Category: Shallow

This message is intended for FOX Entertainment President, Gail Berman, but you can read it, too.
Why on earth isn’t FOX condemning Paris Hilton and distancing itself from her like they did when it was revealed that “Frenchie” Davis, of American Idol had posed topless (and masturbated) for a porn site called Daddy’s Little Girls? (No link here, you can find it yourself.) If an over-weight Black girl with an amazing singing voice does some softcore to make some money, she’s a whore. But if a white, spoiled, anorectic cave bitch who’s never had a job in her life allegedly appears in ten hardcore tapes, she’s just a lovable wild child, someone who needs to learn about The Simple Life?
Talk about hypocrisy!
And don’t tell me there’s a difference because Paris never got paid for her dirty work: Sarah Kozer got paid for her foot fetish films, yet she was still a finalist on Joe Millionaire. (As did Kozer’s suitor, the similarly hotel-product-placement named Evan Marriott for his softcore early work.) So, Gail: these untalented white people can do porn and demi-porn and still appear on your air but Frenchie couldn’t? Try explaining that to Bernie Mac at the FOX Christmas party this year.

Why does Ronald McDonald hate your kid so much?
First, he made your kid fat with his super-size fries, now he wants you to dress him or her up in embarrassing McDonald’s-branded clothing.
According to The Post, “The clothing line will consist of cotton tops and casual pants, not T-shirts emblazoned with the Golden Arches, Howard said. In fact, some of the clothes will only carry the McKids logo on the inside label.”
Maybe they should just print targets all over it, because any kid caught wearing that crap will surely be pummeled by lunchtime. They might also succeed with WIDE LOAD printed on the back.
Related: McSpotlight.org
Fast food horror stories
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
“Stalking Chunk” by Norah Pierson

For as long as celebrity place-holder Carson Daly has been in the public eye, people have been comparing him to Dick Clark. It’s practically an article of faith that Daly is the new Clark, so I was surprised to read Mr. Clark taking the words out of Daly’s mouth in his interview with The Onion A.V. Club this week. Here’s the quote the editors of the A.V. Club saw fit to pull for its cover:
As a storekeeper, you’ve got to learn what you’re going to put on the shelves. That’s always been my role, even when I was in my 20s. I was a storekeeper. It didn’t reflect my personal tastes or my personal preferences. You just look at the audience, listen to what they want, and put it up there and see if they come in and buy it.
This is nearly identical to something Daly’s been saying (and saying, and saying) for years:
“In my other ventures, I’m more like a bartender serving up what people request…” (E! Online)
“If I’m a bartender and somebody orders a lame drink, I’m not going to sit there and knock ’em for it. I’m just serving it.” (Las Vegas Weekly)
“It’s like I’m a bartender. Someone wants a Zima, and I might think it’s kind of an iffy drink, but — you know what? — I’m gonna give it to him in a cold glass and hope he gives me a nice tip.” (quoted on MetaFilter)
“I’m just the bartender. If you want a cosmopolitan, even if I think it’s a pussy drink, I’m not gonna say, “No, have a shot of Jack and a Budweiser.” I’m gonna serve a cosmopolitan, take my money, and serve the next guy” (FHM via this site)
Shopkeeper/bartender. What’s the difference? I guess ‘bartender’ is more edgy, like naming your dog Stoli.

First Gothamist told us that New York is a Cupcake Town. Then The Curiosity Guild introduced its cute (but totally inedible) crocheted cupcakes to the world.
Now, bringing up the rear (so to speak), is Rolling Stone with Jessica Simpson on its cover wearing cupcake panties.
Is this some kind of Hostess conspiracy or what? Is Captain Cupcake (left) the legendary Badgeman (AKA, “the Prince of the Puff of Smoke”) spotted near Dealey Plaza? (Personally, I think Sara Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.)
Sidebar: For all you fans of glossy expertly-manufactured photos of glossy expertly-manufactured pop stars (that means you, Grambo), RS helpfully provides 88 (!) photos of Jessica Simpson, only one of which also features of Swiffer.

