One doesn’t expect much in terms of intelligence, judgment and taste from a reality TV star, but McCall DePron, who is also an “influencer” so that’s two strikes against her before this conduct (Strike three!), is special. Her whole family is tasteless and clueless or being trained to be. That’s the photo above she posted on Instagram of her clan’s so clever Halloween costumes, evoking, celebrating, mocking, giggling at—I don’t know what to call it—one of the most shattering days in U.S. history
McCall is dressed as Jackie Kennedy the day her husband was murdered while sitting by her side. Her himbo hubby is supposed to be JFK before the front of his head was shot off, and her kids are supposed to be John-John, Caroline, and two Secret Service agents. Caroline Kennedy is still alive and surely thinks this trivializing of the day her world fell apart was a wonderful splash of Halloween fun. And, frankly, I’m alive too. November 22, 1963 was a generational trauma for members of my generation; 9-11 doesn’t come close. The fact that a social media “influencer” is so ethically and historically retarded is yet another cultural canary dying in the mine of U.S. society.
DePron took down her “Happy Halloween!” post that included the disgusting photo. Too late, moron. Attaching “happy” to anything related to that day is signature significance proving a porous brain and rotting soul.
[ I didn’t do my final typo check because I had phone consult, and the result was about 12 typos that I just fixed. I am properly remorseful]
I opened this can of worms (celebrity ethics) so it’s only right that I put the squirmy things on the hook.
After delving into the annoying Crystal Hefner-Jon Lovitz feud (D-list celebrity vs. fading C-list celebrity), I was tasked by esteemed commenter John Paul to weigh in on the incident earlier this month when singer and talk-show hostess Kelly Clarkson claimed on social media that she got the “Pretty Woman treatment” when she went shopping at the Brooklyn-based Art of Play store, which sells home goods, puzzles, games, toys and books and also features a 26-seat theater for performances by magicians. This prompted a social media rebuttal by the store’s owner, and another rebuke by Clarkson.
I was aware of the incident but chose to organize my sock drawer instead of investigating. One reason is that “Pretty Woman” is one of the few famous movies I have never been moved to see. I have it on my list, but Richard Gere irritates me, and romantic comedies about prostitutes have never been my cup of metaphorical tea. So, until I researched it today, I didn’t know what the “Pretty Woman” treatment even is. As a cultural literacy bug, I deserve a rebuke for that—sorry. In the 1990 romantic comedy Roberts plays Vivian, a prostitute who walks into an upscale boutique on Rodeo Drive and is instantly treated by a sales clerk as unworthy of service because she does not appear to be sufficiently wealthy or cultured. The clerk refuses to show Julia any merchandise, and tells her to leave because she does not fit their clientele. Julia returns after she has entranced her sugar-daddy (I’m beginning to remember why the movie didn’t appeal to me), flashes expensive accessories from rival boutiques, and delivers an apparently classic “So there!” kill shot.
Clarkson had posted: “Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude. You’re an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out 👎”
Celebrity dust-ups are usually too trivial even for me to get concerned about, but the behavior of pseudo-celebrity Crystal Hefner, Hugh’s gold-digger widow, is truly gobsmacking, and attention must be paid.
Crystal married the wealthy Playboy founder in his dotage after she was a centerfold in the magazine, for love, I’m sure. Now, having become rich herself (estimated worth: $20-30 million)on the profits from Hugh Hefner’s female objectifying enterprises, she is a feminist. Recently she decided to impugn has-been Saturday Night Live alum Jon Lovitz, saying that he had been the “Playboy Mansion’s No. 1 customer.” Lovitz responded that “Any time someone says I’m No. 1, it’s a compliment.” For some reason, the former Mrs. Hefner thought it made sense to get in a war of words with someone a lot quicker on the uptake than she is.
“I think Jon Lovitz is part of the problem,” she told Page Six. “I think many men who came up to that mansion [and] were very sexist and misogynistic are all part of that problem. If I could dismantle that toxic masculinity and patriarchy just a little bit, I will feel happy. It’s very sad.”
The woman married the man who invited everyone to the Playboy mansion! She was at those parties flaunting her sexual assets; she is ethically estopped from wielding the woke patriarchy blather when she owes her status in life to embracing and promoting it.
She targeting Lovitz after a July exchange, when the comic reacted to her Instagram statement that she “regretted” marrying Hugh. “Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?” Lovitz responded. “And keeping the money, after you sold it?… And do you regret all he did for you?”
