10:20 PMI don't understand why there's all this enmity towards Ratner. Why are people writing such hateful things? Isn't he trying to improve Brooklyn? And he seems like a nice, socially conscious man.
I don't understand why there's all this enmity towards Ratner. Why are people writing such hateful things? Isn't he trying to improve Brooklyn?
I feel kind of sorry for her. Why don't you wait till the trial before labeling her "psycho"; who knows what really happened, or what was done to her, first? And she was always great at her job so why should that change? #aliwise
On Ivanka Trump's Wikipedia page it used to read (it may still) that she graduated from Penn summa cum laude. But there was no mention of that in her Times' wedding announcement -- why not? That seems like something she would want everyone to know, if it's true. On the other hand, if it's not, Times' readers would surely expose it as a lie. #ivankatrump
At one point I read -- somewhere -- that Ivanka graduated from Penn summa cum laude, but in her Times' wedding announcement nothing was mentioned of it, which leads me to believe it may not be true -- because it would surely be exposed as false by Times' readers. But if it is true, perhaps she's very bright, or a good student, or perhaps her name signalled to professors they had to indulge her. I have professor friends who claim they've been instructed by higher-ups to up-grade -- as best as they can -- students with packed-wallet names; on the other hand, students are give B-pluses today for just showing up for class. Who knows. #ivankatrump
Why are my quotes being removed? #salmanrushdie
I vaguely remember a public fight Rushdie had with an ex-wife, Marianne Wiggins, where he accused her of being a "social climber," among other nasty things. Actually, his friend William Styron, the novelist, may have been the one to call her a social climber, but I'm sure it was said with Rushdie's permission. Styron's accusation is ironic because he married a woman, Rose, from a wealthy Jewish family who supported his lavish lifestyle. #salmanrushdie
I feel kind of sorry for her: while I don't know her personally, I know people who do, and they say she's a sweetheart who'd give you the designer shirt off her facialed back. Really. She was probably confused and desperate, that's all. And who knows the details. Maybe she found men who incited her jealousy, spoke about their ex's all the time -- Salman Rushdie/Padma Lakshmi-like -- or perhaps that was the way she responded to nastiness from those ex-girlfriends. Who knows the dynamics? I'm not saying she should have done it; it was wrong and intrusive, but also so desperately ridiculous that you just gotta feel for the gal. #aliwise
Didn't it occur to this ridiculous man that the more interracial couples he marries, the less their children will suffer discrimination from either whites or blacks, because they'll have a bigger group of their own. And one day, maybe their group will be the majority. #keithbardwell
Didn't Bruce's ex-wife, Claude, also adopt his late sister's Wendy's child? So maybe Lucy Jane has a home, and isn't so alone.
@Oryx Hearts Crake: Wendy never adopted her daughter; she went through a very painful pregnancy at 48, and had her just shy of her 49th birthday.
Exactly how many women/girls has he had affairs or one-nighters with? And what was the average age difference? That is, was he still having affairs with interns -- college juniors or new graduates -- when he was in his fifties? We might well speculate that he started an affair with Stephanie Birkitt when she was in her early or mid-twenties, and he was in his late forties or early fifties.
@MildApplause: That's how it is, because life works in strange ways. It also taks a lot of courage to report sexual harassment, especially regarding a very powerful man in the media world. And some of these women might have been embarrassed because they DID in fact sleep with him, and were also afraid of being labeled "predators," or worse. Plus, many people at the show might have suspected the affairs but had no proof. They can now claim to be victims of sexual harrassment, especially if they didn't advance as far as Letterman's paramours.
Cindy Adams wrote an absurd defense of Letterman in this week's Sunday New York Post. She favorably compared him to O J Simpson and Phil Spector!!! Gee, are we to conclude that since Letterman isn't a murderer he's an okay guy, or that since O J got off, we should follow that kangaroo court and indulge Letterman? It was ridiculously women-hating, and all from Cindy herself. And she seems to think college age interns are an appropriate age for a man in his forties or fifties, who just happens to be their boss, and a very powerful man to boot -- that is, he could harm their careers in general if they reject him. How does she know it was consensual, and does she even know what consensual means? Thanks God she has no children. I hope you put her column somewhere on Gawker, not to popularize it, but to reveal a seriously disturbed sensibility.
