I mean, as the whole Heidi Fleiss fiasco proved, Hollywood stars are willing to drop major coin at a high-class brothel. But those were just chucklehead straight dudes like Charlie Sheen. No one was really shocked. In this instance, though, we're talking about Will Smith. Lady-wooing, ass-kicking, humanity-saving Will Smith. It would be much easier for him to discreetly pick up a fella at a club or, heck, even find someone online than it would be to involve the whole middleman of a bordello. I was watching that horrid documentary Hookers at the Point yesterday (nothing else was on) and, you know, the girls were talking about how guys go to hookers because there is that illicit thrill, that fear of being caught. But that's with street walkers blowing you in your parked Crown Vic, not sensual liasions with "high class" call-boys. The latter just seems a little too out there in the open—what with money exchanged and all—than would be comfortable for Will f'ing Smith who, sadly, could stand to lose a lot if his sexuality was in question.

Sure there's an argument to be made that one pays for discretion when using an escort service, but with a random money-free hook-up, the star would most likely have more deniability than he would if there were "Client No. 9"-style records of the various transactions. Unless there were photos.

All things considered, we don't quite believe this lascivious hissing. This anonymous madame lady may, you know, just be trying to drum up some business. By, um, supposedly outing one of her clients? Ur doin it rong!1!

The incident caused an uproar, but look at what it really was: one guy with a fake post on an unmediated citizen journalism site. Making any stock selling decisions based on that is approximately as risky as making the same decision based on a Craigslist post. It's an inherent gamble. Jeff Jarvis is sanguine:

Every time so-called citizen journalism muffs one, I get such calls, as if to say, look what your bratty kid is up to now. Funny, I don't get them – as a journalist – every time a reporter messes up.

I told these reporters that they were on the tail of the wrong story. This may not be about citizen journalism at all. It may be about someone trying to game Apple stock and using, nefariously, whatever tools were available. I also told them that anyone who sold their stock on the basis of a pseudonymous post on the web was a fool who deserved what they got.

He's right! And furthermore, anyone familiar with online media would have known right off the bat that there's no guarantee of the accuracy of the rumor like that. Have you looked at the internet lately?

So while the majority of internet readers took the whole thing with a grain of salt, the traders who didn't are now in an uproar. It's interesting to contrast this with the recent debunked rumor about a (nonexistent) Esquire story on Anne Hathaway in which the actress supposedly said she loves anal sex. That one got far more credulous coverage than the Jobs rumor. Why? Because it cited a print source—Esquire—which even trash-talking bloggers like us subconsciously assume is trustworthy. (Even if the actual interview didn't turn out to exist).

The lesson: rumors are rumors are rumors. The main thing the sketchiness of internet rumors reveals is the underlying sketchiness of print rumors, too. If you trade on a rumor and get burned, don't cry about it. It's all about learning.

So, I almost wrote this email to you guys a few weeks ago but stopped because as I wrote it I felt like a huge tool.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was at the lovely gay bar Therapy in Midtown when a dude ran in and was chased immediately by a camera crew. Yes, I was having an encounter with the gay cast member of the Real World Brooklyn—whose name happened to be JD, is 23 and hails from Miami Florida. Now, I had a hour conversation with the kid and determined he was a no one with no personality. Thats until I read your story about Anderson Cooper today and his rumored loves. I am pretty sure they are the same person, I mean how JD dolphin trainers from Miami are there? I have a really blurry photo of him on my iPhone of him in the bar with the camera.

One interesting thing about my encounter with him, he is apparently dating the bartender at Therapy and is there often—sometimes alone to score some B roll footage (as he was the night I was there). He also told me how he has taken his Mormon roommate out to XES, yet he wanted to read all the gay rags (HX, Next) at the bar that he could as his Mormon roommate would freak if he brought it home. Oh he also said that they never hang out in Brooklyn and always go to super NY places like Angels and Kings and Mansion—they apparently also get shuttled around in cars from Brooklyn and back

Thats it, but the fact that AC was getting down with a Real World media whore is beyond me. I thought he was better then that.

