While students at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School were attending a talent show in the auditorium, a show of another sort was going on in a classroom.
Alini Brito (left), and Cindy Mauro (right)
Married Spanish teacher Alini Brito, 29, and French teacher Cindy Mauro, 33, were caught in the lewd and nude act by a janitor, who reported them to school officials on November 20th.
Both teachers have been reassigned to a center commonly known as the “rubber room”, where Department of Education members are sent while being investigated for misconduct.
DOE spokeswoman Margie Feinberg stated:
“Madison High School is investigating an incident of employee misconduct while the school was having an event in the assembly during the evening of Nov. 20. The two teachers, who are tenured, have been reassigned, pending the outcome of the investigation.”
An 18 year old junior named Eddie Ramirez told NBC:
“[Mauro] was pretty fun, she dressed like a teenage girl — she’d wear low-cut tops, shorts, three-quarter length jeans. She was kinda sexy.”
source: Hot for Teachers: Women Caught Naked in Classroom [MSNBC]
A former teacher pleaded guilty Wednesday to fleeing to Mexico with a 13-year-old student so she could have sex with him. Her plea was part of a deal to ensure she’ll spend less than a decade in federal prison.
Kelsey Peterson, 26, cried in court and shook her head when the prosecutor said she started having sex with the boy when he was 12 years old and a student at Lexington Middle School, where she taught.
But the former math teacher pleaded guilty to a charge of transporting a minor across state lines to have sex, and avoided a similar charge that would have carried a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence.
The plea agreement calls for a sentence of at least 70 months in prison, up to a maximum of 87 months. The judge could decide on a different sentence, but that would give Peterson the right to change her plea, said federal prosecutor Jan Sharp. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for September.
Her family burst out of the court room Wednesday shouting at reporters, telling them to “ask (the victim) how old he is,” and saying Peterson is being unjustly accused.
Peterson’s attorney, James Martin Davis, has publicly questioned the boy’s birth certificate. Davis said the boy was likely at least 16, and that he was the aggressor.
Amy Peck, an attorney for the boy and his family, said that suggestion was disgusting.
“He was a 12-year-old boy and the defendant knew it,” Peck said Wednesday. “The result of this lower plea could have been obtained without playing to every racial stereotype that there is.”
Sick, sick, sick. Did I tell you this was sick?
source: Kelsey Peterson Pleads Guilty to Fleeing, Sex with 13-Year Old Student [transworld news]
Presenting The 25 Funniest People in America. From Conan O’Brien to Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey to Craig Ferguson, let’s count down the names of the entertainers who make us laugh the hardest.
25. AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS
Burroughs’ best-selling memoir Running with Scissors — about being raised by a nutso shrink who studies his poo and rents the back shed to a pedophile — is unbelievably disturbing. And sidesplitting. At first we felt guilty giggling at his adventures with an electroshock therapy machine, but Burroughs knows that laughter is the best antidepressant. Much better than booze, which the author struggles to kick in his equally effervescent follow-up, Dry.
24. CATHERINE O’HARA
After her run on SCTV in the late ’70s, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with O’Hara. Fortunately, Christopher Guest did. In Waiting for Guffman, she and Fred Willard are tracksuit-wearing answers to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; in Best in Show, she’s a onetime floozy with a prize terrier and a torrid past; and in A Mighty Wind, O’Hara shows off a subtler comic touch, proving that humor doesn’t always mean a pie in the face.
23. SARAH SILVERMAN
The Lenny Bruce of the 21st century might be this hot, foul-mouthed, button-punching stand-up. Silverman is ruthlessly funny about topics like sex, the Holocaust, and 9/11, which may be why The Sarah Silverman Program has a permanent slot on our DVR. Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, she’s f—ing Matt Damon.
22. DAVE CHAPPELLE
The fact that Diamond Dave is all but absent from the comedic stage these days doesn’t invalidate his funny. After all, Chappelle’s revered Comedy Central show — on which the wiry comic gleefully engaged in crass T&A humor, swore like a sailor, and mocked everyone in the multiculti rainbow, confronting race in a way that is positively Pryor-esque — is still the best sketch comedy this country has seen in more than a decade. For that alone, he deserves a spot on any list like this.
