Vanity Fair bills the article "Beautiful People, Ugly Choices," as "a definitive portrait of Fawcett's meteoric rise, turbulent second act, and tragic final chapter." Unfortunately, the story mainly offers the definitive portrait of what a horrible partner and father Ryan O'Neal is, without getting at who Farrah really was, or why she chose to stay with O'Neal on and off for 30 years. The profile will be published as the cover story of one of Vanity Fair's two September covers (the other features Michael Jackson), which will be available on August 5 in New York and Los Angeles and on August 11 nationally. Below are excerpts from an advance copy of the article.

Author Leslie Bennetts first interviewed Ryan in June, after Farrah had been hospitalized with an infection in the port in her chest, which was installed because the veins in her arm collapsed from the many injections she received during her three year battle with anal cancer. Bennetts writes that Farrah's condition was so bad Ryan was "desperately trying to sustain himself with gallows humor," such as joking that he and her loved ones were just trying to get their hands on her money.

He made another crack about the 2007 incident which led to his arrest on assault and weapons charges. Ryan claims he fired a shot at his son Griffin O'Neal because he swung a fireplace poker at him. (Griffin accidentally hit his pregnant 22-year-old girlfriend in the head instead of his father.)

"When [Farrah] turned 60, we had this celebratory birthday where I shot my son," O'Neal said, his tone as casual as if there had been nothing conversation-stopping about such a remark. "I could have hit him, but I missed. Farrah was lying in bed, and she could hear it all—fights, swinging, gunshots. Welcome to the O'Neals'!"

In her final days, much of the public's perception of Farrah's condition was shaped by anecdotes Ryan fed to the press, which were apparently more rehearsed than they appeared. Ryan's revelation during an interview with Barbara Walters in June that he had "asked her to marry me, again, and she's agreed" was widely reported, along with his joke that he'd dress for the ceremony, "like a gigolo, you know? With a little thin mustache and slicked-back hair." Bennetts says that Ryan had already tried out the exact same lines on her, but in his first draft of the story he sounded far less sincere. Originally, he described his outfit as "a boulevardier in a silk suit, taking her for her money." Griffin claims Farrah never intended to marry his father, and that he only cared for her while she was ill because he wanted to be written into her will. No one has disputed that Ryan stayed by Farrah's side throughout her illness and to be fair, Griffin is obviously not an impartial source on the matter.

The article discusses Farrah's difficulty with her sex symbol status, suggesting that may be what inspired her "to sculpt female nudes with an obsessiveness that seemed like an attempt to understand the world's fascination with her own body." Ryan even says Farrah told him she liked her iconic hair style because "I can't see to the right or left, and that way I don't have to see people looking at me." Bennetts writes:

Aging only exacerbated her ambivlanece about her acting career. "As you get older, the young studs take over, the agents change, and you get shuffled off to Buffalo," O'Neal observes. "She didn't like that feeling."

And the process is always harder for women who have traded on their looks. "I think they lose confidence," O'Neal says. "I my mind, if I say, 'Your're beautiful,' that should be enough. But she was very high-maintenance. She took a long time getting ready to go anywhere, and that started to drive me nuts."

While most say Farrah first left Ryan in 1997 after she found him in bed with a 25-year-old actress on Valentine's Day, Ryan says menopause was another factor in their split.

"I believe Farrah was going through some kind of change," he says. "I didn't have a change of life; I was always a jerk. But they're hard work, these divas; I was sick of it,a nd I was unappreciated. I just don't think she liked me very much. So I excused myself and I was lucky enough to meet this young girl. She was more a duaghter to me than a lover, and my own daughter had flown the coop, so here was this replacement."

Many of Ryan's most disturbing statements are about what an admittedly terrible father he was to his four children (by three different women). He said he only talks to Redmond, his son with Farrah, who is in jail. As for the others,

"I was in touch with them for years, and I was a mess. I'm not in touch with them now, and I've never been happier," he says, giving me a belligerent glare. When I ask if he's sorry he had children he nods. "A couple of them I would take back."

Though Ryan insisted in an interview following Farrah's death on June 25 that since he reunited with her about two and a half years ago he hasn't been with another woman, he also says that during her funeral:

"I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me," Ryan told me. "I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car' She said, 'Daddy, it's me — Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."