Fascinating! The blurry photo didn't help us at all, though. We demand confirmation on this weird, probably not-at-all-true coincidence! Plus, Sheila and I want more info about the Mormon boi.

From MySpace:

Update: In an email with a subject line reading "Can confirm that there is a "jd ordonez" in the real world brooklyn cast" a tipster tells us:

nothing to present as evidence but can say producers sent around personal data (height, weight, shirt size etc.) to publicists a while back almost as a solicitation for freebies to cast members.

And another tipster says the rumors that Ordonez dated Cooper are true:

Just read your article on the dolphin trainer said to be Anderson's ex boy toy and I wanted to confirm that it's true. I'm from Miami and was actually at the club Buck 15 when I met J.D. He drunkenly informed me who his boyfriend was and when I didn't believe him he showed me pictures from his camera phone with Anderson and some dolphins...this was around the beginning of June...just wanted to give you a head's up!

Among the reasons that NBC has to be pissed at Silverman: he hasn't resurrected the network's ratings; the upcoming season of shows has no clear breakout hit; he's a party boy who stays out all night and doesn't come into the office till 11; and he tapped his old friends for important positions they weren't qualified for, which resulted in NBC doing things like paying his deputy's boyfriend $1.75 million to take his stupid show pitch and go away.

At a normal job, this would result in your boss hating you. But NBC chief Jeff Zucker couldn't be happier about how things are going!

"Ben has done a fantastic job. So far he's exceeded all of our expectations and the financial targets that we've set," said his boss, NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. "We're talking about him being with us for a long time to come."

Words like "fantastic" are as common in corporate statements as words like "the." If you read press releases, you'll notice that every company is "delighted" about everything that happens. Therefore it means nothing. The fact that NBC is "talking about" Silverman being there a long time is not as reassuring as, for example, this alternative: "He will be here a long time."

"The shows that we have for this season are more commercial than any programs that we've had in the past four years," Zucker said.

Silverman's shows may suck, but they get a lot of product placements. Point in his favor.

"From our perspective there are no questions about Ben Silverman's job security. From our perspective he has done everything we've asked and more. We're incredibly happy with the job he's done, and hope that he'll be with us for a long time to come."

Disregard "incredibly," obviously. The inclusion of "from our perspective" and "hope" are bad signs. Consider that Zucker could have said: "There are no questions about Ben Silverman's job security. He has done everything we asked and more. We're happy with the job he's done, and he'll be with us for a long time."

Maybe they'll just dump him when his contract is up. Incredibly fantastic and delightful!

[LAT, Jossip, Mixed Media]

it doesn't happen if your company has a sane and convincing leader who can go on CNBC and say, "here, look at our books! Our firm has such robust ratios of cash and hard tangible assets to covenants and other accounts payable that it really doesn't matter what our stock price does because, familiar as we are with the pussy nature of Wall Street confidence and the easily-distracted myopic ephemera-addled lemmings who govern such day-to-day fluctuations, we've seen to it to inoculate our business from such attacks by stockpiling enough hard currency and solid — but also liquid! — financial instruments that we can weather a crisis of confidence without having to undermine our case by begging them for money!" Lehman had no such leader. And it had no such assets!

One of the less-noted upshots of this whole Lehman mess is that maybe the Fed didn't give it the proverbial "Bear Hug" because it seemed like less of a victim of "scurrilous malicious rumors" than Bear Stearns did. And Bear had that pothead CEO! But Lehman seemed to have a victim complex about the rumors, as Andrew Ross Sorkin noted in July:

“I will hurt the shorts, and that is my goal,” Richard S. Fuld Jr. fumed.

It was April, and Mr. Fuld was blaming short sellers, one of the most maligned tribes on Wall Street, for spreading rumors about Lehman Brothers, the troubled investment bank he runs. Shorts bet against stocks, and Lehman, they were whispering, looked like the next Bear Stearns.

A Wall Street Journal story the next week portrayed him — as Cramer did the same week — as more concerned with shaming promulgators of bad rumors than figuring out the extent to which they were true:

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Richard Fuld Jr., whose firm's shares also have been battered, also has contacted Mr. Blankfein. "You're not going to like this conversation," Mr. Fuld told Mr. Blankfein, according to people familiar with their talk, but he was hearing "a lot of noise" about Goldman traders who allegedly spread negative rumors about Lehman. In recent months, Mr. Fuld has contacted traders he felt may have been bad-mouthing his stock, according to someone familiar with the matter. Spreading rumors one knows to be false with the intention of manipulating a public company's price is illegal.