21. DEMETRI MARTIN
You know what’s funny? Palindromes and anagrams. ”Shut up, Grandma,” you say, but we say shut up yourself and watch Demetri Martin work a stand-up mic. ”A drunk driver’s very dangerous. Everybody knows that. But so is a drunk backseat driver — if he’s persuasive.” The floppy-haired heir to Steven Wright won a prestigious award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, taking him from the comedy underground to…the comedy slightly less underground.
20. DIABLO CODY
Not to be partial, but the newly minted Oscar winner showed off her comedic — and emotional — chops with her debut screenplay for Juno. Did we mention it won an Oscar?
19. CRAIG FERGUSON
Late night is the province of the mono-name. Jay! Dave! Conan! Then there’s that Scottish guy, two-name ID required: Craig Ferguson. You know, the one who can’t quite be pinned down. Since taking over CBS’ Late Late Show from Craig Kilborn in 2005, Ferguson has brought a fresh burst of energy to the format. He’s reinvented the opening monologue, doing away with most of the topical jokes and just ad-libbing about his life. Along with fresh energy, he’s brought something else — ratings. Ferguson, 45 and a brand-spanking-new U.S. Citizen, doesn’t get as much media attention as time-slot competitors Jimmy Kimmel or Conan, but with an audience of just under 2 million, the great Scot outperforms the former and has climbed within 500,000 viewers of the latter.
18. JACK BLACK
Black is an entirely new classification of human: the frenetic slacker. Before his turn as doofus band reject/inspirational teacher Dewey Finn in School of Rock, he was the Ritalin-deprived half of Tenacious D (along with his partner, Kyle Gass) and the list-obsessed record-shop shlub in High Fidelity. He is, inarguably, the coolest fusion of music and comedy since Spinal Tap. (And, if Tropic Thunder is as good as we’ve been led to believe, we’ll forgive him that whole Nacho Libre business.)
17. DAVID LETTERMAN
With a receding hairline and a jogger’s grim jowls, Dave is no one’s idea of a hip comic, and he likes it that way. New-school gone old-school, the upstart who first pumped irony into the talk show still rails against the stupidity of the powerful and yet has the charm to melt Julia Roberts.
16. AMY SEDARIS AND DAVID SEDARIS
Big brother is the best-selling author of the sublime autobiographical essay collections Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, full of terrific riffs about stuff like his cuckoo-clock North Carolina clan and his midget guitar teacher. Little sis was the rubber-faced star of Comedy Central’s truly strange Strangers With Candy, as well as coauthor of the book Wigfield.
15. WILL FERRELL
See, there’s this man-child who latches onto Will Ferrell in most every role he plays — and good luck getting the little guy to let go. As a result, we are treated to inspired displays of dolt-trapped-in-the-headlights hijinks, be it in the form of Old School’s keghead Frank the Tank (who goes from repressed to regressed to undressed) or Talladega Nights’ Ricky Bobby, the dumbest, most earnest NASCAR driver on the circuit — who’s also the most comfortable with his sexuality.
14. RICKY GERVAIS
Okay, so he doesn’t spend all that much of his time in America. We don’t care. Whether as the creator of The Office and Extras, a supporting actor in movies like For Your Consideration or Night at the Museum, or doing killer stand-up (as seen most recently in Grand Theft Auto IV), he’s still as funny as the dog’s bollocks.
13. ELLEN DEGENERES
DeGeneres, whose career seemed all but kaput a few years ago, has earned back adoration simply by being her affably dry self on the Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Whether it’s her circuitous monologues, her deadpan celebrity interviews, or that vocal turn as Dory in Finding Nemo, she remains one of the cleanest, coolest funny ladies around.
12. DAVID CROSS
All conversations about his genius start here: Along with Bob Odenkirk, he created the cunning HBO sketch series Mr. Show, which routinely put SNL to silly shame. And not only does Cross work little miracles in supporting roles (remember his role as feckless freak-job Tobias on Fox’s Arrested Development?), he can drop some pretty fearsome stand-up (who else talks about being raped by the Virgin Mary?). Simply put, this dude never kowtows for his funny.
