with whom Jeanine Pirro suspected her husband was having sleazy boat romp sex, is "stunning." Also "young" and "brunette," although the News finds her "elegant," while the Post, presumably from lack of familiarity with the word, eschews the extra color. Everyone involved is denying that the affair occurred, but if Al Pirro did in fact stick it to Lisa Santangelo, wife of the attorney who represented him in the tax-fraud case that resulted in an eleven month prison sentence, you've got to give him credit: It's rare that you can screw two lawyers simultaneously without fucking either of them.
Republican candidate for New York state attorney general Jeanine Pirro may have the worst luck of any would-be politician ever, but that doesn't mean she can't deliberately act to make things even worse. Faced with — and admitting to — a probe regarding her conversation with disgraced former police commissioner Bernard Kerik about planting a bug on her husband's boat to catch his philandering, Pirro has chosen to go on the offensive. At a press conference today, an angry Pirro exclaimed, "There needs to be a federal investigation of the felony of leaking sealed court documents ... That's the only crime that occurred here. And it's an outrage to the people of this state." Outrage heaped upon outrage! However, what we'd really like to see is the transcript of those recorded phone calls to Kerik, as an agitated Pirro is said to describe her naughty husband-bugging intentions in "profanity-laced terms." No luck finding the transcripts online, but if you see 'em, let us know.
It's like watching a mortally wounded animal. You're only sorry that it has to suffer and that there's nothing you can do about it.