The thing is, while Lehman seemed to have an army of friends willing to discredit the rumors at the risk of looking totally fucking ridiculous:

Absurd rumors can have legs, like the Lehman-Barclays one, which Richard Bove, an analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann, said “ranks up there with the moon is made out of green cheese in terms of its validity.”

(The specific rumor in question, and the subject of the Sorkin piece, was that Lehman might be acquired by Barclay's in a "take-under" whereby the British bank paid a discount to Lehman's stock price. Barclay's is currently in talks to do essentially that, with a whole lot less headache!)

But here's the big thing: Lehman had the nicest, most polite short-seller in David Einhorn. He made his short position public, for god sakes.

Very few people publicize their shorts, and when Einhorn did, it got Lehman’s attention. The conversation with Callan was to give her a chance to explain discrepancies he had uncovered between the firm’s latest financial filing and what had been discussed during its conference call about that filing… She was evidently not prepared for the complexity of Einhorn’s questions and tried to bluff her way through. “The conversation was reminiscent of the ones I had with Allied,” says Einhorn. “We had our questions, we were organized, but she was evasive, dishonest. Their explanations didn’t make any sense.”

Dear Lehman, Sarah Palin can do this because she is talking to people who don't have money. (And will have even less when she is through with them!) (Related: someone could use a better shade of lipstick!) In the meantime, the shorts and their self-hastening prophecies perform some of the last remaining regulatory functions on Wall Street, and in the aftermath of Enron I will never understand why they are so maligned. Doesn't Wall Street, like the post-9/11 Justice Department, need someone to poke away at its hubris, its secrecy and its destructive tendency to act as if it can impose its will all the time with impunity? Which is to say, the rumormongering shorts are so widely detested because they are like the media, only with money.

Short Interest Data: Lehman, AIG, Merrill [Seeking Alpha]
Pssst! Hear The Rumor Of The Day? [NYT]
Why Did David Einhorn Publicly Attack Lehman Brothers? [NYM]
Fear, Rumors Touched Off Fatal Run On Bear Stearns [WSJ]
The Man Comes Down On Rumormongering [Daily Intel]
Goldman Sachs Accused Of Rumormongering [NYM]

Mr. Follieri's move toward a guilty plea comes despite some potential problems with the government's case. While prosecutors contend that Mr. Follieri overstated his Vatican ties to attract investors to his church real-estate deals, he did have some high-level connections in Rome. Last year, a Clinton spokesman said at least two senior Catholic Church figures had spoken up for Mr. Follieri, including Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who, as Vatican secretary of state, effectively ran church operations before retiring last year.

[WSJ]

Beckman, of course, would be the mastermind of the entire Fashion Rocks campaign, so what the hell is a fluff interview of him doing in a WWD-penned special supplement, posing as legit editorial copy? Staffers there are asking themselves the same thing. They feel that Mary Berner, who formerly led Fairchild and WWD before it was all absorbed into Conde Nast, would never have stood for such a thing.

On MediaPost yesterday, Ari Rosenberg decried the whole ongoing degeneration of the advertising/ editorial line. "Today's media-buying demand for a 'big idea' required to earn a media commitment, combined with a softer and more competitive environment, all driven by a sales force that has no idea who Henry Luce is, have publishers doing things not done before," he wrote.

Which leads to this:

To: All TONY Staff
Fr: Alison Tocci

Statement from Time Out New York President Alison Tocci:

As Time Out reaches its 40th anniversary in London, and Time Out New York passes the 13-year mark, there is much to celebrate. Sadly, some of our achievement has been clouded by an anonymous, typo-riddled post on Gossip, I mean, Gawker.com, which alludes to our imminent demise.

I can assure you that rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Time Out, like all print media, has felt both the specific downturn in print ad sales as advertisers and readers migrate online, and the general economic downturn complicated by rising paper and printing costs. In addition, we have made significant investment into our own costly transition online.

