Another model is making the transition to acting, against all odds. Also today: Two ladies, real ladies, are directing movies, Starz cuts off the head of King Arthur, and Vince Vaughn is going to shock you.
Who's the last remaining initial member of President Obama's core economic team? The one people really don't like, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. But this job and his term as president of the New York Fed immediately proceeding it are exhausting him. It's backbreaking work, hoisting that money-launching cannon aimed at bankers all day. He's ready to quit.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo became the nation's progressive superhero and pre-determined 2016 Democratic nominee for president just last week, with the legalization of same-sex marriage. So what's next for this once-in-a-generation liberal lion? How about ditching the state's moratorium on dangerous hydraulic fracturing for natural gas? Hmm.
In your pleasant Thursday media column: Mark Halperin's Obama's-a-pussy flashback, Ashton Kutcher vs. the Village Voice, Greta Van Susteren calls for more outrage, an angry subject sues David Grann, and Brits are coming for you news.
Here's a trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy a very classy looking adaptation of the novel by the great John le Carré. It's chock-full of notable British actors so you know it has to be good. And will make absolutely no money.
Over in the U.K. they like to stand by their traditions and do things a certain way. That still doesn't excuse Carolyn Bourne from sending an overly bitchy email to her future daughter-in-law, Heidi Withers, about her "rude behavior." Who is ruder here?
Go figure, Google might have face some consequences for hoovering up emails, passwords and other personal information from people's unsecured wi-fi networks with its Street View cars for years. A judge just ruled the company can be held liable for the so-called Wi-Spy fiasco. It's good to see that Google, which so far has escaped any major punishment from U.S. regulators, must now face the wrath of the people it spied on. [Wired, image via dspain/Flickr]
The Republican party's ability to spontaneously organize around anything, just to show that they can, is a thing of beauty. President Obama wants a few hundred billion dollars in revenue increases to go along the $2 trillion in cuts that you want? Don't give in a cent, walk out, let the president excoriate you, and then get your entire 47-member Senate caucus to demand a comical balanced budget constitutional amendment as part of a debt-ceiling agreement, too.
Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a "fair and balanced" counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the "prejudices of network news" and deliver "pro-administration" stories to heartland television viewers.
The Federal Election Commission gets it — Stephen Colbert is punking them. But they treated his request for an advisory opinion like anyone else, and on Thursday granted him the ability to form a "super PAC" and have his parent company Viacom pay for most of the costs of the PAC's activities without having to disclose most expenditures as in-kind donations.
It's not exactly news that a lot of house paint colors have wacky names. But they have apparently become even more wacky as paint companies become increasingly desperate to sell to a U.S. homeowner population so behind on their mortgage payments they're papering their walls with free subway newspapers.