The incident encapsulates what tarnished the image of one of the most glamourous stars of his generation: his womanizing, substance abuse, and horrifying relationship with his children. In the article Ryan pretty much undoes with his own words any public rehabilitation he may have accomplished by casting himself as the hero in the drama of Farrah's final days, but sadly we never hear Farrah speak for herself. In what will probably be one of the last in-depth articles written on her life, we're left with a better understanding of the "ugly choices" that she made, but no insight into why she made them.

Leslie Bennetts On Farrah Fawcett And Ryan O'Neal: "Beautiful People, Ugly Choices" [Vanity Fair]

• Lindsay Lohan is on the cover of Elle UK — the shoot where jewelry went missing! — and here's what Editor-in-Chief Lorraine Candy writes in her Editor's letter:

"Lindsay Lohan wrote me a note during this month's cover shoot. It read, 'Let's do it again some time.' I've put it on my office wall because, in all honesty, I don't know if I could. This was the most unpredictable, and confusing cover shoot in my magazine career. First, Lindsay was about to arrive. Then she was in Paris. She was almost on set, then she disappeared into her hotel room. She was ready for her interview, then she had to have a fake tan! But we got there. And what we got was amazing. This shoot is truly original, just like Ms Lohan herself. In the end, she did her job brilliantly and, I hope you'll agree, so did we." Here's video from behind-the-scenes at the shoot [Elle TV]