Good questions. Hefner, proving she was fighting above her metaphorical weight class, said, “Jon Lovitz had mentioned to me that Hef had bought something for me or paid for something and that I have no reason to speak because of that. I think his thinking is very outdated. That’s really sad that, just because someone buys you something, it guarantees silence.”
Once a bimbo, always a bimbo.
Well, as Jimmy Durante would say, “I’m glad I got that out: on my x-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”
This is the last Open Forum before the Most Important Election In The History of Mankind. Make it count!
I like Ryan Reynolds. Terrible Green Lantern, lousy in the remake of “The Amityville Horror,” but he radiates likability and good humor, and that’s a gift. I especially liked his performance in “Woman in Gold.” But Ryan, who has a new movie out, is being roasted on conservative media and by social media Maga-ites, because of his recent statement about the 1980s.
“Mayday” is Reynolds’ first major movie since “Deadpool & Wolverine” (a disappointment, from my perspective) over two years ago. It’s set as the Cold War was ending thanks to Ronald Reagan, and Reynolds stars as a U.S. Navy pilot who, trapped behind enemy lines, forms a friendship with an eccentric ex-KGB agent (Kenneth Branagh) who loves ’80s American culture. Reynolds told an interviewer that the warm nostalgia surrounding the decade, embodied in shows like “Stranger Things,” misrepresents the turbulent nature of the era:
“When you get far enough away from a time period that’s quite distinct, there’s always a lovely feeling associated with it, almost like you pave over all the trauma with puppy dogs and ice cream. The 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people. It was a fucking mess and people forget that…It was a tremendous strife. Socio political tensions everywhere. We were still pretty fresh off a Cuban missile crisis, which was only 15-20 years before. It’s a tumultuous period, but you look back at it now and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. ‘Top Gun.’ Cocaine!’ Like, ‘No!’ It was really scary.”
The mockery has been flying thick and fast. Much of it is unfair and deliberately misrepresents what Reynolds said. Here’s “Not the Bee”:
As you must know by now unless you have been in a submerged submarine with a broken communications system like the one in “Crimson Tide,” Dolly Parton died yesterday at 80. Why her death is being described as a shock is a mystery: as my father said when he hit 80, “It’s the Red Zone, son. I can kick off any second from here on!” Nonetheless, the public and official outpouring of grief, love and admiration is unlike anything we’ve seen at least since Princess Diana’s demise in 1997.
The tectonic reaction is certainly not based on Dolly’s singing, acting or song-writing. Personally, I was never a fan; Dolly’s singing voice always sounded to me like someone who has inhaled helium. Her songs were pleasant but unremarkable to my ear. As an actress, I place Dolly Parton in the large category of experienced public performers who can project their own personalities effectively into roles and stories where their personalities seem appropriate, a diverse group that ranges from the late Fred Thompson to the late Bob Newhart to the not-quite-late Ringo Starr.
Clearly, the reason Dolly is being mourned so vigorously is that her public persona was entirely benign, virtuous and lovable, even aggressively so. She literally gave nobody any reason not to like her. In 2020, as the Great Stupid was grabbing American society by the throat, Hollywood producer Rob Long wrote an appreciation of Dolly in “Commentary” exploring her universal popularity. He wrote in part,
I believe, and have believed for as long as I can remember—Shut up, I remember more than most people—that everyone in our society has an ethical obligation to know as much as possible about the society and culture we live in. This takes time and effort, as well as humility. For the young, it means showing an interest in what had transpired before they were born, if it had a significant effect on history and culture.
I have related here my interaction with a professional woman, ten years my junior, who revealed that she didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was. I told her that was inexcusable, and sent her to some sources. A lawyer I worked with at one point, even younger, couldn’t come within 70 years of the dates of the Civil War, despite graduating with honors from Cornell and being an associate at Skadden Arps.
The case was made powerfully in the Eighties by J.D. Hirsch in his best-seller “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” and he updated his book several times. His main declaration was that without a shared cultural knowledge, communication and understanding between generations becomes impossible, and society’s connective tissue is eventually degraded and destroyed. Analogies and metaphors no longer work; patterns are no longer detected; “presentism” becomes epidemic. Jackie Robinson was on Hirsch’s list; so were John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, James Watson, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire.
