Archive for March, 2008

31
Mar

Hillary Clinton’s Universal Insolvent Health Care

hillarycare.jpg

From Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign website:

“Hillary’s American Health Choices Plan covers all Americans and improves health care by lowering costs and improving quality. It speaks to American values, American families, and American jobs.â€

Shucks! Just six months ago Clinton boldly told a campaign audience in Iowa:

“I believe everyone — every man, woman and child — should have quality, affordable health care in America.â€

That is, every man, woman, and child who doesn’t work for her campaign. From this morning’s Politico:

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out …

[T]he unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.

They show the campaign ended last year owing Aetna more than $213,000 for “employee benefits.â€

31
Mar

Ashlee Simpson Is Not Welcome on SNL

ashley_simpson_nickelodeon.jpgIn case you’re wondering why Ashlee Simpson is making the magazine and talk-show rounds, it’s because she has a new album coming out called Bittersweet World.

(Sidenote to Ashlee: Bitch, please. You don’t have nearly enough edge for a drama-queen album title like that. I don’t care that you now have red hair, you just don’t.)

Her dad/manager Joe Simpson wants her to go on Saturday Night Live to promote it, but guess what? They remember what happened last time.

Camp Simpson’s rationale for the rejection?

A rep for Ashlee said, “We’re not doing ‘SNL’ because they’re dark the week we are here in April and there were no other opportunities later in the year.”

Or maybe SNL’s producers just aren’t buying that she’s really professional. You know it.

31
Mar

UT-San Antonio to Add Course on Irony

boyscout.jpgSometimes Deceiver posts just write themselves:

It seemed like an honorable goal: Draft an honor code for University of Texas at San Antonio students to follow, exhorting them not to cheat or plagiarize.

But when students threw a draft of the new honor code onto the Internet for feedback, some noticed a problem: Parts of the code appeared to have been lifted word for word from another school’s honor code, without attribution. Even the definition of plagiarism was, well, plagiarized.

Akshay Thusu, the student in charge of the honor code effort, said it was an oversight, the result of a draft that was crafted five years ago and passed through different students and faculty advisers before landing in his lap.

“We believe there might be a citation page,” Thusu said. “We are still looking for it.”

Thanks to ultracute reader Toby for the tip!

31
Mar

Keith Richards Writing “A Million Little Pieces: The Sequel”

keith_richards.jpgThis might explain why Keith Richards chided Amy Winehouse for using drugs:

“I can’t even remember yesterday.”

He says his constant marijuana smoking combined with a head injury he sustained during a fall from a coconut tree in 2006 may be impeding his progress on an upcoming autobiography.

About his current drug use:

“I smoke my head off. I smoke weed all the damn time. But that’s my benign weed. That’s all I take, that’s all I do. But I do smoke, and I’ve got some really good hash.”

“You have to drag things out of your memory. Some of it you don’t even want to remember and others you’ve totally forgotten, so you end up trying to put your life together again.

“And since I didn’t keep a diary, it’s a bit difficult.”

Sounds like this Rolling Stone is going to give James Frey a run for his money for the fictional memoir Pulitzer.

31
Mar

Hayden Panettiere Rewarded for Interfering with Other Cultures

The diminutive dolphin-defender received the amazingly prestigious Gretchen Wyler Award on Saturday night. Whaddaya mean, you’ve never heard of the Gretchen Wyler Award? It’s only the best prize ever:

“As an actress, you always dream of getting awards like the Golden Globe award, but I never expected to get an award that is this special and important to me as this,” Hayden said through tears. “There are people who dedicate their entire lives to preserving the environment and defending animals, they are so much more deserving of something like this.”

No argument! (If only they were on Heroes.) This was at the Genesis Awards, which are produced not by the silly band, but by the silly Humane Society. Last year Hayden made a spectacle of herself brought attention to “saving the dolphins” in Japan, but apparently these people are willing to overlook all the bunnies and cows she’s killed. Save the Animals (That Don’t Earn Cute Lil’ Hayden a Big Paycheck).

P.S. Oh, and don’t forget all the cows she’s exploited! (Thanks to reader Melissa)

31
Mar

Brangelina Tied the Knot? Or Not?

Brad Pitt in the Oct. ‘06 issue of Esquire:

“Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.”

Brad Pitt on Saturday afternoon, according to the Star:

“I do.”

Guess they know something the rest of us don’t! Or maybe not. If they didn’t actually get hitched, er, um, never mind.

P.S. Now the Star is saying: “After further investigation, the sources are not standing by their story.” Those darn sources!