• Chris Brown will be sentenced on Wednesday and appear on Larry King Live afterward: He'll apologize for assaulting Rihanna on TV. [Radar Online]
• Was Chris Brown forcibly removed from an upscale bowling alley in NYC last week for "partying too much"? [Fox 411]
• Take note: Tom Cruise is David and Victoria Beckham's "relationship guru." [Daily Express]
• "David Beckham is to star alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in TV ads promoting California to tourists." [The Sun]
• Ryan O'Neal says of Farrah Fawcett's funeral: "I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She replied, 'Daddy, it's me - Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick." Tatum O'Neal says: "That's our relationship in a nutshell. You make of it what you will." [The Sun]
• Vanity Fair produced two different covers for its September issue: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. These deaths bumped a scheduled Mad Men cover, so now the actors from the show will be inside. Boo. [WWD]
• This paper spoke with the grandmother of the Samantha Burke, woman that Jude Law got pregnant. Delores Burke, 80, says: "What I want to know is how a girl gets pregnant in this day and age? Yes, it takes two people but he is the older and wiser man and he should have made sure nothing like this happened. I'm mad at him, we all are. He has other children. Didn't he think about how his actions would affect them?" [Daily Mail]
• "Samantha, her mom, and her family can affirm that Jude has been responsive and supportive throughout the relationship and pregnancy, and know that he will remain so as a father once Baby Sophia is born." [People]
• Video of Samantha Burke talking to the media at the link. TMZ]
• Apparently Samantha barely had any boyfriends, hence the headline: Prude Until Jude. [The Sun]
• A source says: "Jude sleeps with so many different women. A lot of names were going around as to who the mother of his baby could be." [Page Six]
• Jude's ex, Sadie Frost, is the oldest of 10 half brothers and sisters and mother of four kids from two marriages, so she's "understanding" and wants her kids with Jude to meet the new child. [Mirror]
• Jude Law allegedly told Sadie Frost that he only slept with Samantha Burke once, after a drunken party. [Daily Mail]
• Jessica Biel sings! She's playing Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls at the Hollywood Bowl, and says she would love to to go Broadway: "That is one of my eight-year-old dreams. That's like my little eight-year-old inside me is cartwheeling around, thinking about that idea." [AP]
• Mariah Carey's new CD will have ads. Actually, the CD booklet will be a 34-page mini magazine in co-production with Elle… with ads from Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, Carmen Steffens, Le Métier de Beauté and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. [BrandWeek]
• Paris Hilton's estranged manager Jason Moore is hopping a book about how he molded this blond piece of clay into a global icon." [Rush & Molloy]
• Dr. Conrad Murray was getting $150,000 a month to be Michael Jackson's personal physician. But many of his previous patients were low-income. "There are many, many patients that thank God this man was here for them," says one. One patient said Murray performed angioplasty on him three years ago without ever being guaranteed he would be paid. [CNN]
• If you have $30 million or so, you can big on the Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson, going up for auction soon. [BBC News]
• Jon & Kate Plus 8 will not become Jon & Kate Plus Dates. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Leslie Mann says her husband Judd Apatow gives her anecdotes to tell while she's promoting new film Funny People: "He has trained me to be ultra-prepared, to have five stories ready to go. He gives what I say a beginning, a middle, and an end. Whereas I'd just barf it out," she says. "It's really lazy of me to depend on him to make me sound sensible, but so what? I'm lazy." [The New Yorker]
• Milla Jovovich: Getting hitched for the third time; filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson is her fiancé. [Daily Mail]
• Tilda Swinton and 40 other people are pulling a film screen through the Scottish Highlands "on an eight and a half day odyssey through the mountains, camping each night in a different village." [Guardian]
• In this interview, Diane Kruger says she is a "country girl" and "definitely not sophisticated." The reporter writes: "What utter hogwash! Kruger spent most of her childhood summers on a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London, then five years as a top-drawer international model, based in Paris, before becoming a film actress." [Times of London]
• Liev Schreiber says kids make you youthful: "I'm older physically, but spiritually much younger." [People]
• Kate Middleton, aka Prince William's girlfriend, has had a series of meetings with Sir Richard Branson, in an effort to "sharpen her business acumen." [Daily Mail]
• Editors at British magazine Pride are apologizing for manipulating comments made by Nia Long, which made it seem like she was ranting about Beyoncé's acting skills. [Daily Express]
• Liza Minnelli will not be on Ugly Betty, but she will be on Drop Dead Diva. [AP]
• Whoops! Emile Hirsch and an Emile Hirsch impostor both attended the same party. [Page Six]
• Eric Bana is hot and talking about his attraction to cars. [Daily Mail]
• Sienna Miller on GI Joe: "If these films are well done I can find them quite entertaining. But…I prefer indie, arty films really. It's not the kind of film I'd normally go and see." [Guardian]
• In addition, Sienna's GI Joe wig cost cost £4,800. [Telegraph]
• Carey Hart says he and Pink are going to have a baby… Eventually. "She still has another 18 months of touring, and I'm pretty heavy in competing again in all my businesses, so it's definitely going to happen, but just not anytime soon." [E!]
• Q: A character with special needs or a prostitute-those are usually the two paths to Oscar. Had you considered that? Hugh Dancy: "I genuinely didn't. But now that you've said that, if it doesn't work out for me with Adam, I'll play a hooker next. There was the worry that if we didn't pull this off, I would look doubly exposed. Like, 'Really? You thought that was going to work? Better luck next time! There's this great prostitute movie coming out-maybe you should give that a shot.'" [BlackBook]
• Kevin Costner and his band were set to perform in Canada when suddenly the stage collapsed. One person died and at least 60 people were injured, including 2 members of Costner's band. [TMZ]
• Funny interview with Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, at the link. [BlackBook]
• Sheree from The Real Housewives Of Atlanta seems psyched that she was the number one trending topic on Twitter last week after her "Who's gonna check me, boo?" argument. She says: "You don't want to be on the wrong side of Sheree. You really don't. I tell them all the time, 'Don't let the cute face fool you!'" [E!]
• He's done Ali G, Borat and Brüno.What will Sacha Baron Cohen do next? How about a Eurovision music mockumentary? [The Sun]
• Kathleen Turner spills about living the last 17 years with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis, taking steroids which made her puffy and bloated and then turning to vodka to kill the pain — and becoming a drunk. [Daily Mail]
• Omarosa will be on TV One in a new series called Life After. [WaPo]
• "In Cold Souls, opening Friday in limited release, the actor Paul Giamatti plays an actor named…Paul Giamatti." [LA Times]
  
