Continuing its tradition of reporting on celebrities by reporting on some other aspect of culture that celebrities are involved in, the Times chronicles the tribulations involved in being famous while having a court date.
How to get inside without being accosted by a local news reporter? How to make your exit and slip into your waiting black window-tinted SUV when there's a scrum of paparazzi blocking your way?
When Rip Torn left the courthouse on a DUI matter, he found himself hiding under an 18-wheeler; Courtney Love had a different tactic, namely turning the courthouse sidewalk into a step-and-repeat.
There's a fun gallery where you can relive your favorite celebrity court moments, from Naomi Campbell to Boy George. Collect them all.
The left-leaning blogger Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, was shot in D.C. yesterday. "Some of the details of the incident are still sketchy. According to [MC project director Tracy] Van Slyke, Beutler was walking with a friend after leaving a bar in Washington's Adams Morgan section when the two were confronted by a man demanding their cell phones near 17th Street and Euclid Street. It's unclear as yet what happened, but the man fired several shots at Beutler. One bullet hit him in the spleen and he was hit twice in the shoulder. A D.C. police official said he wasn't aware of any arrests made in connection with the shooting." Though Beutler is expected to bounce from stable condition to full recovery, this whole thing is sad, because it's quite likely he was not even shot for his political leanings. [TPM]
Billionaire and massaging young-thing procurer Jeffrey Epstein has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges. After his sentence, he'll return home for a year-long house arrest and a slot in Florida's sex offender registry. [TSG] The biggest surprise? The New York Times, which took four hundred years to finally report on the Epstein scandal, already carries a wire report of the news.
After that power lunch at Michael's on Monday, Raffaello Follieri was planning to jet off to Italy on Wednesday and spend some time in Capri. He'd even scheduled a birthday party for himself with friends at a restaurant in his hometown of Foggia. Then Tuesday got in the way, what with that little 12-count indictment, his handcuffing, courtroom antics, and eventual house arrest. All of which reveals one little thing: Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend had zero idea the feds were after him. If he did, at the very least he could've moved up his travel plans, or even better, gone somewhere else beside Italy, which has an extradition agreement with the U.S. — though after the CIA flap last year, where the U.S. refused to send accused officials overseas for trial, perhaps the Italians are less willing to cooperate with American law enforcement these days. We hear Austria is lovely, and uncooperative, these days.
It's not that Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri is a con artist. It's that he's a bad con-artist. How to tell? He was arrested! That's sort of the biggest criteria for finding out if a con artist is bad at his game. The second piece of criteria? Going to prison, which is where it sounds like he's headed.
Trying to buy some sway with the pope, because you told your investors you were the Church's financial manager, by donating $387,000 of your investors' cash to the Vatican? And when that didn't work, you hired a pair of monsignors to travel with you and then asked them to change into a more seniorial robe to send the impression you were down with god's No. 2? If this sounds like a caper out of one of, uh, Hathaway's movies, add to the film treatment many more hundreds of thousands of swindled funds that went toward funding a lavish lifestyle including a Trump Tower duplex, custom tailored clothes, and luxurious holiday travels, and you're really on your way to the bumbling about of Get Smart. CONTINUED »
As soon as Naomi Campbell has settled one case, it’s time to plead guilty to another one. Such is life when you’re an angry lunatic with a crippling sense of entitlement. She pleaded guilty this morning in London to “two counts of assaulting a police constable; one of using threatening, abusive words or behavior to cabin crew; and one of using insulting, abusive, threatening behavior or disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress” — a result of her recent temper tantrum at the British Airways counter at Heathrow Airport.
Let’s face it — unless, due to some warped, wishful thinking, you are convinced that the real R. Kelly is “I Believe I Can Fly” and not “You Remind Me of My Jeep,” or you are just such a die-hard fan that you are completely delusional, most people believe that R. Kelly did indeed film himself having sex with and pissing on his 14-year-old goddaughter, whether they’re in the cut-off-his-balls or the she-was-old-enough-to-know-what-she-wanted camp. You believe this because you saw the tape — which very clearly shows R. Kelly and a sickeningly young girl in an ugly wood-paneled room one might also have seen if one had tuned into his MTV Cribs episode — or because you know that R. Kelly married a 15-year-old Aaliyah, or because you’ve heard about the multiple settlements he’s paid to underage girls who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
The jury saw the same tape many of us did (I was in college; it still makes me queasy to think about it). And, from what they’re saying in post-trial interviews, they saw what everyone else saw. So why the hell did R. Kelly get away with it? There was one little thing. Well, one big thing.
Breaking: The jury in the R. Kelly child pornography trial has reached a verdict. Not guilty on all 14 counts.
Alain Robert, the French climber dubbed Spider-Man for his tendency to draw attention to himself in public settings (and also because he climbs buildings and other structures), was let off the hook for climbing the Times building, except for a disorderly conduct charge. That wasn't enough to keep him: He flew back to France yesterday. He told the grand jury: "If you can climb a ladder, you can climb the New York Times Building."
Say what you will about NYC’s radio personalities and their exhausting egos, but none of them deserve to die. A sexual harassment lawsuit — which made waves when a few details of it were leaked in March — filed against Wendy Williams’ husband, Kevin Hunter, includes some interesting information about Wendy Williams competitor Miss Jones of Hot 97.
Not being a law professional and already believing that the man is guilty, it’s difficult for me to gauge R. Kelly’s chances of being acquitted. But you don’t have to be a law professional to know that R. Kelly, who based on insider-y things I’ve heard and interviews I’ve read and witnessed, has the IQ of a slug, did himself a big favor by avoiding the witness stand.
When Eliot Spitzer was New York's attorney general, he went after white collar crooks and prostitutes. Now that Andrew Cuomo has taken the helm, he's made turning the Internet into a safe playground for kids a top priority. First he went after Facebook, for allowing lax privacy policies that might let kids become the real-life victims of a To Catch a Predator episode. And now he's heavy handed Internet service providers including Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner, to block websites that are known to traffic in kiddie porn.
That the online newsgroups where child porn pics and videos are traded are so widely known, and that these ISPs could pretty easily identify customers who visited them, is one thing. The other thing is how Atty. Gen. Cuomo described his relationship with kiddie porn: "You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed." Well, some folks can help to look at it, but that's just us.
At R. Kelly's child porn last month, jurors were treated to a special screening of the tape that allegedly depicts the rapper urinating on a 13-year-old girl and having sex with her.
But what if that's actually the better of the "porn at jury duty" scenarios? CONTINUED »
Josh Waring, son of gold-digging robot Lauri from The Real Housewives of Orange County, was arrested in Laguna Beach this weekend for possession of heroin and ecstasy and intent to sell.
R. Kelly’s tell-tale mole has been found, the tape has been verified, the young girl has been identified by friends and family, and the prosecution in R. Kelly’s child pornography trial has rested its case. Yesterday, 27-year-old Lisa Van Allen testified that she had multiple three-way encounters with Kelly and the victim when the victim was underage.
Editorial Director
