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 »
Former Page Six scribe, Law & Order inspiration, and current UrbanDaddy blogger Jared Paul Stern’s second (alleged) attempt at extorting money from Ron Burkle has failed. The first time around, he was reportedly caught on tape offering the Friend Of Clinton the opportunity to pay for favorable coverage in the column with cold hard cash. This time, he sued over defamation about that first time around. Oh well: A judge has tossed his lawsuit against Burkle and the Clintons.
J.C., Clinton!
After Vanity Fair’s long expose – a writearound, in fact, given that Bill Clinton refused to participate – in the July issue, which is getting more play thanks to the voluptuous Angelina Jolie gracing the cover, the ex-president’s camp appears to have copy/pasted from its defense playbook, countering the article and the magazine that has a “penchant for libel.”
Todd Purdum’s article arrives just in time, because at some point this week, wife Hillary will be an after-thought as Barack Obama champions toward November, and our focus, genuinely, jumps to Obama vs McCain.
So while the public can still be relied upon for its interest in the Clintons, VF hits with “The Comeback Id,” which opens with a not-so-kind portrayal of Clinton and his skeevy friends, like Ron Burkle, owner of the plane “Air Fuck One,” and Steve Bing, whose favorite pastime is litigation. (Though there is this line: “In fairness, it should be said that Clinton’s entourage that weekend also included his daughter, Chelsea, and her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, and no one who was there has adduced the slightest evidence that Clinton’s behavior was anything other than proper.”)
The article, all nearly 10,000 words of it, which jumps around from his presidency and his scandals to his new sources of income and his role in his wife’s campaign, can be summed up in this way: “What’s the matter with him?” CONTINUED »
Somehow the travails of Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch, Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Page Six v. Vanessa Grigoriadis, Cathy Horyn v. Giorgio Armani, Dale Peck v. Rick Moody, and Leonard Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan get boiled down to what’s going on between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag: CONTINUED »
• The $1.08 billion in debt American Media is carrying is bad debt, says analyst troupe Moody’s, which just downgraded the company’s rating. This puts more pressure on David Pecker to work out a deal with Ron Burkle, who’s shown interest in snapping up the company but hasn’t exactly moved forward with the deal; something about involving more cash in the deal thanks to fearful banks. [Keith Kelly]
PROFITS FOR PRESIDENT Did Magic Johnson’s business relationship with Ron Burkle cause his support for a presidential candidate to swap from Barack to Hillary? Official spokespeople say NO; common sense says YES. [HP]
… just how coincidental it is that the National Enqurier – owned by American Media Inc., which Clinton family friend Ron Burkle is looking to buy – pieces together a “secret love child” story about John Edwards just in time for the Iowa primary.
Ron Burkle, BFF of Hill and Bill, is set to acquire AMI, which owns Shape, Star, the National Enquirer and Men’s Fitness. GQ’s advice to the editors there: stay out of the Clintons’ way. [WWD]
“High-level merger talks are underway between American Media and Ron Burkle’s Source Interlink Companies,” reports the NYP. “The merger would combine American Media’s titles, including the National Enquirer, with Source Interlink’s, which range from Motor Trend to Soap Opera Digest.”
While negotiations are still in the early stages, both parties are confident the deal would do nothing to tarnish the sterling reputation of the titles in question, which have long been unofficially merged at the front of the supermarket checkout aisle, under the multi-purpose category of “Reading For Dummies.”
“Kisses like a fourth grader.” “Passive in bed.” “Inspires Academy Award caliber fake orgasms.” These are just three of the serious allegations levied against billionaire Ron Burkle by his opportunistic former mistress, Chevyn McClintock (who, incidentally, is shopping a memoir). And while Burkle is, undoubtedly, less than pleased by the questionable and totally irrelevant charges, McClintock will not be silenced.
She told [Page Six] that when she recently sent Burkle the chapter he appears in, she got angry calls from him. “He told me, ‘Chevyn, if you’re smart you won’t go through with this. It’s not in your best interest.’ . . . But it’ll be published even if I have to publish it myself . . . He will not intimidate me further.”
And there you have it. The indubitable McClintock will stay her course, and continue her selfless, one-woman crusade to alert any/all potential Burkle bedders of the magnate’s inability to master first base. And if that should happen to result in a profitable book deal, so be it!
Kate Hudson dumped recent beau Dax Shepard. According to OK!, Kate didn’t even cut Shepard loose herself; a friend told Dax the news over the phone.
Since the break up, Kate has been spotted around the city with Ron Burkle. Dax has been seen around his apartment eating Chinese food watching Swingers over and over again.
