A terror alert has rocked Simon Cowell’s UK series, The X-Factor. The producers for the talent show have had to increase security after Islamic radical cleric Omar Bakri took issue with the show’s support of injured British troops.
The contestants for the show are all recording a cover of Mariah Carey’s hit song, Hero. Which is benefiting the British troops.
“Some Muslims in Birmingham are wearing the armbands in support of British troops in Afghanistan,” said 50-year-old Bakri, who is in Lebanon after being exiled from London in 2004.
“This is a form of muadaat (hatred) of the kuffar (non-believers) against Muslims … and it has dangerous implications. Even watching the show – those people are committing a form, a type, of mudaat (hatred),” he said.
Known for his fiery rants, Bakri pledged in December 2004 “a 9/11, day after day after day,” if Western governments didn’t change their policies.
Aside from the increase in security, “X-Factor” honchos have even put out calls to Scotland Yard. “Producers have spoken to CID and anti-terrorism officers about the potential threat level,” a source said. “It’s being taken very seriously.
source: Simon Cowell’s ‘X-Factor’ threatened by radical Muslim Omar Bakri [ny dailynews]
Terri Hughes was a producer for the Playboy Radio show “Night Calls.”
Hughes claims during a live broadcast, she was asked to repeatedly “wax” the “ass” of co-host Christy Canyon.
She alleges Canyon created a hostile environment by, among other things, “exposing her genitals and breasts to co-workers, making requests to guests and co-workers to touch her genitals and breasts, and masturbating herself with her own hands as well as with various sex toys during live broadcasts of ‘Night Calls.’” Kinky.
Hughes, who is African-American, alleges that when a host of another Playboy show — who was also an African-American woman — requested for Hughes work on her show, the executive producer of Playboy Radio warned,
“I don’t know how to say this, and it might offend you, but I’m just going to say it anyway — no Negro shows.”
Hughes is seeking unspecified damages. Calls to Playboy were not immediately returned.
source: Lawsuit Claims Playboy Plays Dirty with Blacks [tmz]
Did you see John McCain on ABC’s The View this morning? Well the presidential candidate said he would like the Constitution interpreted the way it was originally written to be.
Whoopi Goldberg didn’t really like this statement and said, “should I be worried about being a slave, about being returned to slavery because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change?”
Barbara Walters chimed in and said to Sheri Shepherd and Whoopi that “us white folk will take care of you.”
A coalition of disabilities groups is expected as early as Monday to call for a national boycott of the film “Tropic Thunder” because of what the groups consider the movie’s open ridicule of the intellectually disabled.
The film, a movie-industry spoof directed by Ben Stiller, is set for release on Wednesday by Paramount Pictures and its DreamWorks unit.
“Not only might it happen, it will happen,” Timothy P. Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, said of the expected push for a boycott. Speaking by phone, Mr. Shriver said he planned to be in Los Angeles with representatives of his group and others to picket the movie’s premiere on Monday evening in this city’s Westwood district.
A particular sore point has been the film’s repeated use of the term “retard” in referring to a character, Simple Jack, who is played by Mr. Stiller in a subplot about an actor who chases an Oscar by portraying a mindless dolt.
Mr. Shriver said that he had also begun to ask members of Congress for a resolution condemning what he called the movie’s “hate speech” and calling for stronger federal support of the intellectually disabled.
“The most disappointing thing, the most incredible thing, is that nobody caught it,” said Mr. Shriver, who, as a co-producer of the DreamWorks film “Amistad,” is no stranger to the studio. He spoke of what he described as the studio’s and the filmmakers’ blatant disregard for the disabled even as they stepped carefully around other potentially offensive references, notably in a story line that has Robert Downey Jr. playing a white actor who changes his skin color to play a black soldier.
In a statement on Sunday, Chip Sullivan, a DreamWorks spokesman, said the movie was “an R-rated comedy that satirizes Hollywood and its excesses and makes its point by featuring inappropriate and over-the-top characters in ridiculous situations.” Mr. Sullivan, in the statement, added that the film was not meant to disparage or harm people with disabilities and that DreamWorks expected to work closely with disability groups in the future. But, he said, “No changes or cuts to the film will be made.”
Formal complaints about the content of films are not uncommon, but well-coordinated boycotts are fairly rare.
The groups involved said that they represented millions of members and associates. Perhaps the most striking use of the tactic involved “The Last Temptation of Christ,” released in 1988.
Religious groups that considered that movie’s depiction of Jesus blasphemous called for a boycott of companies owned by MCA, whose Universal unit made the film.
source: Nationwide ‘Thunder’ Boycott in the Works [ny times]
They finally attempt a return to hand-drawn animation, and — somewhat more admirably for a company with some racist dirt in its past — create a black heroine to add to their incredibly lucrative Princess line, and it’s already backfiring on them.
The company’s had to go back to the drawing board after the initial plot for The Princess and the Frog was rejected as possibly offensive.
Now they’ve released the first teaser trailer, and — lovely as its vision of Jazz Age New Orleans may be — Defamer’s already pointed out the somewhat questionable stereotype embedded in one of the three characters featured: “a toothless firefly that seems to have fluttered in accidentally from the set of Song of the South 2: Cajun Vacation.”
We’re inclined to believe that the firefly isn’t a racist caricature of southern blacks, but rather a classless caricature of the southern poor, which $244 million for Cars and its redneck tow truck Mater suggest is still totally okay these days.