It seems that New York Magazine has taken Gawker‘s scientifically-precise criticism of its covers to heart, and decided to create a concept cover this week that harkens back to its Felker/New Journalism era. By using the image of an enormous woman towering over a man, it simultaneously evokes dread, feminist backlash, recession anxiety, and kinky fetishism: a deft combination of rapid-succession signifiers that would’ve done Esquire‘s George Lois proud.
You gotta hand it to New York, it’s not bad. Sadly, it’s been done before. In 1995.
Submitted for your approval is the cover of The Nose, issue 26. For those who missed its brief—but great—run, The Nose was a satirical news and entertainment magazine out of San Francisco. It was sort of like a West Coast version of SPY Magazine, or The Onion, were it more obsessed with conspiracies, porn, cable access shows, and comedians. There’s really almost no legacy of The Nose on the Web, but you can check out founding editor Jack Boulware’s book, Sex, American Style: An Illustrated Romp Through the Golden Age of Heterosexuality. Oh, and in case you’re wondering: smushed under the pump of that amazon woman is the comedian Patton Oswalt, who also wrote the accompanying article about the “giant woman” fetish.
I’ll leave it to other, more skilled writers to critique the actual article accompanying the New York cover.

Will the bias and the slander of the liberal media ever end? Sadly, not in our lifetime, as the new Mel Gibson movie and TV series prove.
And now this: today brings news that bow tie-loving conservative commentator Tucker Carlson has been given a new show by PBS scheduled to air sometime in June 2004. According to reports (translation: press releases spun into articles), the still-untitled show will be “a lively discussion of the week’s news stories from a wide range of perspectives.” So, I’m guessing it’s a lot like The Man Show meets This Week… with bow ties. I don’t know about you, but I’m setting my TiVo now!
Anyone have any suggestions for titles? I was thinking Nip/Tucker or maybe Tucker MC’s Call Me ‘Sire’ but both sort of suck. Little help? Anyone…

When two seemingly unrelated phenomena occur at the same time, we call it a trend. Used to be three things, but among its many contributions to the culture, Entertainment Weekly lowered the bar to two phenomena.
Here’s how it works:
FOX Sends ‘Skin’ Crawling After Just Three Shows
Can you be a Porn Star? The Ultimate Reality Show
[Thanks Krusty!]

It looks like God, the Jewish-run media, and those sneaky, learned elders of Zion continue to hold Mel Gibson down:

Gibson, ABC keeping it all in the family by Nellie Andreeva
Oscar winner Mel Gibson has teamed with ABC and Universal Network TV for a family comedy inspired by his life as a father of six boys.
The still-untitled project, which has received a put pilot commitment, centers on a blue-collar single father who is raising five teen boys on his own…
Will the persecution ever stop!?!
Related: Mel Gibson’s Jesus Christ Pose by Jessica Winter

And you thought Ari Fleischer had a tough gig. Imagine trying to be Paris Hilton’s press spokesperson. This comes from the celebrity advocacy journalists at Page Six:
PARIS Hilton – who has already weathered the worldwide circulation of a graphic photo of her exiting a car minus her panties – is now starring in an amateur porno, a la Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. The video, shot three years ago, features the hot-blooded hotel heiress and Shannen Doherty’s husband, Rick Solomon, in a variety of X-rated activities. Doherty and Solomon split up after the tape was made, but have since reconciled. Hilton “keeps staring into the camera and trying to show her best side,” said a source. “She knows she is being taped and [Solomon] keeps trying to get her into sex positions that are better for taping, if you know what I mean.” An anonymous donor, who may be planning to sell the tape over the Internet, dropped off copies to media people. A rep for Hilton said: “This was something she did with Rick while they were dating, after he was no longer with Shannen, and it was something that was intended for their own personal use. This tape was never intended to be viewed by the public and it is in poor taste that someone has decided to release it.”
If only Fleischer had been this honest. (“There are no W.M.D. The President said that for his own personal use…”)

It’s been said before, and it’ll be said again: the blogosphere is just high school with more bandwidth. And most headshots are just yearbook photos, right? So, it’s with that in mind, we present to you, The Blogmore Academy Class of 2003.