11. CONAN O’BRIEN
Smarty-pants isn’t usually a compliment, but O’Brien wears them so well. When this Harvard geek isn’t riffing on Muammar Gaddafi in his monologue, he’s making absurd innovations in low-brow comedy. Now, let’s see if those absurd innovations will play on The Tonight Show….
The Saturday Night Live scene-stealer has found her stride in her third season, thanks to breakout characters like the Target clerk and the obsessively competitive Penelope, as well as spot-on impressions of Jamie Lee Curtis and Suze Orman.
9. LARRY DAVID
Because he’s a balding, neurotic, self-consumed, multimillionaire malcontent who reacts to most social interactions as if he just took a whiff of some really bad cheese. Because the only thing he hates more than these situations is himself. Because he’s the most hilariously doomed white-guy antihero we’ve ever seen, and has no problems taking on every sacred cow. Because we have no idea how much of this Larry David — from the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm — is swiped from the real Larry David. And because both Larry Davids co-created one of the best comedies ever, Seinfeld.
8. AMY POEHLER AND WILL ARNETT
The funniest married couple on the list. (Sorry, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.) When they’re apart (she, on Saturday Night Live and in Baby Mama; he, late of Arrested Development and currently guesting on 30 Rock), they’re great. But when they’re together, as when they played brother-and sister figure skaters in Blades of Glory, they’re resplendent. So let’s get those crazy kids together more often, shall we?
7. MATT STONE AND TREY PARKER
Now in their eleventh season of South Park, these potty mouths with a purpose continue to remind us what full creative control gets you: moments so wrong, they’re right (Ben Affleck falling in love with Cartman’s hand comes to mind). Added bonus: The ninth season episode, ”Trapped in the Closet” contains the most sober explanation of the background of Scientology you’ll ever hear.
6. CHRIS ROCK
Television failed him (Saturday Night Live didn’t know what to do with his bright-bulb humor, and his HBO talk show couldn’t contain him). The movies didn’t get him (though this is as much Rock’s fault as anyone’s, given he wrote and directed his most recent starring vehicles, the underperforming Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife). But on the stage, Rock is a man on a mission, mercilessly tackling race, religion, money, and relationships. And his missionaries are legion.
5. STEVE CARELL
Sometimes, it hurts so good. The pain, the discomfort, the agony of watching Carell’s Michael Scott work himself into another awkward scenario on NBC’s The Office…and almost work himself out. And the fact that we don’t hate Michael — on the contrary, we feel a warm, chocolatey pity for him — is a testament to Carell, who leavens the bald incompetence with wide-eyed awe.
4. JON STEWART AND THE ‘DAILY SHOW’ TEAM
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the most consistent laugh machine on TV — and the only news source for scores of cynics and slackers. It’s not often that a comedy show can tackle politics, embrace a cogent point of view, and still maintain its anarchic spark. The scribes at The Daily Show pull it off four nights a week. As the heart and soul of the show, Stewart is evenhanded but never meek; as an interviewer, he can make his guests comfortable even as he’s taking them apart. Then there’s his gang of ”correspondents,” who soldier straight-facedly into the great American absurd and take no prisoners. Empirically speaking, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in the world right now. Yet here we are each week, chortling.
3. TINA FEY
It takes a certain self-confidence to play a woman who accidentally dates her third cousin, erroneously assumes her neighbor is a terrorist, and gets called the C-word by a colleague (especially when said character is based on you). ”I love going to those uncomfortable places,” says Fey, who stars as 30 Rock’s workaholic TV maven and is also the NBC show’s creator and exec producer. ”I’ll go down any weird avenue.” Maybe this year’s surprise Emmy win for best comedy will empower Fey to pursue some dreams for her alter ego. ”Liz Lemon could do an international adoption for a Russian baby and get the paperwork wrong with the European dates and somehow end up with a huge, muscular 13-year-old. Yeah, I could see that.” Hopefully we will too.
2. STEPHEN COLBERT AND THE ‘COLBERT REPORT’ TEAM
The once (and, we’re sure, future) presidential nominee, author, and dedicated windbag also happens to be one of the smartest satirists working today. Heck, if all the dude had on his resume was the legendary 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, he’d go down in comedy history. But week-in and week-out, Colbert takes aim at the political-industrial complex — and I don’t care if there’s no such term — and spins the facts into truth. Or truthiness. Whichever’s easier.
