Barry Diller turns 67 today. Gossip columnist Liz Smith is 86. Christie Brinkley is celebrating her 55th. Shakira is turning 32. The Food Network's Ina Garten, better known as the Barefoot Contessa, is 61. Veteran actress Elaine Stritch is turning 84. Marissa Jaret Winokur of Hairspray fame is 36. Farrah Fawcett is turning 62. And Dog the Bounty Hunter's Duane Chapman turns 56 today.
Confidential to Liz Smith: We're thinking it probably isn't the best idea to start off any of your FoxNews.com video segments by describing the New York Times as "staid" and "old." Sure, the Times was founded way back in 1851, but that means it's just 72 years older than you are. Click on the video to see the clip for yourself.
Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that Liz Smith lit after Madonna's ex so brutally in the Post today; she seems to just love Madonna. The singer's ex-husband Guy Ritchie, not so much: Smith writes that all three times the director worked with Madonna, Madonna played some kind of abused character, and so everyone should wonder if this "reflect[ed] home life — a meek and conciliatory Madonna." After implying Ritchie is a wife beater, Smith moved on to painting him as a gold digger; though the Times of London said Ritchie's divorce settlement would include "not a penny" of Madonna's fortune, Smith said he got much more:
Given she's 85 years old, you'll have to excuse gossip columnist Liz Smith for speaking so damn slowly. But that still doesn't mean we have any idea what she's talking about in this clip about Sarah Palin. After describing her as the "champion of the ordinary American person" and "half-Alaskan Amazon, half Venus of Willendorf"—and also pointing out that she has a "big, attractive family)—Smith explains what will happen if Palin doesn't win in November. She'll go back to Alaska and brush up on her foreign policy, Smith says, and then come back to Washington in four years and get elected president! Looks like someone forgot to take their Aricept pill this morning!
Here's the thing about gossip doyenne Liz Smith: She's 85 and really, really tried of the gossip scene, despite being paid to write a column on the topic. Hey, fair enough, she's earned her disillusionment. But Smith can't stop with the complaining! "There are very few really big stars these days, and that makes everything truly dull," she wrote in March. And a few weeks later: "There is already an absolute plethora of bullshit, manufactured photography, and speculation passing for gossip, and it will probably increase." New York magazine caught up with Smith for its 40th anniversary issue, and if anything she's grown even more dismissive of the whole scene, and even some of her own older work:
Lots of people are coming to the defense of Michael's, the media hangout that was subjected to a bruising review by Frank Bruni in the Times last week. Caroline Bankoff of the Observer chatted with David Patrick Columbia who says he found the review "ridiculous" and thought Frank Bruni was being excessively "bitchy." Elderly gossip Liz Smith (pictured here with Michael's owner, Michael McCarty) observed that no one goes there for the food, but that she's fond of the place for the "greeting" she receives and the "physical situation," whatever that means.
According to one editor of a celebrity weekly, it's the "last trip to the buffet table," as Britney Spears' gurney-bound trip to the hospital signaled the end of dish. If that seems a bit ominous, it may be because there is a discernible lull in glossy-packaged brain candy. "There's nothing going on in celebrity land. There's no news, no gossip, no scandal," whined a TV producer to Liz Smith a few months back. "The Oscars showed how dull things are. People are only interested in politics." It's true. Reliable pop tarts no longer yield Google results like they once did (at left, Paris Hilton's trend chart, which shows a baseline traffic drop of about two-thirds). Here are a handful of theories about what's happened:
On the safe-for-women news site WowoWow today, octogenarian Post gossip queen Liz Smith weighs in with her opinion of bosses: "My boss is an absolute total shit!" Goodness, Liz! "As I have a lot of bosses in this world just as newspaper, magazine-writing, TV-appearing, Internet-contributing souls all have, I will not identify just which particular boss this is," she adds. But of course, we know exactly who she's talking about.
As if its listicle of the "50 Most Powerful Women In NYC" were not journalistically dubious enough, the Post also had to use the list for shameless self promotion, putting two of its own columnists on the list. Granted, some of the non-Post choices were also highly questionable, like the editor-in-chief of Cookie magazine, socialite Ivanka Trump and former hooker Ashley Dupre. But how can you even begin to take the selection of, say, Post columnist Cindy Adams seriously when the first qualification listed for her is "she's got a sandwich named after her?" The Post's self-serving choices are after the jump.
Take a journey, if you will, into the secret inner chambers of New York's cultural elites. It's an exclusive club where well-dressed "raconteurs and bon vivants" chatter urbanely while tuxedoed waiters scurry about. Of course, their meetings are at noon on Tuesdays, their members are mostly over the hill, and they didn't admit women until 1991. Welcome to the Dutch Treat Club, the Algonquin Roundtable for 21st-century Manhattan olds who still like to drink and ogle girls!
When selecting a mate, Barbara Walters did not limit herself to utterly reprehensible closet cases. She also liked Senators! Walters revealed on Oprah today that she carried on a torrid affair with Edward Brooke, the first black man elected to the Senate after Reconstruction (no one ever remembers Hiram Rhodes Revels!), "for several years in the 1970's." It was never revealed publicly because Brooke was in the process of divorce and a re-election campaign (he lost the latter). Brooke is still alive. Fun fact: he had breast cancer! Well, maybe that's not very fun. Still. We certainly are learning a lot about the love lives of our elder ladies of journalism, aren't we? It was just last month that Liz Smith revealed that she's slept with 20 people (divided more or less evenly among ladies and gentlemen) in her 2,000 years on Earth. She didn't reveal if any of them were Senators, though. [AP]
Octogenarian gossip queen Liz Smith succinctly titled her recent blog post "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Who Still Cares? Millions Around the World Did. Some Still Do." What is she talking about? It has something to do with Princess Di. The memorial pictured is located in Harrods department store in London, commemorating the death of Princess Di and Dodi Fayed. Liz shares Dominick Dunne's opinion that their whole romance was just a big fraud! So why go all the way to London to see it, with the exchange rate being so bad? But then at the end she says that Harrods' Egyptian-themed escalator is worth an overseas visit. Liz Smith, I don't know what your point is, but you are a beautiful and mysterious gem, and someone really needs to buy you this t-shirt. [WowoWow]. Click through for bigger pics of both of Harrods' tacky memorials.
Our tireless observation of the Liz Smith Dirty Old Lady beat has yielded its second bounty in a week, with the lesbian gossip icon waxing fanciful about Nicole Kidman's glorious, supple, unaugmented breasts. "I do recall Nicole saying to me in the distant past that she always felt she wasn't well-endowed and she wished she were," Smith wrote today on her site Wowowow, directing readers to a photo of her and Kidman. "Does this look like a girl who needed breast surgery? No, this is Nicole all natural as the good Lord made her at the Vanity Fair party Oscar night. I admire a fine belle poitrine as much as anyone, but I can't stand these added-on half grapefruits that look as unnatural as can be. I have known Nicole for a long time now and her natural assets were quite good enough to start with." No fans of bolt-ons ourselves, we're happy to have at least this modest overlap in taste in common with our hero; really, for a while there we thought we'd lost her. [Via Queerty]