29
Mar

Black Is the New Green Is the New Dumb

The official Google blog, 8/9/07:

Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we should all join, and that’s why we’re very glad to see the innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea, suggested by the site called “Blackle” (which is not related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our custom search engine), is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this.

Google today:

They know it’s an empty gesture, but they’re doing it anyway. Happy Earth Hour, suckers!

(Hat tip: Valleywag)

P.S. According to Harper’s Magazine, Google is an “energy glutton.” Check out the blueprint of their server farm in The Dalles, Oregon, home of “some of the cheapest electricity in North America.” It’s powered not by magic pixie dust (my longtime theory), but by the Columbia River. Every time you search Google Images for pre-pregnancy Britney pics, God kills a kitten and Google kills a salmon.

28
Mar

Steve-O: “I Am Not a Skeeve-O”

According to Cele|bitchy (which is a great blog but always annoys me whenever I write about it, because I have to look around on my keyboard for the “|” symbol), professional unprofessional Steve-O is hitting back at the National Enquirer for saying he’s a drug-addled girl-groper. He’s only drug-addled, he says on his Myspace blog:

The stories that are circulating right now about me being at some party hitting on random girls and asking to snort drugs from their breasts are not true at all. I will be the first to admit that I’ve snorted all kinds of drugs, in all sorts of situations, but I take offense to claims that I was running around hitting on random women at a time when I was under the impression that I was engaged to be married. I know many of you who are in receipt of this message from me work in the media, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would squash this dishonest journalism. These stories are so untrue, they place me at a party hitting on women when I was locked up in the looney bin.

As excuses go, “I could not have made a debauched public spectacle of myself because I was in a mental institution” is a pretty good one.

Apparently the Enquirer story is accompanied by a picture of him snorting coke off a girl’s leg. So that was just a one-time thing, apparently. What’s he supposed to do, let some helpless young lady walk around with drugs all over her? “Excuse me, miss, I couldn’t help but notice you’ve spilled a bit of cocaine on your leg. May I remove it for you?” It is highly irresponsible to make assumptions about someone of Steve-O’s high moral caliber based on such a selfless act.

Oh, and it was before he got engaged, of course! Get it right.

Seriously, though, if he lives to see 40, maybe he can write a book. He seems like a pretty good writer when he’s not defiling himself. (Kind of like Mick Foley, without the restraint and sense of self-preservation.) I can’t seem to find it at the moment, but I liked the letter he wrote in response to his infamous 2006 appearance on some cruddy Adam Carolla talk show. A true meeting of the minds. (WARNING: Adult language and general Steve-Osity)

P.S. That letter I was talking about is here. (Thanks to Deceiver reader Heather Nelson!) It’s what he calls a “suicide note,” trying to provoke various rappers into shooting him so he doesn’t grow old. He wants to go out in his rectal-bottle-rocket prime.

28
Mar

Material Girl Should Justify Our Love

madonna.jpgMadonna says she may go on tour again this fall but she is so over the songs that made her famous:

“I’m not sure I can sing ‘Holiday’ or ‘Like A Virgin’ ever again,” the singer tells New York’s Z100-FM in an interview scheduled to air Friday. “I just can’t – unless somebody paid me like $30 million or something. [Like if] some Russian guy wants me to come to the wedding he’s going to have to a 17-year-old, you know it.”

First of all, ew. Thanks for the image. But tickets for her last tour were among the highest in showbiz. If I pay $375 to see one of her concerts, you better effing believe she’s going to get out there in a leather tutu or whatever and sing “Like A Prayer” and “Vogue” and everything else off the Immaculate Collection and she’s going to do it graciously.

Who wants to hear her new stuff? Can anyone name three songs since “Ray of Light”?

28
Mar

Paris Hilton Sees Herself as a Role Model

paris_baby1.jpgParis Hilton is in Turkey to judge a beauty pageant. Unremarkably, she shows a complete lack of self-awareness:

“I don’t pay attention to lies because I am a good person, I work very hard and I’ve built this empire on my own. I think this is an inspiration for a lot of girls out there.”

Asked if she was happy to be seen as a role model by girls, Hilton said: “Yes.”

Which empire is that again? Does she mean the hotel chain her grandfather built from the ground up, the money from which is the sole reason we’ve all been subjected to her?

No really, I’m mystified about the Paris Brand and what she thinks she stands for. She’s the poster child for why you shouldn’t let your boyfriend videotape you in bed, broadcast catty feuds with her lame friends, and put your name on incredibly cheap-looking shoes.




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