• Billy Joel is "distraught" over his breakup with Katie Lee Joel and "obsessed" with getting her back. [Page Six]
• People you may or may not have hear of had a kid: "Survivor & Amazing Race's Rob and Amber Become Parents." [People]
• Hollywood is out of ideas, part MCDXLIV: Steven Spielberg will direct a remake of Harvey, about a man and his friendship with an invisible six-foot tall rabbit. The original flick was released in 1950 and starred James Stewart. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Will Ferrell has left the film project Neighborhood Watch. [Variety]
• Dustin "Screech"Diamond: purposely excluded from the Saved By The Bell reunion by his castmates. [NY Daily News]
• Whatshername will celebrate her divorce with a televised "party extravaganza." [The Sun]
• Whatshername is on "yet another" holiday, and her cagefighter boyfriend is with her. [Daily Mail]
• Whatshisname has been crying himself to sleep and wishes he were stronger. [Mirror]
• "They did try to submit in the comedy category in the '90s and suffered from doing it in an era of juggernaut comedies like Friends and Seinfeld and Cheers and whatnot. And The Simpsons was as well written, if not more so, as any of those — but suffered from the prejudice against the medium. So I think perhaps in reparation for that, they should give them an honorary achievement Emmy." — Seth MacFarlane. [LA Times]
• "At 21 I married Luc Besson and we bought a beautiful 13-room chateau in Normandy. I was totally happy, drinking wine, walking in the forests and riding horses in the beautiful farmland. It didn't work because he was so much older. I was young and staying up late, playing the guitar and hanging out with my friends. He was the early riser who went to sleep early. He expected me to be the perfect wife, which was natural - the hostess entertaining his friends. But I was like, 'Aaaargh! I don't even like those people.' It's too bad it didn't work because he was an incredible person and I was an incredible girl, but the timing wasn't right." — Milla Jovovich. [Daily Mail]
• "I think Hillary Clinton is one of the most amazing women of this time. I don't know her and I don't know — should I call her? I'm sure she's busy. But I know they know this movie's being made. And I just want to call and say: Do you have any thoughts or feelings I should be aware of? Of course I can't make that call. I feel like saying, 'I'm going to play you in this movie and I have a lot of respect for you and is there anything you want me to say?'" — Hope Davis. [LA Times]
• "Whatever I say, I get myself into trouble." — Sienna Miller. [Guardian]
• "When I'm not working, I feel like a Ferrari in the garage. You have all this potential and you just want to break out." — Glenn Close. [LA Times]
• "I would talk my wacky language to him and he'd interpret it to the drummer. I'd say, 'I want it to sound like Zeus woke up from a nap and he's pissed and there's an opening in the clouds and he starts handing out lightning bolts,' which is crazy, but that's how I hear the rhythm. And Omar, he whispers some things to the drummer, and that's exactly what it sounds like. It really encouraged the songwriter within me." — Juliette Lewis, on recording her band's new album, produced by The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. [Reuters]
• "I have a theory that people feel as attractive as they did as a child. I was a really hideous child. People who were attractive as children have a sense of entitlement. I have a sense of awkwardness." — Kate Beckinsale. [Times of London]
• "Troy launched me but it launched me as the face that launched a thousand ships and not as an actress. I want roles where I have to expose my soul." — Diane Kruger. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• "I have never come across a female character that is written with Blanche's level of complexity, in that she's vulnerable, she's pathetic, she's a monster, she's nasty, she's tender, she's kind – she's so many things that you never know quite what she's going to do next. I've never come across so rich a character before." — Rachel Weisz on being in A Streetcar Named Desire in London. [Telegraph]
• "My life has gotten more surreal in stair steps. from the blog to the book to the movie to 'Oh my God, Nora Ephron's directing it! Oh my God, Meryl Streep's in it!' So right now I'm at this sort of surreal-is-the-new-normal phase. I'm cool with it." — Julie Powell, whose blog became the movie Julie & Julia. [NY Daily News]
• "I'm so not the relationship go-to girl. But I'm much clearer about what a relationship is, which is why I will never marry again. Gabriel and I have a great partnership and a lovely daughter. But I once was stupid enough to say, in a previous relationship, 'I'm going to be with this person for ever,' and realized, as I grew, that I don't know if for ever is possible. Gabriel and I don't look at our relationship in terms of for ever, we look at it as right here today. And today means being the best people we can be, the best parents we can be. It's wonderful, but neither one of us feels the need to attach ourselves to each other for life – because it may not be that." — Halle Berry. [Daily Mail]
• "I hate alcoholics and AA. If you can't drink responsibly, don't drink at all. Don't go to meetings, whine about your character flaws and blame the fact that you are a sociopath on booze" — Roseanne Barr to Heeb. [Page Six]

[Us , People, The Mirror]

MEGAN: No, the Clinton thing is totally epic, I fully support a separate post for that.
MOE: ok cool... i suppose then that we should talk about... florida and michigan, jeremiah wright, rosencrantz & gildenstern…
MEGAN: Wait, aren't they dead?
MEGAN: (Sorry, it was a pun that had to be made)
MOE: we all die is sort of the point
MEGAN: That's sort of existential for this time of the morning, I thought I was supposed to be the depressed one!

