(Some things to think about as we gear up for another week)
-Clinton's, Campbell's and Karl's Questionable Calculations...
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Hillary Clinton (in handling the demise of her presidential campaign), Naomi Campbell (in not being in the RIGHT place at the right time), and Karl Lagerfeld (in his response to the death of the man that, more than likely, made him a better designer) all committed public relation gaffes in woefully awkward form...
Upon becoming aware of what would be the undisputed fact that Senator Obama had achieved the number of delegates necessary to clinch the Democratic Presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton appeared as an especially spoiled sport by continuing to assert in a speech given to her retinue that same evening that (if you follow her fuzzy math) she had won more of the popular vote- instead of making the grand gesture of uniting the Democratic party by ackowledging Obama had made history on that night by becoming the first African-American to clinch a major party presidential nod. This would be yet another episode that continues to cement the African-American community's strained relationship with anything Clinton as of late. On top of that, her campaign finds itself $30 million in debt- which she is supposedly now negotiating with the Obama campaign to take on! My question is: Why can't she use some of her reported $105 million dollars in income that the Clinton's have amassed since leaving the White House in the 90's to satisfy her debt? If a multi-millionaire like Hillary can negotiate with the DNC to have her $30 million campaign debt taken care of, can a brother get his $400 Amex bill paid?
Karl Lagerfeld's and Naomi Campbell's, errr, "indiscretion" is chronicled in The Fashionista Files (see below). Hint: it has something to do with the biggest fashion tragedy of the YEAR...
-Ed McMahon and Evander Holyfield continued the trend which most recently felled Latrell Sprewell by becoming the latest celebrity millionaires to land on the home foreclosure chopping block. McMahon is some $660,000 behind on his $4.5 million dollar mortgage, while Holyfield's $10 million Georgia home is slated for auction on July 1st (all of this while he is $6,000 behind on child support payments for one of his nine children!) Let's just hope that the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has straightened out her payments on her Detroit manse...
"STAY IN YOUR LANE"
-According to The New York Times, the most powerful woman in media is reportedly in trouble. There may be some cracks in the Oprah Winfrey machine, as she faces dwindling viewer ratings on her talk show, a decline in readership of her 'O' Magazine (which is STILL fantastic!), and a dirth of criticism for her foray into new-age spiritualism by choosing Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" as her eponymous Book of the Month club reading selection.
There are a number of theories out there trying to explain why some of her most avid followers may have stopped drinking the Kool Aid, but I have my own feelings about it. If you ask me, all of this is attributable to the "stay in your lane" philosophy that yes, even OPRAH, should be aware of. Just as you wouldn't go to a Chinese restaurant for soul food (or vise versa, hopefully), some might feel that that Ms. Winfrey is trying to sell them something that they did not ask her for. I myself sometimes have to stop short of WORSHIPPING Winfrey for her intelligence, business acumen, and commitment to the betterment of ALL people, but I think she may have made a misstep in her endorsement of a political candididate. While I totally do not begrudge Ms. Winfrey her right to vote and fight for who she would like to see in the White House in January, I submit that there are apparently still some personal choices that, as a public figure (dare I say, servant?) who opens her life to the world, may be best left that way for fear of reprisal in one's business ventures. "When we want to figure out how to live our best life, we go to Oprah. However, we don't go to her for political advice. People don't look to Oprah for that", says a close associate (who also happens to be a Barack Obama supporter).
The only time Winfrey has opined publicly (and coincidentally, was hit with a lawsuit as a result), was in 1998 when the U.S. was embroiled in dialogue about how to handle the threat of mad cow disease. After an expert on her show shared his criticism of farmers feeding processed livestock meat to cattle by intimating that it is a contributing factor to the occurence of mad cow disease, Winfrey famously uttered that his remarks "just stopped me cold from eating another burger." Immediately, the cattle industry claimed Winfrey's program caused beef prices to fall to a 10-year low within a week. The industry sued her under Texas' food disparagement law, which protects agriculture products from false and defamatory remarks (she ultimately prevailed).
Her "beef trial" aside, she has been adept at sidestepping controversy. She has done this mainly by sharing her favorite things, her heartfelt interviewing skills, and her unlimited world access with her audience and allowing them to make their own decisions about what they see. However, when people feel like she is TELLING them what she thinks they should do, there arises a mini-mutiny on the Winfrey bounty. My prediction is that, unfortunately, as she continues to offer her services in the Obama campaign, these downward trends will continue. Politics, especially this campaign season, has proven to be particularly divisive along racial, gender, AND foreign policy lines, and some people appear surprised that Winfrey, with her "United Nations" audience, would risk losing the Nielson ratings that this very delicate balance of ethnicities deliver to her daily, and that gird and support her media hegemony. However, at the end of the day Oprah has more money than God and more courage than The Cowardly Lion after his pilgrimage to Oz, so it obviously won't matter that much.
However, two other individuals might want to reconsider their behavior...
Rocsi, the Dominican chica who is one-half of the hosting team on BET's most popular program ("106 & Park"), might definitely rue the day she decided to step outside her "lane" and blast Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's latest album as "garbage". Though the Chicago native is hardly the affable television personality that Winfrey is, Rocsi is shown on a video repeatedly telling people that if they have to choose between her homeboy Kanye West's CD and 50's CD, they should buy Kanye's because 50's CD is "garbage"...
With regard to the "stay in your lane" issue...
One might say that NOBODY goes to Rocsi for her musical critiques! The only thing
Sharon Stone has also had "foot-in-mouth" problems recently when discussing her view on the China "Syndrome"...