What's happening with his poor niece, Lucy Jane? When the now late Wendy Wasserstein left Lucy in his custody, I don't think she ever imagined another divorce, an illegitimate daughter, and then marriage to a woman about thirty years younger. Does Lucy Jane even live with him any more?
No one here looks good: Letterman, Birkitt, and Halderman. And I have a feeling an ex-Letterman-staffer is going to come out with a book, "Scenes Inside Worldwide Pants: Odiferous and Odious." It will be a bestseller, and Halderman will sue for copyright infringement.
I don't know about your last line, "If so, that's bound to fail," regarding Halderman's supposed ploy to make the public feel sorry for him by releasing info that Dave was sleeping with his girlfriend as late as last fall. Because it worked on me. I do feel kind of sorry for him, in general, and even more so, if the new scoop is true. And I'm beginning to feel disgusted by Birkitt, whom I also felt kind of sorry for earlier. It seems she went back and forth between two considerably older men, and that she may even have found Halderman attractive because of his proximity to Dave -- his house in Norwalk isn't so far from Dave's in North Salem. Who knows what was going on among the three for years, and why keep a detailed diary of it, especially when it involved a world famous man, and by default his common-law wife -- until last March when Regina Lasko became his legal wife -- and his vulnerable toddler son. How weird? And if you're going to keep a diary, why was it not safely locked up somewhere? I'm wondering if Birkitt in some way, even unconsciously, didn't want it publicized, in some way at least.
@Atilla the Bun: You say "potatoE" and I say "potaAto," because I don't think there is a "big, big difference" between an existing "power imbalance" and "sexual harassment," that is victimization. Sex is a complicated matter, intimate, messy, chockfull of all sorts of emotions and vulnerabilities. So when a man, a boss, and in this case thirty years older, is sleeping with a subordinate, chances are it's not healthy, not based on mutuality and consiousness, that is, a meeting of minds. Just because the woman agrees to it, or even initiates it, doesn't mean she isn't THE ONE being manipulated. Plenty of things are done tacitly. But there is a big, big difference between a mess ignited by two sexually involved co-workers, and a mess ignited when one person has power over another. That all said, sometimes good relationships can start in the darndest ways. But not in this case, not where a man essentially built a harem -- had one affair after the next -- for what I'm sure were narcissistic, selfish purposes. Who cares how nice Letterman seems -- what is he really?
@Atilla the Bun: No, to suggest a power imbalance exists -- that sexual harrassment inheres to the relationship -- does not make "women sound like idiots who aren't in control of their own sexuality"; but it sure makes men sound like that. Of course, it's part of any relationship between a boss (for our purposes male) and subordinate (for our purposes female), always, always. That doesn't mean the relationship can't turn into something more meaningful, and it doesn't mean that that power imbalance has to be exploited -- BUT IT IS ALWAYS, ALWAYS THERE. And to deny so is idiotic. And regardless of what women want or think they want, their desires should not always be met. Plenty of college students think they're in love with their professors, but that doesn't mean those professors should take advantage of that delusion or crush. Grow up.
@GotlandMilk: Well maybe he really does have a Jewish heritage, but given how many political plots are abreast -- and I don't just mean in spy novels -- I wouldn't be surprised if they faked a picture with his ID card. I seem to have heard rumors of his Jewishness years back, and it's in the interests of his political opponents to press on with it. And I made a mistake above, because Mel Gibson and his fellow anti-Semites don't need a real Jew to blame everything on Jews and Israel. The world could be Jewless and all its problems would still be blamed on Jews. So an anti-Semite could claim Ahmadinejad, Jew or not, is still serving the interests of Israel by being so threatening and wacko, thereby creating sympathy for the Jewish state.