MEGAN: By the way, I meant to say, all I dreamt about last night was Bill Clinton and economic insecurity.
MOE: Dude Dodai and I saw the Sex & The City movie. All I dreamt about was…shoes.
MOE: NO NOT REALLY.
MEGAN: Aw, those would've been some awesome dreams, though.
MOE: I would say the movie made me ill, but I was ill before…it's just such A Soul Murdering Work Of Staggering Consumerism
MEGAN: Yeah, that's sort of why I went to see Indiana Jones instead. That, and the fact that my companion was a straight guy.

MEGAN: Anyway, so that that Pfleger guy is the new Wright and Obama's church is the story that shall never die even though he quit it this weekend and no one can answer the riddle of why they would continue to tape the damn sermons.
MOE: This Pfleger guy is soooooo much more fascinating than Jeremiah Wright. WHERE DID HE COME FROM? And unrelated: Did you read how there are still seven or eight Jews in Baghdad? It totally is ruling the Most Emailed List, as if it were a story about pandas or spotted owls, only that's really now how it is…anyway their synagogue closed after the war "made it too dangerous for them to worship openly." Great going, us! And everyone used to be so nice, and Muslims were nice to Jews and Sunnis were nice to Shiites, but not anymore, except that there are so few Jews that the Muslims actually are still nice to them…anyway. Back to Pfleger.

MEGAN: Right, because the only violence the Iraqi state used to countenance under Saddam Hussein was the violence that it itself committed against the Kurds and political dissidents! But, yes, Pfleger.
MOE: Dude, has someone made a mashup of this vs. Harriet Christian? Because that sort of demands to be done.
MEGAN: By the way, in point of fact, "der Pfleger" is German for "male nurse." Not that that's important.
MEGAN: Oh, God, Harriet Christian. What a wack job. "Inadequate black male," Harriet? Gosh, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones must've loved that shit.

MOE: Seriously, okay, the thing here is 1. If it didn't sufficiently speak to Pfleger's own point that what he said was probably just as offensive to most folks as anything Jeremiah Wright said but it's harder to argue with him because he is himself white, then 2. Harriet Christian pretty much does the rest of his job for him.
MOE: And the Rosencrantz reference was MoDowd's. So unlike me, I know.
MEGAN: I don't know, was Pfleger more acceptable? Was he just the straw that broke the camel's back, or was it worse?
MOE: The thing is that this lede

They say that every president gets the psychoanalyst he deserves. And every Hamlet gets his Rosencrantz.

is typically retarded, but I remember that play being my favorite thing I'd ever read back in high school, and maybe that's why McClellan appeals! Except McClellan was probably aiming more for Guildenstern. Spokespretty Dana Perino can be Rosencrantz.
MEGAN: Is openly mocking Hillary Clinton worse than "God damn America" and "the government invented AIDS" and shit?
MOE: See, I guess I didn't see Pfleger until after I'd seen Harriet Christian. How come no one has made a mashup of this shit yet?
MEGAN: Nope. Could we set it to, like, Keystone Kops music?
MOE: Someone should do that, and then splash in some Michael Richards
MEGAN: Ooh, right.

MEGAN: Anyway, so Howard Dean (who is apparently the new devil to Hillary supporters) called Geraldine Ferraro's comments on race "outside the mainstream and unhelpful." That's a start, really.
MOE: Here's a little passage from a Chicago Tribune story about how Rev. Pfleger got into this line of work:

Clements has remained an activist ever since, leading anti-drug campaigns, encouraging black adoptions, convincing parishioners to open their hearts to ex-offenders. He often joins forces with a white activist priest, Rev. Michael Pfleger, the pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church on the South Side. As it turns out, Pfleger was also in Marquette Park the day King was hit with the rock.

PFLEGER WAS 16, a kid from nearby Thomas Moore parish. Everywhere he went for several days leading up to the march, people in his Southwest Side neighborhood were talking about the pending march. Why couldn't they stay in their own place? They took away our old house. They took away our old neighborhood. They took away our old church. They drove us out. Now is the time to draw the line.

Pfleger and two friends hopped on their bikes and rode to the park to see if they could get a look at King, the man who was causing all the trouble. When they got to the park, it was scary. "I saw this hate," he says. "I had never seen them, my neighbors, like that. I'd never seen that side of white people."

His neighbors were cursing and throwing rocks. There were police in riot gear and there he was, King, looking calm, trying to say something to the mob. But Pfleger couldn't hear over the screams of "Niggers, go home!"

MOE:

"King was in control," Pfleger recalls. "And the more in control he was, the angrier the crowd became. I thought to myself, 'Either this man is crazy, or this man has some sort of power I want to know about.' It was the greatest, most powerful class in non-violence I'll ever get in my life."