Older generations have obligations too. As a child who watched more television than anyone I know (or knew), I became convinced that TV was an essential cultural literacy tool. My parents, one a lawyer and Harvard College grad and the other a career Harvard administrator, had many friends who boasted of either never watching TV or only deigning to watch PBS. Even when I was ten, I regarded them as arrogant and foolish, which they were. They didn’t see the Sixties coming, or comprehend the culture that was its catalyst when it fell on then like a rock squishing Wile E. Coyote.
I acknowledge that keeping up with current culture, while in some respects easier than it used to be due to technology, is overwhelming, and to some extent even impossible. We have many parallel cultures trying to coexist today, and some are antithetical to each other. At very least, I believe, all of us have to try to keep abreast of popular culture, which includes important societal developments that drive that relentless engine.
Last week EA expressed disgust that Sen. Jim Clyburn had revealed that he only recently became aware of ChatGPT. He’s 80: it’s no excuse. It would be almost as inexcusable if Clyburn announced that he didn’t know who Taylor Swift is. President Trump was recently dragged in social media for apparently conflating a kids’ TV host from the Fifties with Eighties star Paul Reubens, aka. Peewee Herman. At least Trump is aware of Peewee’s existence; that fulfills his cultural literacy obligation.
Five years ago, I wrote a discouraged post about how my cultural literacy commitment was failing, Confession Of A Life Competence Failure. I am obviously over-due for an audit, so I went to the same source for a pop quiz: WeSmirch, a web aggregator of celebrity news. In 2021, I regarded my performance as a failure, writing in part,
“It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in these stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathlessly shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about. Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). My score was 15 celebrity names recognized, with 17 complete mysteries. My conclusion: “When all the celebrities are strangers, I will have reached the dreaded stage of my uncle, who got the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones, and the codgers today who talk about the internet like it’s some new-fangled fad. And at that point, I will be useless.”
Let’s see what my score is today. The “celebrities”…
Courtney Stodden, a reality show star for about 15 years and with her career sagging, decided this week to accuse “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander of abusive and exploitive behavior towards a “child” based on a sketch they performed together in 2012. The two were in a Funny or Die sketch where Alexander played a self-help guru and relationship coach. Stodden wore an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny small-as-it-could-be bikini as Alexander cracked jokes about her feminine assets.
At one point in the web video episode, Alexander rubbed an iPhone over her chest. “I was 17 years old in this photo,” Stodden wrote on Instagram. “The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand. During this comedy sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ‘plenty of signal’ in my chest.” Jason was 53 at the time and co- writer of the sketch.
“Later in the sketch,” Stodden continued, “he joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me. IMDb credits him as one of the writers of the episode. As an adult, that fact has become harder—not easier—for me to understand. I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to Doug [her husband]. The production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone. Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke. People still say, ‘You chose to be there.’ Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions for myself. That’s the point. I can’t change what happened to me but I can ask myself: How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable? That’s exactly why I speak out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.”
Alexander, not wishing to be cancelled over an offense from 14-year-old skit that nobody remembers, groveled an apology. “Looking back at the comedy sketch in which Ms. Stodden and I participated in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and I truly regret it,” he said. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”
And now, as Paul Harvey would say, “The rest of the story!”
As an introduction, here is Courtney at what I guess she would call “her peak”:
I know this particular bias is probably indefensible. I know how I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t. A little help here?
Remember Shannon Elizabeth? I’d place her in the same category as Andrea Dromm, Michelle Johnson and Pam Austin, three earlier sexy, attractive starlets who had brief moments of B-level film success before they were pushed into obscurity by younger Hollywood “It” girls. It’s a cruel business, and especially cruel for young women whose main assets are their assets and not the potential to play Medea.
Shannon Elizabeth gained 10 minutes of stardom playing the sex kitten in the raunchy hit “American Pie”: that was her peak. “America Pie II” is where that photo above comes from, and professionally it was all downhill after that…a few forgettable flops, a TV series that was cancelled in its first season, nothing since 2006. Her Wikipedia page describes her as an “activist,” a professional poker player, and an actress. Her major recent accomplishment seems to be being named “one of the leading celebrity poker players”20 years ago.
I find all this ineffably sad, but that’s not the topic today. It is this: at the age of 52, Shannon just filed for divorce and announced that she was opening an Only Fans account, where horny middle-aged men can pay to see her ta-tas, and presumably other things.
“I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career. This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans,” Elizabeth told PEOPLE . “I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future.”
