Miss Brooklyn Pageant Roiled by ScandalThe Miss Brooklyn Pageant, recently revived after a sixteen-year hiatus, is already enmeshed in scandal, though not of the topless-Facebook-photos variety. At least, not yet. Anyway, as it turns out, this year’s winner, 22-year-old Leigh-Taylor Smith, who was crowned after she charmed the audience at Long Island University’s Kumble Theater last week with her off-key rendition of “Nobody Does It Like Me,” lives in Manhattan. And that’s not all! The Brooklyn Paper did some digging, and now they have revealed that the judges were not only aware of this fact, they chose to turn a blind eye. “We only had a few committed girls from Brooklyn,” Kim Thomas, the executive director of the Miss Brooklyn Scholarship Program, explained to the paper. “We couldn’t have a contest with only three girls.”
Miss Brooklyn is from Manhattan [Brooklyn Paper]
the sports section
Clemens Testimony Referred to DOJ for Perjury Investigation, After AllAfter hedging a bit, Congress has decided to refer Roger Clemens to the Department of Justice for a perjury investigation. They are concerned that his testimony over his alleged steroid use directly contradicts that of former trainer Brian McNamee and fellow Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte. You’d think this would be bad news for Clemens and his legal team, as a handful of U.S. leaders just basically called BS on his testimony. But we sort of suspect that his lawyers were a little bit psyched, because they got to deliver this line:
“Now we are done with the circus of public opinion, and we are moving to the courtroom,” Clemens’ lead lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. “Thankfully, we are now about to enter an arena where there are rules and people can be held properly accountable for outrageous statements.”
You can just hear the crack coming through between the words, as Hardin imagines himself hitting a PR homerun. No matter how good he is with words, it’s not going to fix all the damage Roger has done to himself by being bad with them.
Congress Asks DOJ to Investigate Clemens [AP]
Earlier: As Clemens’s Story Weakens, Congress Drafts Perjury Letter
in other news
Publicist Catherine Olim Does Cindy Adams WrongLet’s just say it. Hollywood publicists and particularly PMK-HBH publicists are notorious for being difficult. But today, Nicole Kidman’s flack, Catherine Olim, crossed a line! Yesterday, Cindy Adams reported in her column that pregnant Nicole Kidman enjoyed a nice glass of white wine backstage at the Oscars the other night. Nothing wrong with that, we said to ourselves when we read it. Nicole’s just being European, and anyway our mom drank 40s of malt liquor all through her pregnancy and look how great we turned out. But Ms. Olim, it turned out, was not about to let this slide. “I try to ignore your column, unlike most of the rest of the world, because it is so nasty,” she wrote in a charming e-mail to Perez Hilton, who had picked up the item from Adams. “But I have to tell you that Nicole Kidman most certainly did NOT drink white wine or any other alcoholic beverage backstage. She had water and lemon zinger tea. That’s it. I know, I was there with her.” Then she said the unforgivable. “I cannot remember that last time that Cindy Adams got anything right. She’s an idiot, and you can quote me.”