The next day, Pfleger started reading whatever he could find about the march and about King. He cut out photos of King and taped them to the back of his bedroom closet door as a sort of shrine. Today, in his office at St. Sabina, he has half a dozen photographs of him: King addressing thousands of people at the rally at Soldier Field, King speaking at a temple on the North Shore, King and a young Jesse Jackson the night before King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

"People ask me all the time why I became a priest," Pfleger says. "I tell them it was really a black Baptist minister who called me into ministry. My activism today was unquestionably birthed that day in Marquette Park. I think of him as a mentor."

MOE: That's from 2006
MOE: In 2002 he was involved in some controversy when a black team joined his mostly white suburban Catholic school league and parents were like "we don't want to go play there it's unsafe."
MEGAN: "I'd never seen that side of white people," kind of helpfully sums up what I think every right-thinking person's view of racism is. Like, the horror that you could be associated with something that is so very, very obviously deeply wrong.

MEGAN: The first time you see it or experience it, it should make you sick to your stomach that there are people like that in the world.
MOE: So here's the question: Geraldine Ferraro: obviously unhelpful. Michael Pfleger: more helpful than unhelpful, over the long haul, I believe. And yeah, racism is completely stomach churning the first time you experience it from your community. I mean, my initial experiences were all in Asia, which was slightly different, because it was like, my little kid friends grumbling about how Chinese spit and/or smelled and/or always insisted on touching our hair. It was beyond my comprehension at the time how they could even think those things, to be honest. It used to bother me so much. I would stand there dutifully while someone touched my hair and yearn to apologize for the Opium Wars and having an air conditioner and such. Oh… phew! Geraldine Ferraro is now back on Fox. Someone needed to put the crap back in this Crappy Hour!

MEGAN: OMG, she looks so freaking happy to be on Fox. Goddammit, Geraldine, try to look a little less self-satisfied.
MEGAN: Dude, they just completely laughed at her when she quoted Jackie Mason. I'm beginning to be uncomfortable.
MEGAN: Oh, are you kidding? She's like, "If people said that crap about Obama, we would be horrified." Oh, really, Geraldine? You mean, like, when Andrew Cuomo said that Obama cannot "shuck and jive" at a press conference and his press people successfully convinced everyone to ignore it and not a single Democratic party leader in NY or beyond called him out on it?
MOE: I'm clarifying the Pfleger thing; it was his school in the "dangerous" neighborhood, and his school was rejected from the Southside Catholic Conference or something on account of that, and then he went public with racism charges, and then a lot of Catholics were like "why couldn't he have been a little quieter about this shit."

MEGAN: Ah, lovely. Well, Chicago is such a lovely, well-planned city. Ahem.
MOE: Jesus I didn't even know what "shuck n jive" meant.

"To shuck and jive" originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier. "Shucking and jiving" was a tactic of both survival and resistance. A slave, for instance, could say eagerly, "Oh, yes, Master," and have no real intention to obey. Or an African-American man could pretend to be working hard at a task he was ordered to do, but might put up this pretense only when under observation. Both would be instances of "doin' the old shuck 'n jive."

MEGAN: Yes. It's a racist term.
MOE: Um yeah.
MEGAN: But his press people called everyone in the universe (I ought to know) and were like "he meant bobbing and waving!!! you're taking it out of context" and I was like, there's no context for that
MOE: What I wonder is if there would have been way more of those types of slips had Barack Obama been more stereotypical. Had he not been reared with such colossal reserves of cultural capital, the "something for everyone" biography, the arugula plus the brotherhood plus the atheist mom plus the Indonesian stepdad etc. etc.…had he simply been more stereotypical, had he had an "I could have been baking cookies all those years" moment. Do you think there would be more overt racism involved in his campaign? Because I did, but quotes like Cuomos