The result is a tight cash flow situation that has led unfortunately to very slow payment to our vendors and freelancers.

Happily, our New York investors, who understand the value of the brand you have all built and have been entirely supportive over the past 14 years, remain fully committed to us. They have stepped up to the plate in a significant way and I can assure you that our valued vendors, freelancers and all service providers who make what we do possible, will be brought up to date over the next 90 days.

And unlike our anonymous and gossipy friend, you can sign my name to that.

Alison Tocci
President
Time Out New York

[Alison, please send future typo corrections and memos here.]

That's good enough for Page Six!

[HYB via Animal]

The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, has been named as the “other woman” in a Texas couple Joe and Kimberly Burkett's bitter divorce.

Burkett’s wife Kimberly, 32, was so distraught with his cheating that she took an overdose of Valium

Kimberly Burkett's attorney Susie Chmielowiec told The ENQUIRER, “Kimberly believes Lara stole her husband – and now they’re trying to steal her little girl."

And in a twist that’s as shocking as any story Lara has covered, sources are charging she also had another affair, and her two lovers got into a brutal battle over her in Baghdad!

Sources charge that the Emmy winning Logan began her affair with 36-year-old U.S. State Department contractor, Burkett in war-torn Baghdad.

And yet another scandal brews in the steamy mix: Lara’s reported romance with a star CNN correspondent – whose jealousy exploded in a battle royal with Burkett in a Baghdad “safe house.”

“Not only is Lara having a torrid affair with a married man – she apparently has more than one lover!” Chmielowiec charged to The ENQUIRER.

When CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric heard about Lara’s sexual shenanigans, she blew a gasket!

What is your favorite part of that story? Katie Couric blowing a gasket is good, but we particularly enjoy the bit where an affair is "as shocking as any story Lara has covered." Because, like, she reports from war zones, where people are fighting wars and stuff.

Of course none of this is really shocking at ALL because foreign correspondents basically all sleep with everyone they can. It's stressful work and adrenaline runs high. Though some war zones are more conducive to this sort of thing. It depends on heat, relative humidity, and availability of showers.

Update: SO the print Enquirer further claims that Logan's second affair is with CNN reporter Michael Ware, and that Ware fought Burkett over it in Baghdad.

Then the contractor dude who announced in court that he's having this affair with Logan told his wife that he killed people in Iraq. Which is maybe not true?

Finally, Lara was "entertaining" some people in Baghdad when Ware came in and then him and Burkett fought for HOURS and even ended up in the CNN safehouse! It's amazing they had time to cover the war, what with all this drama.

Lara supposedly "sputtered" something when an Enquirer reporter inquired about her husband, and her husband is said to have had no comment. Whee. We're still not clear on how Katie Couric is involved?

CBS NEWS LARA LOGAN DIVORCE WAR [Enquirer]

Update: Well, yeah. They are now choosing the old white guy who will replace him.

Steve Bing, whose colorful private life includes fathering a child out of wedlock with the actress Elizabeth Hurley and suing the billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian for invasion of privacy, alleging that private investigators for Kerkorian swiped Bing's dental floss out of his trash in a successful effort to prove that Bing's DNA matched that of a child delivered by Kerkorian's ex-wife, the former tennis pro Lisa Bonder.

Now. There isn't any proof that Bill's been engaging in his usual sexual escapades since he left the White House. But he's certainly been associating with colorful characters, and clearly not giving a shit about (or even noticing) the appearance of impropriety. Ron Burkle's his best bud, why shouldn't he fly around on "Air Fuck One" with various young models and NYU students?

ANYWAY the problem is that Clinton's "counselor," or his top aide, or his "butt boy," is this guy Doug Band, who is quite good at making sure Clinton gets to work on time but really not very good at keeping him away from bad influences.

The story (written by Todd Purdum, husband to former Clinton press secretary DeeDee Myers), also lists nearly every woman Clinton has been associated with since he left office, from Gina Gershon to that Canadian parliament member to some lady on an elevator. Naturally, Clinton's office wasn't too happy with the piece.

