Next headline: Selfish Obama Wants Your Kids to Die! Why, God, Why?!

[Story: White House Blog
Pic: Dance With Shadows]

Talk about an incredible item. Brief recap: Fox canned Friedman after he wrote about how easy it was to obtain a leaked, unfinished copy of Wolverine that had made its way onto the internet. Friedman went through a Kangaroo Court of sorts and got the opportunity to reason for his job with EVP John Moody and Fox News chief Roger Ailes at Fox News. It didn't go well, and he lost. The statement that was released:

Fox News representatives and Roger Friedman met today and mutually agreed to part ways immediately. Fox News appreciates Mr. Friedman's ten years of contributions to building foxnews.com and wishes him success in his future endeavors. Mr. Friedman is grateful to his colleagues for their friendship and support over the past decade.

Not so much. Friedman took his story to Rush & Molloy in the Daily News' (immortal competitor to the Fox-owned New York Post, in case you forgot). Naturally.

In it, Friedman accuses Scientology of plotting against him for a long time, as he's been a vocal critic of the organization for a while. Friedman thinks the entire Wolverine saga - a case Fox definitely took to the FBI in order to trace the original source of the film's leak - was a bullshit cover-up for his termination, or at least, the pin they needed to pull on his employment that they'd been waiting on a for a while. He cites a few instances and interactions with key celebrity Scientology members, but mainly, John Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston.

He says he saw Preston at fellow Scientology member Issac Hayes' funeral in Memphis about eight months before he was fired. They ran into each other in a hotel lobby, and as Friedman tells it, Preston had some words for him:

Mrs. John Travolta loudly blasted him for his columns criticizing Scientology. "She called me a ‘religious bigot,'  " Friedman recalls.

Sometime thereafter, as the story goes, Preston then tried to get him fired by getting Friedman's aforementioned Kangaroo Court, John Moody and Roger Ailes, on the phone. Preston called Moody a dirty word when Moody wouldn't fire Friedman for slagging on Scientology. Moody and Ailes supposedly met with Preston and Scientology's spokesman Tommy Davis to put them on ice. Friedman's overlords then told Friedman to ease up on writing about the controversial death of Jett Travolta, Preston's son. [It was recently revealed that John Travlota went against the Church of Scientology's teachings in noting Jett as having autism, a condition regarding by Scientologists as a psychological disorder, and thus, a relatively stigmatized term to them.]

Sometime after, Jim Gianopoulos, 20th Century Fox's chief, told Friedman to lay off of Tom Cruise's Hitler-hunting epic Valkyrie in the leadup to its release. Which, if it's true, sounds like some typical studio-news overlap, and probably has less to do with Scientology and more to do with Gianopoulos trying to curb the momentum of bad press his movie was getting at the time.

But then:

Last month, Variety reported that Cruise was in advanced talks to star with Cameron Diaz in a Fox action comedy, "Wichita." A source suspects that Cruise may have made Friedman's ouster a condition of the actor appearing in "Wichita. "

And, conspiracy! Someone, somewhere, suspects that some shit might've gone down! Maybe? Either way, Friedman notes that the moment his job was on the line, nobody came to his defense. "Nobody from Fox News defended me. They let the studio dictate to the newsroom," he told the News. The quote they got from Friedman's lawyer is far less conspiratorial: he's arguing the whole "piracy" aspect of things, and he's probably going to try and spend less time trying to convince a court that Friedman's being plotted against than he is working on the whole "wrongful termination" thing, though he does toss one gem to R&M: "I've seen how Scientology intimidates even the most powerful media. That seems to be what happened here."

So it goes. The final note in the column that matters is that Fox Overlord Rupert Murdoch isn't a fan of Scientology and reportedly "bristled" when they tried to recruit his kid.

Preston and Cruise's lawyers both issued outright denials. Fox refused to comment. And we might have a ball game. Let's say this thing goes whole hog: that's Preston and Cruise, being called to the stand, being asked to testify under oath as to whether or not they wanted Friedman fired and had remarked the same to anybody, at any point, ever.