Whoops-a-doozie! Pseudo-homophobic Star
magazine missed its 1.5 million rate base for the first half the year — and has Ron Burkle target American Media Inc. wondering whether they should drop it to 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the tab that usually sells upwards of 800k on the newsstand has only been averaging about 600k under new EIC Candace Trunzo. Which begs the question: Can we get Bonnie back to do another one of those blog-a-zine issues? Or maybe they should just follow this one’s model and go with the gay-baiting angle.
At ABC headquarters in D.C., mysterious “white, powdery” substance turns out to be aspirin; Related: In moment of inspired genius, Lindsay Lohan’s legal team unveils new “Tylenol” defense.
• CBS to pay Imus an undisclosed settlement. In exchange, the ousted radio D.J. will agree to “shut the fuck up.”
• Ron Burkle still exploring the idea of adding Star and The National Enquirer to his “crappy supermarket tabloids” repertoire.
• Yeah, we’re going to out on a limb here and say that Business Week’s Jon Fine thinks Arthur Sulzberger should go private.
• Baghdad Diarist unimpressed with Weekly Standard and New Republic for being unimpressed with him: “It’s been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq.”
• When asked to clarify his feelings on Dow Jones, Ron Burkle winked and said, “Yeah, you know I’d like to get a piece of that,” before reaching up for a high-five.
• Ivanka Trump has zero interest in joining morning trainwreck otherwise known as The View.
• Impossibly, the Conrad Black jury claims they’re utterly incapable of unanimously reaching a (guilty) verdict.
• Michael Moore “live-chats” with HuffPo about healthcare, politics and, of course, how much he hates Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
• Amy Jacobson ‘devastated’ over termination. “I thought they would suspend me and then support me,” she tells the Chicago Sun-Times.
• Reputed rivalry between Tina Brown and Graydon Carter gets exponentially more heated boring.
Michael Jackson savior and Radar suspect Burkle responds to rebuffed bid for Los Angeles Times by joining GE in making a play for Rupert Murdoch’s big game.
Whew, we’re exhausted.
• Elizabeth Spiers discusses what she would do as acting president of Time Inc. Better still, it’s not part of her infamous stand-up comedy routine!
• Time Warner president may be in trouble for quietly covering up HBO prez’s habit of accidentally choking the women he’s screwing.
• Ron Burkle is now in another bidding war. For Stuff magazine. Seriously.
• Calling CollegeHumor “sophomoric” is like calling McDonald’s “greasy.” You know, because both are so delicious—in a low-brow, cheap thrills kinda way.
• Don Imus is just itching to jump back in the insult-radio saddle.
• Greta Van Susteren follows Rudy G.’s lead, challenges the Dems to debate on the fair and unbiased Fox network.
• ABC’s fall schedule to include “Geico cavemen” sitcom; Unimaginative tv critics poised, ready to blast the show as being “too commercial.”
• Only Ron Burkle can explain how owning Radar fits into his plans of total world domination.
• Forbes.com chief executive Jim Spanfeller admits to running a “page-view sweatshop.”
• XM Radio DJ’s are suspended after admitting that “a homeless guy wanting to f—k Condoleezza Rice” was kinda hilarious.
CONTINUED »
“Stupid.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Ballsy.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Which lever do I pull to be crushed by a safe?”
Just a sampling of reactions we solicited from magazine industry veterans about Ron Burkle’s $1.2 billion purchase of Primedia’s 76 specialty magazines. Oh, and a line from Will & Grace that seemed relevant.
• Did Vicky’s fire Gisele Bundchen because of her hefty paycheck? Or because she was Bitchy McDiva?
• See Kate Moss like you’ve never seen her before.
• Escort-turned-journalist Jeff Gannon gets inspired by McG, becomes event coordinator for the International Bible Reading Association.
• Ron Burkle sues Anne Hathaway’s boyfriend for more money than you could possibly imagine. Or, in Burkle’s words, “enough to buy a low-grade mansion.”
• Stephen Colbert gives Rep. Tom Davis a much-needed lesson on “doobies.”
• Bravo searches for Tim Gunn’s sidekick. The ideal candidate will be a fashionably dressed fag hag who knows how to “make it work.”
Since Ron Burkle lost his chance to turn the Los Angeles Times into a publicity machine for his ego, he’s now turning his attention to American Media Inc., the debt-laden publisher of Star, National Enquirer, Flex, and Muscle & Fitness. (Yeah, that list sort of trails off at the end.) It’s also the stomping ground of David Pecker, whose ability to retain an executive title bewilders us. So the story goes, Burkle wants to merge AMI with Source Interlink Companies, a firm probably responsible for half the junk mail you receive, and one Burkle controls through his Yucaipa investment company. Combine all that with his not-so-secret investment in Radar and, if the deal goes through, he’ll have a whole stable of tabloid magazines in dire financial straits.
Editorial Director