(Oddly, Radar has not mentioned this story!)

(BTW, Ron Burkle owns Radar)

Gawker-394546 Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:42:15 EDT Pareene http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=394546&view=rss&microfeed=true We hear that Portfolio senior editor Bob Roe (formerly of Sports Illustrated) was let go today! Editor Joanne Lipman didn't like him! But we're told Roe was "popular and highly skilled." Anyone?

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.)

Roger Stone! Republican political mastermind! Nixon acolyte and dirty tricks specialist! Creepy old perv who goes to swingers clubs! He is largely forbidden from meddling in national politics anymore, because he's an embarrassment, but he still manages to keep himself involved (often in name and by reputation only) in Florida doings and goings-on.

As always, take everything Roger Stone says with massive doses of salt. But he's right almost as often as he's full of shit, which is his only actual genius. Stone claims he has surveillance camera footage of Crist making out with a lady on an elevator. That's it. There's kissing and groping, between the governor and some biologically female human, captured on CCTV, and in Roger Stone's hands, for some reason. No one has seen it yet, as he is "saving it for the national shows."

We're not sure who the purported girlfriend is, but it may be Kelly Heyniger, the beard trotted out when Crist was running for governor. She is an actress who was in a "Hottest Mom in America" contest, once. And also on Fear Factor.

It's a bizarre story. Basically Crist is an ideal candidate because he'd lock up Florida for McCain but, you know, men keep claiming they've had sex with him.

(Yes, that is a photo of Crist with disgraced congressman Mark Foley.)

Report: Crist Circulating 'Make Out Tape' To Squash Gay Rumors [HuffPo]

Then, it stung me like a hundred bees. Preston has not told me everything. He is holding something back. We've only been together for two nights, and this was nothing serious, so I had no right to question him. WRONG!!! I had every right.

I did just that. I asked him if there was something I needed to know- more importantly, if he had a family. "I have two children. They live with their mother. I see them on the off-seasons."

Oh no! Terrance is cool with it though; he says he's been in that situation before. Plus, Preston gives him a present (and us a clue):

Preston had me sprung. Yup, he sure did. Because to solidify he was serious about me and him, by the end of the week he brought me one of his personal team's jersey.

"Here you go," Preston said as he pulled the jersey from behind his back. "This is for you."
"This is for me," I said jubilant. I stared at his number. I had memorized the double-digit number from when I googled him on-line. I was going to make sure to find his number while I watched him run up and down the court.

Double digits. Take note! Finally, they take a surprise trip:

We pulled up to a beautiful home. As soon as the car pulled up, an older woman came through the front door. It was his mother. Preston was taking me to introduce me to her. A wonderful woman. Such a warm spirit and very loving. She readily accepted me. I was now on the "in." I met two important people in his life.

Maybe this was love? Maybe Preston was the man of my dreams.

Maybe? I should be receiving an actual copy of Dean's book in the near future. So any further secrets contained within will be revealed.

[1224 Confessions]

First, our tipster goes into an overlong rant about how when Edgerley said that there were never separate web and print reporting staffs at the Times, that was a "categorical lie." Whatever. Not really too scandalous. More interesting is the tipster's comment on this portion of one of Edgerley's answers:

It's more like we moved in together and got married. The Web staff used to be in a different building a couple of blocks from our old Times Square office. When we moved into our new building about a year ago, we had the space to sit together for the first time.

One of the great things about a newsroom is its sheer open space — the heart of our newsroom is as wide and long as a New York City block and three stories high. And thanks to the open design, I can sit at my desk on the third floor and yell to Sam Sifton, the Culture editor, on the fourth floor. It encourages collaboration.

"Oh, and when she says she can yell from her third-floor desk to the Culture editor on the fourth, she is not exaggerating," writes our tipster. "SHE COULD SHOUT FROM THE BOWERY TO EAST HARLEM AND BE CLEARLY HEARD BY EVERY LIVING SOUL ON THE EAST SIDE!"

