
Katie Holmes helps daughter Suri cross the street. Of course, Suri has been walking since three minutes after she exited Katie's mechanical womb, so this is no big deal. Still cute though.
The [movie] industry certainly doesn't help. Success doesn't help. ... She needs to get out of Hollywood," he said of Lindsay, to whom he has not spoken in months. She needs to be on Long Island with her family and just have us around her like she did when she did her best.
He hasn't seen her for months. They're friends but that's it.
David's performance was so slick and assured it's clear the advice from Tom has been rubbing off. David has always been quite shy in front of the cameras. ... He's got a squeaky Cockney accent normally and he talked into his chest. While wife Victoria could turn on the charm, David always looked uncomfortable with that side of fame and preferred to do his talking on the pitch. But Tom's being drumming into him that Americans expect their stars to be able to be all-singing, all-dancing.
I love her with all my heart. I like the way she walks and talks. I love her bones. I love her brain.
There's been this lockdown and I can't get hold of her. This is the only way I can get through. ... I need her to know that she's out of her fucking mind. Kate, if you love me then realise I don't want any other girl. ... Do I still love her? Don't ask me that question. Why do you think I'm here today talking to you? I'm here to tell her that I love her. ... Fucking hell man, why does she read the Daily Mirror, anyway? She moans all the time about the fucking paparazzi then first thing in the morning she's got to buy your paper.
Kate - a nasty old rag. We fell out for the same old reason. She accused me of fucking this girl who lives around the corner. ... We were watching a DVD together and Kate started going "I could tell by the way you were sitting back there that you've fucked her." I said "You're out of your fucking mind." ... I was really up for some peace and love that morning. I wasn't up for being called a cock and being kicked in the head. ... She's got an awful temper. I grabbed a guitar and books and said "I'm never going to be treated this way again."
I made rather a rash gesture. It was more in a fit of anger. I asked this bird Christine to marry me. ... She's gone back to Paris and I don't know what to do.
They gave me an anti-drugs implant. I was under very, very heavy sedation. Then they gave me a sticker warning the emergency services that I shouldn't be given any morphine. All my receptors are now blocked which means I can't enjoy the recreational use of Class A drugs. Inside, I feel a little more chirpy than I have for a long, long time. But that's only because there's a degree of stability around me that I haven't had for some time. ... The drugs have taken their toll. But I'm mending. The implant was only done a day and a half ago and I'm still healing up. It's going to take a couple of weeks for me to clean up. My arms especially. It's been dark. But I've come out of rehab a new man. ... I had the choice of prison or making some attempt to contain a wilfully dissolute lifestyle. But I was already booked in. It was always just a question of when I did it. I'm on a heavy course of antibiotics and sedatives. For a couple of weeks I'm just going to be a bit of a bag of bones. But I'm confident I can clean up.
We have a great respect for Jay Leno, but we are disappointed in the path he chose to allow a guest to make light of a very serious situation concerning Lindsay.
When Mrs. Lohan stops partying with her child, then I'll have an ounce of respect for her.
I don't care if her parents are both crummy – you cannot blame your parents anymore. She's not a kid.
I hope she does okay but at a certain point, there's so many bigger problems in the world than Lindsay Lohan. ... I hope she gets her head out of her nice, cute little rear end and finds a life for herself. ... She's very talented, and a special little actress but there are so many people out there who'd trade positions with her in a heartbeat and use it better than she is.
Jude plans to take her on a series of dinner dates this week and just spend some time hanging out. Cameron and Jude really bonded while working together but now that friendship has turned to romance.
[Barron] was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris. He now doesn't want to leave unearned wealth to his family.
The Really Bad Girls
Those who collude in the public degradation of gifted young women are beneath contempt.
Bidisha
Saturday July 28, 2007
The Guardian
Who doesn't love to speculate about good girls gone bad? Well, people who like and respect women don't. Nor do people who recognise that the rules prescribing what constitutes a "good" female are bigoted and hypocritical. A good girl is charming and comely, and never does anything to upset the status quo. A good girl does not dare to challenge the position society has put her in. A good girl is the ideal helpmeet for a man, with neither a hair nor a thought out of place.
So it's a nasty shock for reactionaries to see Lindsay Lohan's latest police mugshot, in which she sends a fabulous look of "Yeah, I've been arrested. So what?" straight through the camera into the miasma of prurient dreck that is pop culture. So Lohan likes a drink. What's the problem? Women get drunk, fall over and hit the double standard face first. Further proof that womankind is pushing things a step too far is the news that Britney Spears acted brattishly at a recent photoshoot, wiping her hands on one dress and letting her pooch defecate on another.
Again, so what? Male power players have been abusing subordinates ever since they created the first hierarchies. Nobody points out that male violence is destroying the world. A drunk young rich guy is a crazed creative genius and cultural messiah who lives on the edge; his female counterpart is a sad strumpet. Or, in Britney's case, it's all put down to her ongoing "meltdown".
That is not to say that I want to even things up by watching talented women sabotage themselves with as much dedication as men. There is no glory in substance abuse or depression. They are debilitating conditions, deeply saddening for any friend, family or fan who must watch, wondering how they might help. But the avid readers of What Lindsay/Britney Did Next are not wondering that. The people who like to see a good girl go bad do so not because it provides young women with a vicarious means of joyful rebellion, but because they like watching a gifted woman get destroyed.
The strategy is the same whether we're talking pop princesses or actual ones. First, the target is goaded, speculated about. She is said to be too fat, too thin, unstable, unprofessional, a bad mother. Then, understandably, she begins to freak out and unwittingly vindicates the gossip. Then she is hounded some more until something - an arrest, an accident, a scandal, an eating disorder, a suicide - degrades her so much that the public finally sits back, satisfied that another promising female has been taken out of action.
The media that deal in pop freakouts don't report these stories so much as create them. If Britney Spears has had any kind of meltdown, who can blame her? She is followed wherever she goes by stalker-violators: some have cameras and call themselves paparazzi; some have notebooks and call themselves journalists; some have vaginas and call themselves concerned women of the world. All relish the harassment that they perpetrate. It is women (writers and readers) who are enjoying and encouraging the exposure of Lohan's drink and drugs hell or Spears's identity crisis, while saving space for a snide comment about their outfits. It is women who are getting off on other women's difficulties, while men in power carouse, abuse (and self-abuse) with impunity.
Who are the real "bad girls"? Not Lohan or Spears. The gossip magazines may be as punchy as a dose of Splenda, but they offer evidence that women have obediently taken on the values of a woman-hating world. We must recognise the part women play in the degradation of women: the ultimate betrayal.
Bidisha is a novelist and arts critic
contactbidisha@hotmail.com
Of the four Spencer children, Diana was the slowest. Because of her slowness, she was easily found out in her preposterous fibs.
Apparently she didn't have the courage to write her own letter ... in adulthood Diana became more, rather than less devious.
The saddest thought of all is that Diana's death may have resulted indirectly from another of her kack-handed manipulations; it is said that she only went to Paris with Dodi Fayed in order to make heart surgeon Hasnat Khan jealous.
Diana was never a fashion icon; she dressed to the same demotic standard of elegance as TV anchorwomen do, plus the inevitable hat. ... It is precisely because she was basically anonymous that Diana's public could so easily identify her.
Her habit of popping up in the midst of other people's life crises must have startled some of her victims.
Diana's legacy is no more than endless column inches of adulation and speculation.
Britney felt a lot of her recent troubles started and stopped with Shannon. ... Britney thought [Shannon] was talking badly about her. She was very rude and Britney felt she was letting business emails fall by the wayside.