Noted comedian and Cinnabon connoisseur Louis C.K. has backed out of his speaking gig at the 68th annual Radio & Television Congressional Correspondents dinner, prompting wild speculation that his cancellation has something to do with Fox News's designated Sarah Palin circus handler, Greta Van Susteren. Though C.K.'s agent has said simply that the comedian "just didn't want to do it anymore," Van Susteren posted the following bit of vitriol about C.K.'s speaking engagement on her blog only a day earlier:
Another pig….and a media association has hired the pig, Louis C.K., to be their headliner for the big media dinner? Really? I am not going. I refuse to go. Everyone in the media should join me in this boycott.
The headliner of this year's Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner is "comedian" Louis C.K. Comedian? I don't think so. Pig? yes.
He uses filthy language about women…..yes, the C word…and yes, even to describe a woman candidate for Vice President of the United States. It isn't just Governor Palin he denigrates. He denigrates all women and looks to the crowd to laugh.
Is that you, Greta? I remember when Greta Van Susteren seemed merely like just another boring pundit on CNN, albeit one with the hypnotic habit of talking out of the side of her mouth like a buccaneer holding a dagger between her teeth. But let's be fair. Though there are plenty of Dick Tracy villains on the right of the political spectrum whose rampant misogyny Van Susteren regularly ignores, in the peculiar instance of Louis C.K., she has a point — he says an awful lot of terrible shit about women, most notably towards end of his otherwise funny 2008 stand-up movie Chewed Up in which the reality of an upcoming divorce infuses the familiar knocks on his wife with a palpable bitterness. Or so I've heard. Before Van Susteren goes on a blogging crusade against a comedian whose built a career on casual offensiveness, she might take a hard look at the party her network so stalwartly defends and wonder whether there isn't a "pig" or a few dozen on her side of the fence. [THR, GretaWire]
- The extremely important Desperate Housewives lawsuit continued Friday, with executive producer George Perkins apparently failing to provide his audience with a spoiler alert before saying something E! was thankfully too discreet to place at the top of its post. He also offered some character evidence about Nicollette Sheridan, who filed suit against the show's producers after she was unceremoniously dumped from the fifth season: I know Nicollette is emotional at times. I felt that emotion played a part...I felt that it was a misunderstanding between somebody trying to give a direction and the actor herself." [E!]
- Noted movie gangster Michael Madsen may have committed an actual crime. Looking very much like an aspiring Beach Boy, the Kill Bill actor was arrested in Malibu yesterday after police said that he got into a physical fight with his juvenile son. [TMZ]
- If you want to continue to see
Tim Riggins'sTaylor Kitsch's muscled, naked torso on the big screen, you better get to the theater this weekend and shell out 16 bucks for John Carter because Wall Street soothsayers have predicted that the $250 million film could lose Disney anywhere between $100-$125 million. Whatever happens to Kitsch, though, in the wake of this impending flop, remember: Texas forever. [LA Times] - Nearly a month (!) after Whitney Houston's death, Ray J says he's "still hurting." Us too, Ray J. [US]
- Houston's stylist Tiffanie Dixon would like to disabuse us of the fantasy that the singer had been staging a comeback in the moths leading up to her sudden death. Says Dixon, "We talked about it and she's like, 'I never went anywhere. It's a come through. I'm coming through something.'" "Something" as in a lingering connection to Bobby Brown or a decade-plus of drug abuse? The world may never know, but maybe it's better we don't. [Ministry]
- Britney Spears is holding out for a $16 million offer from X-Factor? Pshaw, try $20 million. [HuffPo]
- Julia Roberts's ungrateful children have forbid their mother from reading them bedtime stories in her dramatic voice, a privilege that the rest of us have to pay for. [Express]
- Relationship experts unanimously conclude that Chris Brown's new song about Rihanna and feelings — "How I Feel" — is "extremely therapeutic" and "an important part" of his "healing process." So, that's good? I remain unmoved by this commercialized form of therapy. [Hollywood Life]
- Just when you thought Suri Cruise was growing up so fast, she goes and spills something all over her dress, like a mere child would do. [Daily Mail]
- Fancy seamstress Vera Wang and bullet-riddled million-dollar man 50 Cent were photographed together in what appears to be a poorly lit hallway, which means that they are entertainment world's newest power couple. [ONTD]
- Spike Lee has suggested that everyone become pen pals with his friend, Wesley Snipes, who's currently serving a 3-year prison sentence for tax evasion and is, consequently, pretty lonely. [Express]