So we ask: Is Susan Edgerley the biggest loudmouth at the New York Times? Bigger, even, than Thomas Friedman? Informed arguments and speculation are encouraged. And don't feel bad for Edgerley; she also said this:

When Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy, I was the one saying it was a Page 1 story. I was persuaded on the walk to school with my 17- and 10-year-old daughters. Listening to them talk about birth control and hearing them wonder aloud how the pregnancy would affect the Nickelodoen show "Zoey 101," I was alternately full of pride and terror. Somewhere, I knew there was a story there.

Word is that he's going on vacation next week for two weeks — DURING SWEEPS — this is a show that under Shelley Ross you couldn't take off even if you died — and that he won't be returning to the network after his vacation.

Yes — he has been pushed out of the Evening News and the Early Show.

Word is that a senior producer Shelley hired from Canada will be the next EP — but that could be a tough sell b/c well he has NO news experience. He was the EP of a program in Canada titled "Gay TV."

Things are still tough at the morning show — in fact a senior producer David Shenfeld — who has lost all his power to Laurye Blackford — in fact just didn't come to work starting last Sunday — just didn't bother to call or e-mail anyone. Apparently he was so fed up and frustrated he just decided to come to work. Really professional.

Btw — Rick is having a staff meeting on Friday — I'm sure no one over there will admit that he's leaving — but what a shame — he really tried to get the show to a better place after the Shelley debacle...and now he's being pushed out. You gotta wonder what the execs are really doing there except reading staffers' e-mails.

"I've worked in the entertainment industry, and in paticular with Hip Hop for over 10 years. I've been in the room with rappers and celebrities when they've used deragatory words such as Fags, and Homos. I've wanted so many times to step up and say something, but I didn't want to out myself. I didn't want to be put on blast. I didn't want to lose my so-called friendships. But, what bothered me most was when I heard many rappers and celebrities use those words and they themselves were hiding their sexuality just as I was."

It is ironic that the most homophobic male happens to be the one who is trying desperately to deflect from his own sexual identity crisis, and distract attention away from himself. It's so easy to call someone out of their name, especially calling another man a faggot, or punk, or homo.

Okay, so "many rappers and celebrities" he knows are closeted gays. A numerical hint: it should be more than one, and not just in hip hop, but celebrities also. Good start!

So, here I stand with many men in Hip Hop who refuse to hide. We have helped shape, build, and create Hip Hop and have just as much say as those who feel the need to degrade, and denegrate our contributions. Yes, we are here. We are all up in Hip Hop - your stylists, publicists, managers, producers, songwriters, ghostwriters, video directors, journalists, product managers, tour managers, lawyers, accountants, and your friends.

Christ, it could be anybody. Any of your friends!

I wrote this book many years ago. Long before there was a mention of Karrine Steffans and her infamous tell-all book, Confessions of a Video Vixen. I loved her book and her truth. It took courage for her to tell her story.

A good friend, who is an accomplished R&B singer/songwriter, had been after me to tell my story for a while. We have been friends for many years and I never told him about my life

Who is this accomplished R&B singer/ songwriter man? I'm guessing it's someone from Jodeci, maybe? Or not.

Deep within the confines of Hip-Hop is a prominent gay sub-culture. A world that industry insiders are keenly aware of, but choose to ignore. From the testosterone of men striving to be on top and in control, to the "by any means necessary" bravado in an industry that thrives on power, homosexuality is a reality at nearly every level of Hip-Hop

Russell Simmons. I'm getting strong vibes. Or it could be someone totally opposite, like Suge Knight. It will be interesting to find out!

One good friend, Emil Wilbekin, Editor-in-Chief of Giant Magazine gave me the kindest words of advice. He told me, "Terrance, you can only tell your truth. You have lots of friends who support you. I am one of them." His words helped me during the initial phase of writing the book.

Another friend, a celebrated record label publicist, who has helped launch many legendary careers, told me, "Don't worry about what people are going to think. This is your story. Write your book!"

The editor of Giant clearly knows something. Email us, Emil Wilbekin! It's simple journalistic solidarity.

In conclusion, it sounds like Ja Rule fits the general profile here. Then again, so do most famous rappers of the last decade. But that is really pure speculation, because I have no idea! Do YOU?