But really, this just sounds like a case of Friedman being more trouble than he's worth. Fox makes exponentially more cash via Scientologists than they do their gadfly columnist talking shit on some of their highly-connected high-earners. Why keep Friedman, who's pissing off their Big Names, around? There's no reason to. So, yeah, the Wolverine thing was probably the straw that broke the gossip's job in half. To win and/or settle this thing in Friedman's favor, his lawyer's gonna have to drag whoever he can through the mud, which is probably going to be far more difficult than he thinks it's going to be.

Meanwhile, Friedman's doing a watered-down variation of his shtick at the Hollywood Reporter, incredibly. The Reporter, which has always played second fiddle to Variety for industry trade news, needs the favor of studios and agencies in order to get scoops. Why, then, would any trade paper brass in their right mind associate themselves with Friedman's gossipy items? In order to get the money Friedman's used to being paid by Fox, he has to associate himself with a big name (like The Reporter). Eventually, they're probably going to learn that Friedman's items are costing them news, and they'll cut him off from writing the "good" stuff. And Friedman's going to need something to do when that happens. Like sit on some of that lawsuit money.

Onward! To the courts!

Fox's axed man blames Scientologists [Rush & Molloy]

Honestly, we thought it sounded a little bullshitty when we first heard it—Edwards staffers were going to pull a Bulworth to save the Democratic party if it looked like John might get the nomination? Really?

First of all, his appeal to our mom aside, John Edwards never did actually look like he'd get the nomination. Secondly, as Walter Shapiro points out, any smart Edwards staffer would be more focused on saving their own career than rescuing the party, and purposefully sinking your own campaign—even if it's in the service of a greater good, or whatever!—is not a good way to end up working on a future campaign.

So no one will confirm on or off the record that they'd even heard of this "plan." Edwards campaign Senior Advisor Joe Trippi called it a fantasy.

So who is Stephanopoulos covering for, here, with this crazy "party first" conspiracy? Naturally everyone has someone they blame.

It did not take many calls to the Edwards alumni association to pick up off-the-record speculation about who might have peddled the self-aggrandizing conspiracy story to Stephanopoulos. In fact, in back-to-back interviews, two Edwards campaign veterans fingered each other as the likely leaker.

So hell, we don't know. David Bonior might be close to Stephanopoulos, and a former party whip might make up this sort of "Democrat first" nonsense. Or it could've been Mudcat Saunders, who seems like he will say literally anything. His name is "Mudcat," so we'll go with him.

The six foreign-born Muslim men living in New Jersey were charged with a comical plot to break into Fort Dix and shoot their way back out, or something. They were in fact just shiftless lazy bums who disliked America but not enough to do anything about it until an overzealous FBI "informant" earned his $1,500 a week by goading them, repeatedly, into planning this bizarre Fort Dix thing.

The informant berated them into picking a target, and he encouraged them to stick with the plan every time they had second thoughts, with was often, because they were lazy and disorganized "terrorists" who'd be utterly unable to finance, plan, arrange, and carry out a terrorist attack of any kind without an FBI informant holding their hands and browbeating them into halfhearted jihad.

So good work, US Government. You are keeping us safe by keeping the mildly disgruntled Muslim versions of the characters from Clerks off the streets, forever.

We can't blame Hayden for being excited about her first election, and she connected her pet cause to get out the vote efforts yesterday. We don't doubt her sincerity, but a series of clues points to a different explanation for her actions.

Think about it: is it possible that the cast of Heroes' emergence in the whale conservation cause is a plot by the whale-hunting lobby? When Heroes inevitably gets canceled and we have to think back on what a colossal opportunity was squandered in the form of that show, the real victim will be the whales. Celebrities considering whale advocacy will always be reminded of the show's failure to deliver on any of its considerable promise.

And we must look to who else benefits from Save the Whales Again! being tarnished with the Heroes brush. Yes, Jenny McCarthy will have all the more attention on her Autism Speaks cause. The connection between the two is so obvious, my love of whales can silence me no more:

Candie's is a most dangerous corporation, and they are not to be trifled with whether you're a whale or an actress. You heard it here first.

0.01 OF A SECOND?

Yes, the underwater sensors of the official timekeeper of the event, the watchmaker Omega, have determined that Michael Phelps, has won this race by 0.01 of a second.