The actress is another one who should probably "stay in her lane". When asked if she heard about the devastating earthquake that rocked China recently, the actress (who is best known for her movie
ok...Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but...It might be said that people look to Sharon Stone to appear in movies, baring her body parts and murdering the craft of acting. They also might look to her to spearhead the movement to fund AIDS research. They do NOT look to her to comment on foreign policy! Stay in your lane, Sharon...I'm just saying...
-The cracks in the Bush administration continue to falter, as former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan upset the entire Republican establishment with the publication of his book, "What Happened?". McClellan, by asserting in his book that the Bush administration "shaded the truth" of intelligence reports leading up to the Iraq war, basically re-iterated the claims made by former Bush aide Richard Clarke (whom McClellan himself ridiculed when Clarke made the same claims years ago). Interestingly enough, both McClellan's and Clarke's claims seem to be backed up by the newly released Senate Intelligence Report, which says both the State and Energy Department intelligence agencies raised red flags concerning the Bush Administrations "Weapons of Mass Destruction" claims in Iraq. Yet, no one (except former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich) has raised the possibility of impeaching George Bush, or at least to charge him with war crimes...Wow...
Even through all of this,in a time when the majority of Americans feel this war was a mistake and want an immediate pullout, according to a recent poll there seems to be a statistical dead-heat between the Democratic presidential candidate that utilized stern judgement in his opposition to the war in the first place and the "pseudo-maverick" disguised as the Republican presidential candidate that not only voted for the war in the first place but has been adamant about his intention to continue said war should he claim victory in November. Go figure!!!
-Sulu no longer has to be Solo...
As California readies for the FINAL word on same-sex marriage, George Takei (Mr. Sulu of "Star Trek" fame) prepares to go where no (gay) man (in California) has gone before on September 14th of this year, when he plans to marry Brad Altman, his partner of 20 years. He joins
I wonder who the first BLACK celebrity will be to announce his/her same-sex wedding in California? Hmmmmm...
-In a week of coincidences, 50 Cent's baby mama's house gets burned down not long after a brutal court battle he's been in with her over said property, and an alleged steroid dealer is found dead in his home in the same week that Barry Bonds pleads not guilty for the second time that that he has taken steroids...Again, I'm just sayin...-Meanwhile, Florida schoolteacher Danielle Jones is being charged with going on all-night sexual benders, threesomes and the like with a 14, 15, and two 16-year-old students. While the "cosmetically-challenged" Jones is no Debra LaFave (who, when charged with the same crime, pleaded that she was too pretty to go to jail), will they come down harder on her because she is, errrr, less attractive than LaFave?
Anyway, on to the pop culture minutiae that we ALL pore over...Here are the questions going through my head as we close out this week...
1- How GREAT does Serena Williams look on the July cover of Ebony magazine?
1a- With almost a year under her belt in her new job, isn't Harriet Cole doing a PHENOMENAL job as the magazine's new Creative Director?
2-Does anybody REALLY believe that Sean Combs and Cameron Diaz are an item?
3-Is it me, or has Lil Kim's surgery started looking...pretty?
4- What did YOU think of the "Sex And The City" movie? Was it worth the wait?
5- Isn't Fox-TV's "So You Think You Can Dance" INFINITELY better than both Bravo's "Step It Up and Dance" and MTV's "Randy Jackson's America's Best Dance Crew" combined?
THE FASHIONISTA FILES
1- Let's get the "elephant in the room" out of the way first...
Alber Elbaz, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Stefano Pilati, Giambattista Valli, Riccardo Tisci, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Hubert de Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix and Valentino all attended Yves Saint Laurent's funeral this past Thursday in Paris. However... there WERE a couple of conspicuous absences from YSL's funeral. Now, I wasn't there (and if you were, maybe you can help me out), but nowhere in the press was it mentioned that Naomi Campbell (who is currently the FACE of YSL!) attended the service, and Karl Lagerfeld (who, as chronicled in the book "The Beautiful Fall", is well-known to have been Monseiur Saint Laurent's fashion arch-enemy) carried his grudge with Saint Laurent to the grave by not paying his respects in person. In all fairness, Mr. Lagerfeld DID send a floral arrangement (?). But what about La Campbell? Past YSL Muses Ines de la Fressange, Laetitia Casta, Farida Khelfa and Betty Catroux, as well as Catherine Deneueve (carrying a bouquet of wheat) where all in attendance, why couldn't Naomi make it? I guess the $400,000 she was reportedly paid to be the YSL spokeswoman didn't include tickets on the Concorde...
2- How HOT was it for Ashley Olsen to wear a timeless YSL tuxedo to the CFDA awards? I tell you, you CAN'T read those Olsen twins...
WE REMEMBER....
Yves Saint Laurent
The world of couture got a lot smaller this week with the death of the prodigious Yves Saint Laurent. His longtime companion and business partner Pierre Berge was quite succinct when he said at the funeral, "Chanel and you were the great couturiers of the twentieth century. She of the first half, you the second."
Yves Saint Laurent was bid a final farewell in appropriately reverent form, as nearly 1,000 guests--and hundreds more onlookers--bottlenecked the immediate area around the Eglise Saint-Roch on Thursday to mourn one of France's national treasures.
As Saint Laurent's coffin arrived at the 17th-century church on the Rue Saint-Honoré, the crowd of bystanders delivered several rounds of applause reverberated from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and
FLASHBACK...
For this week's flashback, I give you a woman who would likely be one of the first black gay celebrities to take advantage of California's same-sex marriage stance. Remember...Me'Shell NdegeOcello's "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)"?
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