[The whole "Parsing XYZ" construction stolen from Jack Flack]

[via Orbitcast]

A riveting memoir, Hiding In Hip Hop, uncovers a hidden and well-known unspoken secret. Deep within the confines of Hip-Hop is a prominent gay sub-culture. A world that industry insiders are keenly aware of, but choose to ignore. From the testosterone of men striving to be on top and in control, to the "by any means necessary" bravado in an industry that thrives on power, homosexuality is a reality at nearly every level of Hip-Hop.

What's really surprising is that hip hop has managed to keep the identities of its gay people officially secret for this long. Rap has been big business and big money for a long time, but unlike in Hollywood—where gossip hounds have essentially uncovered the gay celebrities, who are then allowed to go about their business—the rap industry still feels that being openly gay could jeopardize an artist's career for good. Tom Cruise hasn't lost work because of the gay rumors surrounding him; Jay-Z surely would. It's a barrier that everyone remains afraid to cross. A rapper who started out as openly gay could theoretically make a career in hip hop, but it would not be a mainstream one. Even today, fostering the twin images of sex lord and crime lord are the most reliable way that MCs propel themselves into superstardom. Though this is changing (see Kanye), it's a long way from changed.

So when Hiding In Hip Hop comes out on May 13—assuming that it does out some identifiable figures in hip hop, and that it is reliable—the fallout will be fascinating to watch. I would expect immediate denials, and private reprisals from anyone named. But the real gay rappers, whoever they are, would be wise to stand up and be counted for the first time. They would go down in history for something much bigger than mediocre album sales. And the marketing opportunities would be enough to relaunch a flagging career, albeit in a slightly more bohemian arena.

If Del tha Funkee Homosapien came out as gay, no one would care. If a hardcore rapper like, say, Fat Joe came out, people would be surprised. But if one of the usual suspects like Kanye or Puffy came out, they would be positioned to use their already-deep resources to continue their careers as trailblazers. So a bit of advice to whoever may be named in the book (assuming it's true): Don't be the mad rapper. When you're dead and gone, one small step you took towards toning down the homophobia in hip hop would be worth much more than your music. And if you are Puffy, your music always sucked anyways. So go for it!

(And if anyone happens to get their hands on the book before May 13, email us.)

So at last night's New Yorker's For Children: A Fool's Fete ball at the Mandarin Oriental, there was a silent auction as there usually is at these kinds of things. One of the items being bid on was a gym membership to Equinox which started at $450. The first bid was by a guy named Bronson Van Wyck. You can read about him here and here.

After that PR lady Susan Shin and a guy named Stuart Sussman also bid on the membership but they had crossed out their bids for some reason. The mystery was easy to solve. It was Van Wyck's doing. According to another bidder who was about to outbid Van Wyck, as he was putting down his bid, Van Wyck came up to him and whispered, "Hey, why don't we just cross out all these bids and then we'll just get the membership on the cheap." The counter bidder looked at him with disgust and said, "No, you've got to be kidding me. This is for charity." and refused. So the price went up and Van Wyck, perhaps to mask his crumminess, eventually won it, for $1050.

[pic via Patrick McMullan/ Fashion Week Daily]

Young Jared is still thought by some to be but a pawn of his parents, specifically felon dad Charles. But his folks surely wouldn't have approved of his relationship with noted not-Jewish person Ivanka Trump, and that whole newspaper-buying thing doesn't have much to do with the family's occasionally-legal business. Regardless, the family remains in business together.

Last year, Charles and Jared sold a bunch of their Jersey properties to refocus on Manhattan. They bought some buildings for ridiculous sums, just before the market slowed to a crawl, and now the Post regularly updates us with news of Kushner's "credit crunch" and complicated real estate stories we don't quite understand that seem to imply that Kushner's crumbly buildings are costing him lots and lots of money.

But now Jared's making a play for Newsday! So maybe he's confident about things! Or maybe he's making a play for another paper to appear to be confident and independent, like when Barry Diller pretended to want to buy Yahoo! He's dumping his girlfriend and buying newspapers because things are just so awesome for him he can take risks. Maybe he'll run for Governor!

Or maybe Ivanka just found someone richer?

UNATTACHED [NYP via NYM]