1. THE JUDD APATOW POSSE
Can you even remember what movie comedy looked like before writer-director-producer Judd Apatow and his ever-expanding comedy clan (including Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd) came along last summer with two stiff shots of cathartic humor — the oops-she’s-preggers romp Knocked Up and the high school raunchfest Superbad? Today, when studio execs have a comedy that feels flat or formulaic, the call goes out to ”Judd it up” — sweet irony for a man once best known for critically beloved flops like TV’s Freaks and Geeks. ”It was always my dream to become a verb,” Apatow deadpans. ”That’s what I wrote in my high school yearbook.”
Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California.
Instead of standing beside Hilary as she battles the campaign trail — Bill is off cavorting around the country, bedding young females. Surprising? I think not.
Bumpshack says, “Last time I checked Gina is a lot more attractive than Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers. So I guess Bill’s taste has at least improved since leaving office.”
More on Gina Gerson:
Sultry, dark-eyed, brunette leading actress Gina Gershon mixes a muscular toughness with her seductive femininity. Born the youngest of five children, raised in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, Gershon gets her exotic looks from her French, Russian, and Dutch heritage. After high school, she decided she wanted a more sophisticated image than those usually attributed to Valley Girls like herself and so moved to the Big Apple, to earn a bachelor of arts degree at New York University. While in New York, she studied acting with such well-known teachers as Sandra Seacat, David Mamet, and Harold Guskin. She started out in theater and worked on both coasts.
[Click thumbnails for a larger view]
Since the mid-’80s, Gershon has carved out a living as a reliable character actress on both the big and the small screens. Her most notable role on the tube was that of Nancy Sinatra, the famous wife of Old Blue Eyes himself, in the CBS miniseries Sinatra (1994). Gershon made her feature film debut playing a small role opposite Molly Ringwald in 1986’s Pretty in Pink, and graduated to the jucier role of of Coral opposite Tom Cruise in Cocktail (1988). Through the 1990s, Gershon vascillated between high-brow and low-brow fare, the former exemplified by her memorable turns in John Sayles’s City of Hope (1991), Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), and Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999); the latter, by her gleeful, scenery-chewing work in Best of the Best 3 and the infamous Showgirls (both 1995). Gershon’s signature role, however, was a synthesis of B-movie pulp and indie smarts, courtesy of the Wachowski brothers’ twisty 1996 neo-noir Bound. Cast as a woman falling in love with an abusive gangster’s moll, Gershon was able to radiate an intelligence, sexuality, and power not afforded her by previous scripts, and the lead part would go a long way in establishing her screen persona into the new millenium
The Hannah Montana star is just 15 years old and she is already giving Lindsay Lohan a run for the title of slut parade queen. Miley Cyrus took part in a shoot that featured her appearing nude.
The Disney princess had scored a photo spread with Vanity Fair. She is looking at the camera with come do me eyes and wearing nothing but a sheet. This isn’t the first naughty photo of Miley. Slow leaks of Cyrus flashing her bra and making out with some dude have also hit the net.
Entertainment Tonight supposedly has the skinny on issue to be discussed on Monday. Screencap teasers of Miley Cyrus topless on Vanity Fair were put up to entice viewers. The spread was taken by Annie Leibovitz and has reportedly left Miley thinking twice. She told People Magazine:
“My goal in my music and my acting is always to make people happy. For Vanity Fair, I was so honored and thrilled to work with Annie. I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed.”
The Disney channel is also pissed their billion dollar tween queen was taken advantage of. While her parents were reportedly there during most of the shoot, they left before the final shots were taken. Miley’s grandmother and teacher were then left to supervise and claim Annie talked them into the controversial shots. The company is taking aim at Vanity Fair and Leibovitz. A rep had this to say:
“Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”
I smell a lawsuit brewing.
Source: Miley Cyrus Topless in Vanity Fair [Just Jared]
I love the “Charlie Brown” font they use in the image above… too funny!
The students, both juniors at Pennsauken High School, didn’t have any weapons on them. The note reportedly included the names of three students and, randomly, Norris.