MOE: Quotes like Cuomo's just make me think it doesn't even matter. They're digging through the history books, finding the anachronistic phrases that will send messages to the right constitutents…so I guess it is less overt.
MEGAN: I mean, he's had his cookie-baking moments, in my opinion, his "stereotypical white person" about his grandmother and stuff. But, yeah, I mean, it horrifies me that either these very bright politicians are using these fucking "code" words like "shucking and jiving" and "kid" and whatever else so that people under a certain age who don't know them won't know that they're being racist and people over a certain age will get the reference. It's like Bush and his fucking evangelical code word bullshit in all his States of the Union and shit.
MOE: But like, it's just racism. You get to the point where, as we've discussed before, he's inoculated himself to this shit, to the point David Duke himself can't get it up to really hate on Obama, and yet we've got Harriet Christian of Manhattan… it makes no sense.
MEGAN: Because, I'm sorry, you don't grow up in the South when they grew up, you don't get to talk about how inspiring the civil rights movement was to you as a politician and then claim not to know.
MOE: And…re racism, institutional: did you read the Post Magazine cover story on Tatum O'Neal's drug of choice? Because I didn't have time but I should have.
MEGAN: I didn't, either, I was still all obsessing about politics, but the sentence disparities for crack v. powder cocaine are completely fucked
MOE: Here's his spiel before Congress:

My name is Michael Short. I am here because in 1992 I was sentenced for selling crack cocaine. Before that, I had never spent a day in prison. I came from a good family. I had no criminal history. I was not a violent offender. But I was sentenced to serve nearly 20 years. I was 21 years old.

They'll be chatting about the story at noon for anyone who still thinks racism exists in this country!
'
MEGAN: But, no, see, it's not racism it's racial resentment, didn't you learn anything?
MOE: Newsbreak Terror Roundup: an attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, a growing sphere of influence for the Taliban, has killed six, Syria has agreed to allow IAEA weapons inspectors to check out its North Korean JV, and something about the Iraqi jail system being less terrible than before. And should we talk about Puerto Rico?
MEGAN: Oh, sure, Puerto Rico. Hillary won! Ricky Martin danced!
MOE: Oh dude, I didn't see the National Review had run six separate stories on Friday trashing McClellan. Good grief.
MEGAN: Well, you know, it's like proving that someone's not a witch by piling stones on them. When they've crushed his chest, he'll be redeemed.
MOE: Ugh, I hate the "well-worn tell-all path" line. I just don't subscribe to the "All ousted tools of the idiocracy are unhappy in the same way" line of reasoning, but if anyone tracks down his partisan ghostwriter the Prince Of Darkness…is probably too lazy but he'll get a lot of hits with misleading headlines suggesting he has!

MEGAN: I really think PoD is giving Bobby too much credit. Let's return to caling him the Earl of Minor Despair. Or the Count of Emotionally-Instigated Intestinal Distress
MOE: Wait, he has emotions?
MOE: Ya think?

Obama's Latest Pastor Disaster [Newsweek/WaPo]
Hillary Clinton Attacked At Barack Obama Church [YouTube]
Clinton Supporter Thrown Out Of Rules Committee Meeting [YouTube]
Glamoracy [Glamour]

• Tatum O'Neal was busted for buying crack cocaine in New York. The 44-year-old actress won an Oscar at age 10 for Paper Moon and wrote a book about being neglected and abused as a child. [Reuters]
• Tatum to cops: "You know who I am, right? I'm researching a part — I'm doing this for a part as a junkie." Sure, sure. [NY Post]
• OK! magazine allegedly offered Lindsay Lohan $1 million to do a coming-out cover, announcing that she is gay. Lindsay's rep says she passed on the opportunity. It's a shame: That would be a cover (and a Midweek Madness) to savor. [Page Six]
• Oh, and Lindsay was not in the hospital on Thursday night to visit a "friend." She had an asthma attack. "She was afraid to go the hospital because [the paparazzi] were gonna write about it. She was sick," Dina Lohan says. "If you were sick, and your mother couldn't even take you to a hospital because paparazzi will fabricate some story, you know, it's sad. It's really sad." Luckily, Sam Ronson went to the emergency room with LL. Dina says: "Samantha is an angel." [People]

