Hello, Kettle? This Is Bonnie. You’re Black.We’re a little confused by Bonnie Fuller’s Huffington Post tirade about Lynne Spears. Just a month ago, Fuller wrote a column on the Website thanking celebrity moms for making real moms feel better about themselves. “Every time that our girl [Britney Spears] cluelessly tries to whitestrip her toddler’s teeth instead of brushing them or runs a red light with the court-appointed monitor and her two sons all strapped in her car,” the tabloid queen wrote then, “working moms across the continent can set back our own personal guilt-meters about our mothering skills.” Aw. Perhaps that’s a little demented, but we can appreciate the sentiment. But today she no longer loves celebrity mothers. She hates them. Specifically, Britney’s mom, Lynne, whom she accuses of not properly teaching her daughters about the birds and the bees, and inadvertently causing her young daughter’s pregnancy. “Were you too busy pushing their careers to ever have this heart-to-heart with them?” the Star editorial director demands. “Were you too tied up lining up meetings with record company executives, TV networks, publicists and tour managers to check on whether you were instilling personal values and self-esteem in your daughters?”
new york fugging city
Fug Girls: Even the Tabloids Are Giving Up
At first, we thought it was the summer heat making us numb and irritable. But Us Weekly’s recent “Hollywood’s Hot Dads” cover, focused on the hot-as-lemonade Jason Priestley, confirmed that what we’re actually suffering from is crippling gossip ennui. Even the tabloids are deathly bored of the current crop of celebrity shenanigans.
numbers game
‘Post’ Beats ‘News,’ FinallyThis morning Rupert Murdoch’s dream — well, one of Rupert Murdoch’s dreams — came true. The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the gang that measures sales of U.S. newspapers and magazines, released its latest numbers, and the Post has finally overtaken the Daily News in weekday circulation. (The News still kills on Sundays.) Some relevant numbers:
Average weekday circulation of the Daily News in the six-month period ending September 30, 2006, as announced today: 693,382
Average weekday circulation of the New York Post in the six-month period ending September 30, 2006, as announced today: 704,011
Average weekday circulation of the Daily News in the six-month period ending September 30, 2005, a year ago: 686,274
Average weekday circulation of the New York Post in the six-month period ending September 30, 2005, a year ago: 669,663
the morning line
Cabs, Gays, and Celeb Car Thefts
• The tabs are aghast at yesterday’s taxicab rate hike, with the Post using words like “adding insult to injury” and the Daily News predicting a ruined Christmas. Completely buried in populist outrage: The TLC will also cease requiring cabbies to be legal U.S. residents. [NYDN, NYP]
• The Times gets a take on New Jersey’s new gay-rights situation from the Gay American himself, the state’s former governor, Jim McGreevey. Would he tie the knot with his partner Mark O’Donnell? Yes! [NYT]
• In celebrity-crime-victim news, Jesse L. Martin’s SUV was broken into and burgled in his hometown of Buffalo — just as the police made a second arrest in the violent theft of Mayor Bloomberg’s car in New Jersey. [WNBC]
• The MTA says that free hand-distributed newspapers are a major cause of flooding on subways. (They clog the drains.) Earlier in the year, the same papers were blamed for the uptick of underground fires. amNew York to add twelve extra pages for the story’s comprehensive coverage. [amNY]
• Speaking of flooding: NASA has rigged a computer model to demonstrate how a 2050s New York City would deal with a major storm. Not very well, it turns out. Flooded areas include “the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.” Oh, no! Even Williamsburg, too! [Mongabay]
