Pack of Wild Models Descends on T.O.’s CheeseburgerThe models were so starved they snatched food from Dallas Cowboy Terrell Owens, plus, some dude dares calls Andy Warhol a “gnome,” and Chloë Sevigny continues to be Chloë Sevigny, in today’s short but delicious gossip roundup.
Is Tinsley Having Topper Trouble?Plus, transvestites in Times Square, Marc Jacobs and his new boyfriend, and Priscilla Presley’s Botox in our daily gossip roundup!
early and often
Roger Stone to Hillary Clinton: ‘C U Next Tuesday!’If it took you two glances at the image to the left to realize what it’s meant to look like, you’ve already donated a few seconds of your time to the cause of right-wing attack dog Roger Stone. He’s the guy who is accused of making nasty phone calls to Eliot Spitzer’s dad (remember how we punctured his alibi?). He’s also been affiliated with dirty tricks for decades, from Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President (yes, that CREEP) to some maybe shady dealings with Roy Cohn and a couple of mobsters. Anyway, this time around, his efforts are pretty straightforward. The image you see here is the symbol for his new group, Citizens United Not Timid. CUNT, for short. Straightforward enough for you? “It’s a simple joke,” Roger Stone told The Weekly Standard. “It’s not War and Peace. The truth is, we sat around for hours trying to come up with words for BITCH and just couldn’t do it.” The sole purpose of Stone’s new group is to sell T-shirts with the above symbol from a Website. “The more people buy the T-shirts, the more people wear the T-shirts,” he says. “The more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated.” Hmm. And people complain that in this election, nobody’s talking enough about education.
Citizens United Not Timid [Official Site]
Making Political Trouble [Weekly Standard]
“Legendary” GOP Strategist Launches Hillary Namecalling Effort [TPM]
white men with money
All About NXIVM, the Cultlike Organization With Ties to AlbanyA couple of days ago, the Post broke the news that Roger Stone — a former state GOP functionary who resigned after allegedly threatening Eliot Spitzer’s family — was procuring money for Joe Bruno and pals from his other employer, a cultlike organization called NXIVM. Needless to say, we’ve been obsessed with the Albany-based NXIVM (pronounced, believe it or not, like “Nexium”) ever since. It’s basically like Scientology masquerading as a self-help seminar, run by a guy named Keith Raniere. Raniere claims to have the highest IQ on record and have been a judo champion by age 11; he also demands to be called Vanguard by his followers (someone should introduce him to Mystery!). He is, in short, your classic swindler (his previous enterprise, a pyramid scheme called Consumers’ Buyline, got kicked out of Arkansas in 1992) who’s discovered the resale value on Ayn Randian mumbo jumbo. NXIVM’s “executive success” program is designed to reel in alpha types who need someone to tell them that greed is good. Its big philosophy is that “human beings are born parasitic” (saying “I’m hungry” or complaining about pain, for instance, is parasitic behavior; the enlightened just take what they need). It also redefines “good” as “pro-survival” and “bad” as “destructive.” Students wear colored sashes and bow in the presence of the leader. You can see where this is headed.
in other news
Spitzer’s Loudmouth Rhetoric: Not Loudmouth-y Enough?
It seems there’s more bad news for Eliot Spitzer, who’s steadfastly refusing to admit that righteous fury isn’t getting him the same dividends it used to. “No amount of hysterical rhetoric will prevent us from doing what is right,” Spitzer said last night at Fordham University, defending both his driver’s-licenses for-illegal-immigrants plan and a boost in state health insurance for children; sadly, his own penchant for hysterical rhetoric (like, let’s see, calling Bloomberg wrong five times in one sentence) appears to be tripping him up at every turn. Spitzer’s approval rating is down to an all-time low of 47 percent — that’s from 61 percent just eight months ago. Judging by the numbers only, one would think the state were in some sort of nightmarish free fall, but no — it all appears to be the fallout from the idiotic altercation with Joe Bruno. Seventy-eight percent of voters want the governor to testify under oath on the matter, and a majority wants the probe stepped up. But lo! In the midst of all this, a shady Bruno associate might’ve provided just the opening Spitzer needs to justify another over-the-top caricature of his enemies.
in other news
Roger Stone, Desperate for a Second Act, Turns to CriticismToday disgraced GOP consultant Roger Stone tried to take his lemons and make, well, sour grapes. On his Website, “The Stone Zone” (yep, that’s right), he posts a review of the show Frost/Nixon. You know, the one he was supposedly attending the night he allegedly made deranged phone calls to Eliot Spitzer’s dad? Yeah, the play that he actually couldn’t have seen because it was dark that night. Well, anyway, he did see it, and he has this to say: “I highly recommend the play to Governor Eliot Spitzer because it underlines the dangers hubris and the inexorable web a public official tangles himself in when he tells a lie. Since the play has closed I hope the Governor can catch a revival.” Well. It took him three weeks to come up with that spin? Let’s hope the Republicans weren’t paying him that much.
Roger Stone: The Stone Zone [Official Site] via [Gawker] and [Room8]
Earlier: Roger Stone’s Alibi: No ‘Frost/Nixon’ on Monday Nights
the morning line
Stone Quits
• GOP consultant Roger Stone resigned his job with the state Republican Party over that call to Pa Spitzer, but he still maintains — busted alibi and all — that Democratic operatives may have just broken into his house and made the call from his phone while using some kind of high-tech device to impersonate his voice. Ya-huh. [NYT]
intel
Roger Stone’s Alibi: No ‘Frost/Nixon’ on Monday NightsEveryone agrees that, whatever else happened, the bizarre late-night phone call to Eliot Spitzer’s dad was made on the evening of August 6, a bit before 10 p.m. Bernard Spitzer’s lawyers says it came from Roger Stone, a Republican consultant; Stone says Democratic operatives broke into his Central Park South apartment and used his phone to frame him. He couldn’t have made the call, Stone said in a statement posted to his Website, because “[o]n the night this call was allegedly made, I was at the theater catching the play NIXON and FROST [sic].” We’ll ignore the ironies that Nixon is modern politics’ greatest dirty trickster, that Stone worked for Nixon, and that the fulcrum of Frost/Nixon is a (fictional) bizarre late-night phone call. We’ll just note this: August 6, 2007, was a Monday. And like many Broadway shows, the play, which closed this weekend, took that night off. “We were completely dark on Mondays,” a rep from its management company told us. —Geoffrey Gray
in other news
Albany Drama Amps Up As GOP Aide Lashes Out at Spitzer FamilyOh, yes. Just when the hullabaloo over Eliot Spitzer’s “Dirty Tricks” scandal was finally dying down a bit, an aide to his foe Joe Bruno has allegedly gone bonkers. Roger Stone, a prominent GOP consultant, is accused of having left a ranting voice mail on the answering machine of Spitzer’s father, Bernard. Drudging up an old issue over controversial loans the elder Spitzer made to his son, Stone is said to have raged, “You will be subpoenaed to testify before the Senate committee on investigations and there’s not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it!”