The boys claim the list was a joke and the local prosecutor says “At this point we believe that this student did not pose any serious threat to any of the people on the list, especially to Chuck Norris.”
Oh, really? I’m sure that’s good enough for you, eh Chuck?
source: School Death Plot Targets … Chuck Norris?!? [tmz]
Adrianne Curry gets naked and graces the cover of Playboy once again. Her black thigh highs are just one of the perks in the first issue of 2008. Artie Lange, comic extraordinaire, gives an interview for the male driven mag. Touching on serious subjects like A-Rod, retirement and a heroin addiction.
His thoughts on A-Rod:
“F—— A-Rod. Can A-Rod get one f—— hit in October? A double down the line – something? (He is) a lot like Babe Ruth. Before the playoffs last year he went to a hospital and promised a dying kid he’d ground out to second for him. … It’s true … I was there. A-Rod pointed to second base.”
Work isn’t exactly at the top of his list of things to do. Being on a stage or television just doesn’t put the cream in his twinkie anymore. After making millions he is ready to call it quits.
“I’m sick of this s—. I’m tired. I just want to retire.”
Having a website created to timestamp his death doesn’t seem to bother him. Artielangedeathwatch.com is purely for press, but boasts “Save Artie” shirts and stickers. Even at the blatant dig at his weight, drinking and drug use he lives with merely one regret. After dating a New Jersey teacher he couldn’t let go of his heroin addiction.
Thank God Adrianne gets naked. It would be one depressing rag without some boobies to cheer you up. Click “Continued” to see her spread from her previous venture at Playboy along with some fresh photos. Obviously it is NSFW.
So rumor has it that there is an Eva Longoria sex tape on the loose. Considering that she always tops the lists of hottest women, I imagine the sales of this sex tape (assuming there really is one) breaking some serious records.
Although the tape is said to exist, no one has posted it online so the rumor hasn’t been substantiated.
When discussing her sex life with Tony Parker, Eva has said,
“Tony’s only been with one other person in his life. I’m the experienced one. I’m the teacher, especially about love.”
I bet Tony was really pleased when he read that quote. I wonder if she’ll add the tape to her self-made Eva shrine in her house. Creepy.
Source: “Eva Longoria ‘SEX TAPE’ (Video)” [Right Celebrity]
Image courtesy of Picture Perfect, for use on Gone Hollywood
Dita Von Teese is using her sex appeal, along with her compassion for animals to launch PETA’s new ABC campaign.
What does ABC stand for? Animal birth control!
PETA’s new ABC campaign tackles the issue of companion animal overpopulation and urges people to do their part by taking simple steps to help end this crisis.
Dita knows her ABCs and just how important animal birth control is. Every year, nearly 4 million dogs and cats are put to death in the U.S. because there are not enough good homes for them. Until we all do our part to put an end to this cycle, euthanasia will remain a tragic necessity.
In her ad, Dita urges fans to “bone up” on their ABCs and, if they are considering adding a dog or a cat to the family, to adopt from a local animal shelter and be sure to get their new family member spayed or neutered.
Take out a student loan and get enrolled at The Learning Annex in New York if you’d like to take a class from GED educated Paris Hilton. It just doesn’t stop. Paris Hilton has been offered $1 million to teach a class at the institution.
The institute’s president Bill Zanker tells the New York Post, “We just sent over the offer to her this morning, and I think there’s a good chance she’d do it. She’s a brilliant entrepreneur. I believe she can offer her knowledge and give back to other entrepreneurs. She’s obviously brilliant, and my students would love her.”She’s a businessman who has made this persona. We have a lot of people in small business, and where they need the most help is getting branded. Who is better at branding than Paris Hilton?”
Paris currently has several businesses under the names Paris Hilton Enterprises, Paris Hilton Entertainment, and Heiress Records. This includes a collection of purses for Japanese fashion label Samantha Thavasa and releasing her own-branded perfume with Parlux Fragrances for both men and women.
This gives “hot for teacher” and quality education a whole new meaning.
Two blonde bombshells dubbed the “Barbie Bandits” shocked the nation when they burst into a Georgia bank and allegedly tried to rob it earlier this year.