0.01 OF A SECOND?

Was this an ad for a watchmaker or what?

But the devil is indeed in the detail.

How is it that the official timekeeper of the event is the same company that sponsors Phelps since 2004? Isn't there a clear conflict of interest here? And why are leading FINA officials unashamedly and brazenly the biggest cheerleaders of Michael Phelps? We are not talking about NBC and other American-broadcasters who have clear interest in weaving the "narrative" in quest for the largest share of ratings, and for their economical ends, for purposes of appeasing to their advertisers who buy such overpriced ad slots. [001ofaSecond.com]

The conspiracy goes like this: Entertainment Tonight ran its story past a personal assistant to Jolie and Pitt named Holly Goline, who used to work at CNN with one of its producers. The assistant "said she was there for the deliveries and everyone was doing well," according to AP, which reviewed the emails.

Jolie's attorneys said the emails came from a Goline imposter. But an anonymous Entertainment Tonight executive told the AP they had an email address for Goline dating back to Goline's time at CNN, where the executive worked with her.

If the emails are geniune, why would Jolie's people pretend they were fake? Said the AP:

Millions of dollars could be at stake. After Shiloh was born, Pitt and Jolie were at the forefront of a growing movement by celebrities to auction off exclusive rights to first public pictures of their babies (Pitt and Jolie donated the money to charity). Sometimes exclusive details on the birth come with these rights.

So the possibilities are:

• Brangelina twins actually born; lawyers covering it up to comply with a lucrative exclusive news/photos contract.
• Entertainment Tonight emailed an address that used to belong to Goline (say, on a service like Hotmail or blackberry.net) but now belongs to someone else, who decided to have a bit of fun with the show.
• Entertainment Tonight emailed the right person, but misinterpreted Goline's statement that "she was there for the deliveries and everyone was doing well" (AP's summary) to mean a birth had occurred, when in fact everyone was waiting for the deliveries but they never occurred due to a false alarm or somesuch.

Entertainment Tonight has pulled its story but refuses to issue a retraction. "We are waiting to see how this story plays out," the show's executive producer told AP.

It's good to see the American news media finally investing in some rigorous reporting and internecine fact-checking, and on a story so vital to the national interest.

[AP]

Alcohol

The president has always denied being an acoholic, though he's copped to "drinking too much" back in his callow youth (which lasted until his 40s, by the way, when he had his convenient religious reawakening). The alcohol provided a convenient excuse for his being a no-good fuckup for his entire 20s and 30s, and the religious awakening and supposed sobering up helped him gain forgiveness for youthful indiscretions like his disorderly conduct arrest and his 1976 DUI.

Anyway. Billy Graham showed up in 1985. In July of 1986, according to the lies he told in 2000, Bush quit drinking for good.

Here is a video of George W. Bush at a wedding that supposedly took place in 1992:

When the president "choked on a pretzel" in 2002, the White House took the step of having the White House physician announce to the press that "There was absolutely, positively, no suggestion on physical examination that any alcohol was involved." He just choked on a pretzel, during a football game, and lost consciousness.

Graydon Carter sez he knows a guy who sez Bush's blood alcohol level was quite high when he was hospitalized after the pretzel incident.

(Around the same time, a number of nuttier lefty sites began blowing up and enhancing photos of the president's face to point out all the burst capillaries that proved his continued reliance on booze.)

Cocaine

The rumors made the rounds in 1999: George W. Bush did coke! This was before 9/11, when everyone started doing coke again, so it was a big deal. If it was true! Proving it became quite difficult when the person with the most damning-sounding "proof" of drug use turned out to be an unreliable criminal (much like how the people with the best proof that Bush went AWOL from the national guard were using questionable documents, FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS). So. Here are some of the rumors:

• Bush was arrested for drug use in the "late '60s or early '70s" but the arrest was expunged from his record after he performed community service. That community service may have been his stint at Houston's Project P.U.L.L. in 1972.
• But that charge comes from the book by J.H. Hatfield. Hatfield was a convicted felon. The book was pulled from shelves. Hatfield turned up dead of an apparent suicide in 2001. He claimed all along that his sources for the cocaine story included Karl Rove, who's known to talk off the record to journalists of all stripes.
• In 2004, Eric Boehlert floated the theory that Bush ditched the air force because they were instituting random drug tests. This seems like grasping at straws (lol) to us, but whatevs. It's out there.
• Bush has simply never denied using cocaine.
• If you take Scott McClellan's diagnosis at face value, Bush probably did plenty of drugs in his college days and beyond, and then more or less convinced himself that he can't even remember if he did or not. Because he's turned into a simple-minded fool.

