DougThompson.Com
Not with my daughter you don't
Howard Stern’s daughter Emily has pulled out of
a satirical stage performance in which she appears nude, apparently
worried that enemies of her father would distribute pictures of her on
the Internet.
Emily Stern, 22, has starred since November in “Kaballah,” staged by
the Jewish Theater of New York at the Triad Theater, 158 W. 72nd St.
She has been playing Madonna, the pop singer who gained an interest in
the mystic Jewish form of study.
Tuesday, the company abruptly canceled its scheduled performances for
this week at the 136-seat theater, saying Stern had dropped out after
learning that she had become the subject of rumors on several Howard
Stern fan club Web sites.
“She’s very scared now,” said Isi Tenonbom, a spokeswoman for the
Jewish Theater, who said the company was looking for a replacement
actress.
Sad state of affairs
The Judith Miller debacle at The New York Times shows just how easily the Bush Administration manipulated the press in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq Her departure from what was once the nation’s newspaper of record shows just how badly the whole affair hurt the paper’s already damaged reputation.
Miller can keep spinning the story anyway she wants but she allowed herself to be used as a pawn of an administration that lied to the world about its reasons for invading a country that posed no threat to the United States. And the Times, already hurt by the Jayson Blair scandal, cannot escape responsibility for allowing a loose cannon like Miller to run amuck.
Sad day for journalism. Even sadder one for America.
We harass, you decide
Seems like the good old boys at Fox News Network just can’t leave the girls alone.
First network loudmouth Bill O’Reilly got caught making dirty phone calls to a female producer. Now the network’s VP of advertising and promotions, Joe Chillemi is under investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a “pattern of subjected female employees to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.”
According to the EEOC complaint, Chillemi “routinely used gross obscenities and vulgarities when describing women or their body parts” and “routinely cursed at and otherwise denigrated women employees and treated them in a demeaning way.” Three women have reported being harassed by Chillemi.
The Missing White Girl Syndrome
Meet Taylor Behl, a 17-year-old freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University. She’s young, pretty, white and missing — ingredients that make her newsworthy in today’s 24/7 news culture.
Taylor’s case has all the ingredients for the sensationalist side of news: She disappeared without a trace, she has a “dark side” to her life that shows sign of rebellion once landing in college and she’s involved with a photographer who likes to take suggestive pictures for young girls and post them on “teen model” web sites.
The photographer, Ben Fawley of Richmond, has a criminal record and admits seeing Behl on the night she died.
Uncertainty
Like many others in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, newspapers feel the effect of tragedy. In Biloxi, the Sun-Herald reports that 30 percent of its staff is still missing after Katrina devastated the city last week.
In New Orleans some wonder is the venerable Times-Picayune will continue publishing, prompting the publisher to issue a public letter saying the paper will survive, no matter what. Others are not so sure.