Now, in her first interview since the incident, 19-year old Heather Johnston, one of the alleged “bandits,” told ABC’s David Muir that the whole scheme started out as a prank.
“This all began as a joke,” she said. “I mean it’s crossed a lot of people’s minds, from what I’ve heard.”
The joke became a reality with the help Johnson’s friend, Ashley Miller and Miller’s boyfriend, who knew a teller at a Bank of America branch. One February morning, Johnston said the teller told her how to write a threatening note. All the while, Johnston said she didn’t think about how her plan might terrify the other bank workers.
“No, because we had an inside man. So, no,” she said.
‘Stunner Shades’ and Highlights
Clad in form fitting jeans, tight tops and large sunglasses that Johnston and Miller called “stunner shades,” the teen girls headed to the bank to pull off their heist. Their plan wasn’t without flaws— they weren’t able to get the wigs they wanted and at first— and they got lost “We took a wrong turn somewhere, ended up going to a complete different Bank of America,” Johnston said.
Realizing the inside man was not at the bank, they called him, got new directions and soon showed up at the correct bank. After the girls handed over the note,Johnston said the money started flying.
“He started throwing it out and it was like going everywhere,” Johnston said. “So I was pushing it, Ashley was grabbing it, putting it, throwing it in the bag,”
After collecting thousands of dollars, Johnston said they hit the mall to get highlights at a high-end salon. They were later arrested and charged with felony theft.
For a girl supposed to be in her first year of college, the bank robbing was the culmination of a trip down the wrong path.
Johnston was a scholarship winner from a typical middle class home. But before heading to college, she met new friends and decided to try working as an exotic dancer. She became fast friends with fellow dancer, Miller. The girl who wanted to become a dental hygienist was soon far off track.
For Johnston’s mother, an elementary school teacher, the ordeal has been heart-wrenching.
“[It's] devastating as a mom,” she said, her voice breaking. “With my children, and I hope that I would instill positive values … we always did something special together. And I thought that that would instill and pretty much guarantee me wonderful adults, but I guess there is no guarantee.”
Out of prison on bail, Johnston has found a new job with an advertising firm — her first boss fired her after learning she was one of the Barbie Bandits.
But Johnston’s troubles may not be over. Knowing she could face up to 10 years in prison, she’s admitted the bank robbery scheme wasn’t the brightest idea.
“Some of the stuff we did was just pretty ignorant,” she said
A Concord, New Hampshire man’s phone keeps ringing at random hours, day and night. He’s being bombarded with people calling his residence, looking for Brad Pitt.
The problem? He’s not there!
But 77-year-old Richard Perkins doesn’t know the movie star and has only seen one film with the 43-year-old actor.
Someone posted the retired teachers’ home phone number in a Web site chat room and claimed it was contact information for Pitt. For the last six days, Perkins’ phone keeps ringing at times as late as 2 AM.
“I thought it was my daughter calling me,” Perkins told the Concord Monitor. “I thought she was saying ‘Dad? Dad? Dad?’ and I thought there was something wrong with the line. Then I realized she was saying ‘Brad.’ ”
A frustrated Perkins disconnected his phone once, but firefighters – summoned by Perkins’s Life Alert system – burst into his home to find him sitting peacefully in the living room.
They “weren’t too pleased,” Perkins told the newspaper.
Perkins says he doesn’t want to change his phone number because he’s afraid he’ll forget his new one.
For the last few years, three-quarters of the network television executives in Hollywood have tried to figure out how to derail “American Idol,” the Fox juggernaut that dominates the prime-time ratings.
Now Howard Stern, of all people, says he has found the way.
For the last two weeks, Mr. Stern has been promoting a Web site created by a 24-year-old “American Idol” fan that encourages people to support the worst performer on the popular talent show. Their candidate has been Sanjaya Malakar, the off-key, lyric-fumbling, elaborately coiffed teenager who is perhaps the most talked-about “Idol” contestant ever.
“We’re corrupting the entire thing,” Mr. Stern said on his Sirius Satellite Radio show Thursday, the day after Mr. Malakar secured a place in the top nine finalists. “All of us are routing ‘American Idol.’ It’s so great. The No. 1 show in television and it’s getting ruined.”