• A Lindsay Lohan interview with the Times of London: LL travels with her personal assistant, Jeni; Patrick, whom she describes as her stylist; and her personal spray-tanner, Lorit. LL says: "I love Europe. I love the culture. It’s so diverse. If I lived in Europe, I’d definitely speak three languages, and I’d definitely want to raise my children there too." [Times Of London]
• It was thrown out of court 6 months ago, but Sam Ronson wants to reinstate her defamation lawsuit against gossip blogger Perez Hilton. He wrote that the cocaine in LL's car (after her May 2007 bust) belonged to Sam. [E!]
• Sex And The City was number one at the box office, beating Indiana Jones. The $55.7 million opening weekend exceeded expectations. Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Brothers, says: "Women power. It was outstanding this weekend." [Wall Street Journal]
• Sgt. Jason Dene, the nephew of actress and activist Mia Farrow, died in Iraq last week. He was in his mid-30s and married with children. His death was a "noncombat" fatality — no one knows the exact cause, but medical complications seem to be the issue. [Huffington Post]
• Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher attended the Butterfly Ball fundraiser, helping homeless men and women find jobs and homes. Ashton's old That '70's Show posse was there. [AP]
• Jack Black has a new son: Jack Black Jr. [E!]
• Brooklyn to the new MTV "reality" show, Real World: Brooklyn: Boo. [Page Six]
• Haha, a fake half-naked Under Armour ad of Star Jones's hub Al Reynolds is circulating. [Page Six]
• Ashley Olsen: Still dating National Treasure's Justin Bartha. [Page Six]
• Are Cameron Diaz and Sean "Diddy" Combs hooking up? Maybe. We heard he was with singer Cassie, but this report says he and Cammie D. were laughing, holding hands and almost kissing. [Rush & Molloy]
• The massive fire at Universal Studios in California that destroyed the courthouse square featured in the film "Back to the Future" and a King Kong exhibit could have been made worse because of low water pressure. [AP]
• Were Kurt Cobain's ashes stolen? [MSNBC]
• There are rumors that Alanis Morissette is expecting. [Rush & Molloy]
• Jessica Simpson says sister Ashlee will be an "absolutely amazing" mom. She says Ash and Pete are "just the cutest couple in the world. Just being around them inspires love and everything I sing about." Haha love how she made it about herself in the end there. [People]
• Ashlee has postponed her summer tour, btw. Was it pregnancy or lack of interest? [People]
• Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Zac Efron, and Robert Downey Jr. were among the winners at the MTV Movie Awards. [People]
• Also at the MTV awards: Since they play stoners in the upcoming Pineapple Express, producers supplied Seth Rogen and James Franco with a fake bag of weed and a joke that required that they light a "fatty." At the last minute, cameras pulled away as they were doing the joke: MTV had a change of heart. [Yahoo News]
• You know how Tilda Swinton has a 68-year old partner (John Byrne) and a 29-year old boyfriend (Sandro Kopp)? Well the 68 year old also has a girlfriend, a 42-year-old lighting designer named Jeanine Davies. "It's all very relaxed and very amicable," says Byrne. [Daily Mail]
• Suri Cruise has a beauty regimen. She gets her nails done with her mom. She's two. [Daily Express]
• Pete Doherty is back with his old girlfriend, Dot Allison. Meaning: Someone wants to date Pete Doherty. [Mirror]
• Ben Affleck quit drinking to be a good husband and says: "People think you have this exciting and romantic life, because you project this exciting, romantic life on screen. But in reality you’re just doing the same thing as everyone else – you know, sitting around watching TV with your gut hanging out, playing with your kid, or even sitting on the toilet. You know what’s weird? Even I’m not that interested in my personal life any more." [Mirror]
• The father of Madonna's adopted son, David Banda, says government officials promised him he would have regular visits with his son, but he's been "left in the dark" by officials and doesn't know if the adoption papers have that provision. [Daily Mail]
• Charlie Sheen got married Friday night, yawn. [Reuters]
• Amy Winehouse showed up late for a concert in Lisbon and gave an "underwhelming" performance. Get it together, girl. [AP]
• Oh, and Amy and Mark Ronson are back to working on the Bond theme song. [News.com.au]
• Prince William will be patrolling the Caribbean with the Royal Navy: Sleeping in a four-berth cabin with other officers and undergoing rigorous training. Does this mean his room in Buckingham Palace is available? [People]
• Johnny Rotten has new teeth. He spent £10,000 on them after being diagnosed with gum disease. Bollocks! [The Sun]

The Good:
Irina Pantaeva looks kinda crazy and I totally love it.
Could May Anderson look any hotter?
Aw, daughter-of-Meryl/up-and-coming actress Mamie Gummer looks pretty!
Sure, I wish she weren't in a tapered pant, but Kimberly Peirce is unabashedly herself in her outfit.

The Bad:
Sandra Nilsson dress looks, well, a little Emperor's Club-ish.
Tatum O'Neal looks broke.
There's nothing wrong with Melissa George's dress, per se. Other than it reads a little slutty/early 90's.
Catalina Sandino Moreno might be a great actor, but couldn't she have worn something other than jeans and a t-shirt?

The Ugly:
NO sheer nude pantyhose, Kimberly Guilfoyle!

[Images via Getty.]