Fans can subscribe to her page starting today. Let me translate what her statement says to me.
“I have never developed any special skills and have the intellectual life of a salmon. My career was based entirely on my looks, my marriage went to hell, and I couldn’t write a book or host a podcast on a bet. Yeah, I’ve got some money saved up, but I’m addicted to being looked at. I’ve slid all the way down the usual greased poll of fading B-level celebrity: reality shows, Dancing with the Stars, so now it’s come to this. I know forty and fifty year-old men will pay to see me naked because they liked ‘American Pie.’ At least that’s something.”
That’s the full page ad that “Ye,” aka. Kanye West, paid to have placed in, of all papers, the Wall Street Journal. I wonder what percentage of WSJ readers even know who the hell he is? Never mind; he did it. Here’s what the ad says (I hesitate to put down “he wrote’):
“Twenty-five years ago, I was in a car accident that broke my jaw and caused injury to the frontal lobe of my brain. At the time, the focus was on the visible damage – the fracture, the swelling, and the immediate physical trauma. The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed….”
It wasn’t properly diagnosed until 2023. That medical oversight caused serious damage to my mental health and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis. Bipolar disorder comes with its own defense system. Denial. When you’re manic, you don’t think you’re sick. You think everyone else is overreacting. You feel like you’re seeing the world more clearly than ever, when in reality you’re losing your grip entirely.
Once people label you as crazy, you feel as if you cannot contribute anything meaningful to the world. It’s easy for people to joke and laugh it off when in fact this is a very serious debilitating disease you live from….
The scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you: You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, and unstoppable.
I lost touch with reality. Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem. I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst. You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to love someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self.
In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find: the swastika, and even sold t-shirts bearing it. One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type 1 are the disconnected moments – many of which I still cannot recall that lead to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body experience. I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.
To the black community – which held me down through all of the highs and lows and some of my darkest times. The black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.
In early 2025, I fell into a four-month long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life. As the situation became increasingly unsustainable, there were times I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Having bipolar disorder is not a state of constant mental illness. When you go into the manic episode, you are ill at that point. When you are not in an episode, you are completely “normal.” And that’s when the wreckage from the illness hits the hardest. Hitting rock bottom a few months ago, my wife encouraged me to finally get help.
I have found comfort in Reddit forums of all places. Different people speak of being in manic or depressive episodes of a similar nature. I read their stories and realized that I was not alone. It’s not just me who run [sic] their entire life once a year despite taking meds every day and being told by the so-called best doctors in the world that I am not bipolar, but merely experiencing “symptoms of autism.”
My words as a leader in my community have real global impact and influence. In my mania, I lost complete sight of that.
As I find my new baseline and new center through an effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise and clean living, I have newfound, much-needed clarity. I am pouring my energy into positive, meaningful art: music, clothing, design, and other new ideas to help the world.
I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness. I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
It’s time to check the old, Ethics Alarms Apology Scale to see where this whatever it is fits.
According to the scale, this is the hierarchy of apologies, their function and their motivation, from most admirable to the least credible:
—Ian Mendoza, whoever the hell he is, an “X” commenter whose profile says “It’s okay to be anti-Israel don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise”
Out of the mouths of morons occasionally come enlightening idiocy!
Ian was delivering what he thought was a crushing retort to critics of the latest Trump Deranged rant from actor Mark Ruffalo, this one at the Golden Globes. Ruffalo’s name now comes up #1 on Google if you search for “Anti-Trump actor,” just ahead of Robert DeNiro. Like DeNiro, Ruffalo is an excellent actor; also like DeNiro (and a surprising number of seemingly intelligent actors), he is a political, historical, critical thought-deprived ignoramus. The actor was prominently wearing the anti-I.C.E. “Good” pin at the awards show, which I consider signature significance. His latest rant was so fatuous it isn’t worth my time to fisk it, but I was impressed with Ian’s comment.
It perfectly encapsulates the logical fallacy that makes so many Americans pay attention to the outbursts of Dunning-Kruger suffering celebrities. Ruffalo, like AOC, was a bartender for almost a decade, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But he apparently got the idea that he was some kind of public policy guru by winning arguments with drunks. Other than mixology, his only other occupational pursuit of any duration has been acting, which he began in earnest in high school and then immediately entered the professional ranks upon graduation. Wikipedia tells us Ruffalo attended “progressive schools,” so he is a cautionary tale in the perils of ideological indoctrination.