By promoting Mr. Malakar, Mr. Stern says, he hopes to turn the talent competition into a farce and destroy its popularity.
The stakes of the battle are not insignificant, either for Fox or for the contestants. In its sixth season, “American Idol” has drawn an average of 32 million viewers each week, nearly 50 percent more than the next highest-rated show and better than the show has measured in any previous season.
Mr. Malakar, who at 17 looks like a 1970s pop star of the David Cassidy/Bobby Sherman/Andy Gibb variety, had been among the lowest two or three vote-getters in the first weeks of the season. But after Dave Della Terza, the founder of a Web site called votefortheworst.com, first appeared on Mr. Stern’s radio show on March 20, Mr. Malakar has not been among the lowest vote-getters. (”Idol” does not release total vote tallies, but each week reveals which performers are in the bottom slots.)
A number of those voting for Mr. Malakar may be genuine fans, many of them in the pre- and early-teenage brackets, to judge from posts on a number of Internet bulletin boards dedicated to the show.
But the fans also include older women and Indian-Americans, and Mr. Malakar’s progress is being tracked voraciously by Indian newspapers in both the United States and India. And they probably include executives at Fox, the television network that is riding “American Idol” to the top of the ratings.
[...]
A Fox spokeswoman said, efforts like Mr. Stern’s do not affect the results. “With 30 million votes every week, and hundreds of millions of votes over the season, the power of true fans of ‘American Idol’ dwarfs any attempt of people trying to gain notoriety,” the statement said. “Despite the press coverage, these campaigns don’t affect who moves forward in the competition.”
Mr. Stern, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this article. Unlike Mr. Stern, Mr. Della Terza, a community college teacher near Chicago, said he did not want to destroy “Idol.”
“We’re not out to take the show down,” Mr. Della Terza said in a telephone interview. “We like the show. We want to keep around the guy we think is funny and corny.” His aim, he said, was simply to spice up the show by toying with the results, keeping what he calls the “cheesiest” contestants on for as long as possible.
In a recent interview on Mr. Stern’s radio show, Mr. Della Terza said he understood that his efforts might be affecting contestants who are better singers. “Everyone tries to say we’re crushing dreams with what we’re doing, but we’re trying to help Sanjaya’s dreams,” he said. “He wants to be the American Idol too.”
Ms. Hudson, coincidentally, was the first contestant to be recommended for support on votefortheworst.com, something that is not lost on Mr. Della Terza.
“We picked her the first week because of her crazy outfits and over-the-top singing,” he recalled. But she improved, and the site switched its recommendation to another contestant. Last year the site also picked Taylor Hicks, the eventual winner, as the worst performer when five competitors were left.
“If we had not recommended him, maybe he wouldn’t have won,” Mr. Della Terza said. It is unclear how many voters have been influenced either by Mr. Stern or the Web site.
Sirius has six million subscribers but does not release listener figures for its individual shows. According to Mr. Della Terza, votefortheworst.com had been receiving a million or so hits per “Idol” show this season; that number jumped to more than three million after his first appearance on Mr. Stern’s show.
Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California.
“My goal in my music and my acting is always to make people happy. For Vanity Fair, I was so honored and thrilled to work with Annie. I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed.”
The students, both juniors at Pennsauken High School, didn’t have any weapons on them. The note reportedly included the names of three students and, randomly, Norris.
“F—— A-Rod. Can A-Rod get one f—— hit in October? A double down the line – something? (He is) a lot like Babe Ruth. Before the playoffs last year he went to a hospital and promised a dying kid he’d ground out to second for him. … It’s true … I was there. A-Rod pointed to second base.”
“Tony’s only been with one other person in his life. I’m the experienced one. I’m the teacher, especially about love.”
PETA’s new ABC campaign tackles the issue of companion animal overpopulation and urges people to do their part by taking simple steps to help end this crisis.
Now, in her first interview since the incident, 19-year old Heather Johnston, one of the alleged “bandits,” told ABC’s David Muir that the whole scheme started out as a prank. 
But 77-year-old Richard Perkins doesn’t know the movie star and has only seen one film with the 43-year-old actor.