Amusingly (to us, perhaps, and probably no one else), we now have a major candidate who's admitted to cocaine use... but that admission itself is suspect. Barack Obama famously admitted to experimenting with coke in his first memoir, Dreams From My Father. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," Obama wrote in the more-than-decade-old book. The New York Times spent god knows how long trying to find anyone from Obama's adolescence who remembered him doing drugs but they came up short. Everyone remembered him as basically a square. He smoked a little weed.

We're forced to ask if Obama didn't exaggerate his drug use for the sake of a compelling narrative!

(We've come so far.)

Why, that's Arnold Newman, the former occupant of the Picasso apartment, portrait photographer and friend of the Picasso family, whose widow sold their apartment to Ruiz-Picasso at 15% below the asking price. Newman, who died last year, befriended Picasso, Stravinsky, Dali and others whilst working as a photographer both in New York and Miami. His last major exhibit was at the Corcoran Art Gallery in DC in 2000, a gallery founded by none other William Wilson Corcoran, (perhaps? God we hope so!) a distant relative of Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran group who sold the place. See? A diagram! —Josh

There's Room for Picassos [NYT]

Did a bit of math today and am willing to share anonymously:

1. Pre 2006:
a) circulating gossip pertaining Google execs
- Sergey Brin shares rides to work. Delivered by the matrimony quasi sister-in-law
- Larry Page made a printer out of Lego. At the age of 9.

b) juicy factoids pertaining Google execs not made public
- Larry Page dating Marissa Meyers
- the founders' harem of PAs (see flickr and comments around)

2. Come 2006:
1. The Larry Page, Marissa Meyer hot office affair former levels of collegiality finally revealed. By none other than the M&M herself.
2. Excruciatingly juicy details of said affair come to light: M&M used to time Larry Page with a metronome.
3. Few months within new relationship, new Larry Page girlfriend (if you have doubts: far right, with the bottle) splashed all over the tabloids.
4. Staged, but offending (for the parties involved) at the same time jet posing of Larry Page and exec girlfriend. Staged, but coy leaking of said pictures. Blamethrower aimed at other exec girlfriend. Oh, the drama!
5. Sergey Brin feeling slightly offended of all the attention directed to fellow co-founder. Larry Page offers a joint stunt - "We are getting married!" No, not to each other, although that might be an option, if the stocks dip low. As in "Hollywood aging star posing for Playboy" desperation.
6. Sergey Brin takes the wheel in his own two hands: mixes drugs, outrageous amounts of money, young cuties and sex in the same party-news. Comes out feeling sorry for himself. So, do we.

Few personal observations and unanswered questions:
- Eric Schmidt, the one who will most likely be pointed out as the sleazy one in a routine line-up including the founders, comes unscathed as a lamb. (I am not in any way suggesting that he is, simply implying that Sergey and Larry still have boyish charms.) Is that whole thing a personal vendetta? Was it Larry and Sergey who dug out Eric's personal data last year and tipped CNET, so that he needs to retaliate?
- Maybe the Google founders joined the super-exclusive, at_least_5_billions_net_worth, year 2K complacent, web 2.0 gossip-a-month club "Chez Hilton"?
- Or maybe, just maybe, gossip and celebrity rumors constituted the majority of searches on Google in the past years, so the Google's PR machine steered clear of the land of flowers, bunnies, shared car-rides and "don't be evil" lullabies?
- Is Valleywag arousing (compare number of comments on the gossipy news as opposed to regular ones) its own readership by throwing in sex and scandals. Amidst the serious journalism, that is.

Of, course I may be all wrong. It may as well be a terrible misunderstanding. But until proven wrong, am eagerly anticipating the next twists on the Google soap opera.