Politics and Celebrity Collide

[Rapunzel]

Today's gossip tidbit from Page Six:


Which perky national TV anchor is having an affair with a very married local TV anchor?

That is the only clues?

[mountaineer]

That's it. "Perky" implies Katie Couric, but she's no longer an anchor and her romantic liaisons are well known. I don't know any perky anchors. Anderson Cooper?  ^-^

[Rapunzel]

That's it. "Perky" implies Katie Couric, but she's no longer an anchor and her romantic liaisons are well known. I don't know any perky anchors. Anderson Cooper?  ^-^

Okay......... exceot her reported boyfriend isn't in the news business, but is a cheater it seems....

Katie Couric spotted out for a jog with pals amid boyfriend John Molner cheating rumors
Financier’s ex Jessica Hsu says he was two-timing — but a source says Molner knew after one date with Couric that it was ‘anchors away.’

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/katie-couric-boyfriend-john-molner-spotted-a-jog-cheating-rumors-article-1.1137925#ixzz247dEfkrX

[mountaineer]

Taylor Swift crashes Kennedy wedding

Taylor Swift crashes Kennedy wedding in Boston
 August 22, 2012

Not everyone is cooing at the budding Taylor Swift-Conor Kennedy summer fling.

Swift crashed the Kyle Kennedy-Liam Kerr wedding in Boston over the weekend and was asked twice to leave by the mother of the bride, Victoria Gifford Kennedy, the Boston Herald reports.

Gifford Kennedy told the publication that Conor was invited to the wedding but never RSVP’d.

“They texted me an hour before the wedding and asked if they could come. I responded with a very clear, ‘Please do not come.’ They came anyway.”

The mother of the bride said no to the Grammy award-winning singer because she didn’t want her to detract from her daughter’s big day. Indeed, Swift and Conor allegedly caused a mild commotion in the lobby with fans asking for pictures and autographs.

"I personally went up to Ms. Swift, whose entrance distracted the entire event, politely introduced myself to her, and asked her as nicely as I could to leave. It was like talking to a ghost. She seemed to look right past me,” she said.

Victoria said the duo left the reception during the dinner but returned after the meal and spent the rest of the night dancing.

Swift’s rep, Paula Erikson, insisted to the publication that the country singer was a welcomed guest and the bride was happy to have her there.

“There is no truth to that,” Erikson said. “Taylor was invited to the wedding and the bride thanked her profusely for being there.”

However, a source for the publication reported seeing Swift being asked to leave the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel where the wedding took place that Saturday.

Conor’s mother Mary hung herself May 16 in her Bedford, NY home. Swift is reportedly helping Conor cope with the tragedy.

[jmyrlefuller]

Ah, yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for...



The good news for Taylor, and the bad news for the Kennedys, is that she now has a boatload of ammo for her next song...

[mountaineer]

Plane desperate for Conor
Last Updated: 12:09 AM, August 28, 2012

Taylor Swift is so smitten with Conor Kennedy that, after leaving him in Massachusetts to head back to Nashville, she missed him so desperately she sent a jet to pick him up from the Kennedy home.

Sources exclusively tell Page Six that country superstar Swift left the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port alone just over a week ago to go to Nashville to work and promote her new single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

But one source said, “Taylor missed Conor so much, she sent a plane for him a few days later. He’s been with her ever since, and his family doesn’t know when he will be back. Things have become so serious between them so fast that no one in Hyannis Port would be surprised if they eloped.”
 
A Kennedy source told us that despite their still-brief romance, which they say started in July, Swift seems “totally in love with Conor. They are inseparable and are all over each other all the time. While his relatives really like Taylor, some feel their lovey-dovey behavior is cute while it has made others in the family feel a little uncomfortable.”

The love-struck pair crashed the wedding of Kyle Kennedy in Boston. The bride’s mother, Victoria Gifford Kennedy, said she had asked them via text not to come, then asked Swift to leave twice. But, “It was like talking to a ghost. She seemed to look right past me.”

Another source close to Swift, 22, said, “She always falls very hard and becomes very intense very quickly, and this time is no exception. In fact she seems to have fallen even harder.”

According to reports, Swift even bought a home next to 19-year-old Conor’s family. And she was spotted holding tight to him while accompanying him and his siblings to their mother Mary Richardson Kennedy’s grave site.

Reps for Swift, who so far have not commented on the relationship, didn’t get back to us last night.

Page Six

[mountaineer]

How heartwarming to know that this b---- has so little success in finding people who might be faithful to her. Maybe she's just not all that loveable.

Rosie to new wife - cheat and you get nothing
Last Updated: 11:33 AM, August 29, 2012

Before their secret rush wedding in June, Rosie O’Donnell subjected her new bride Michelle Rounds to eight months of grueling prenuptial negotiations — and she’ll get nothing if she cheats, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

Sources say O’Donnell, 50, was so tough in the talks that they didn’t get the prenup signed until hours before the intimate June 9 wedding, which was held in front of just a few people at O’Donnell’s home in Nyack.

While comedienne and talk-show host O’Donnell has been “extremely generous to Michelle in the prenup,” sources say, her 40-year-old bride “gets nothing if she cheats.”

 Lawyers for the pair had been in talks over the agreement since they were engaged last December.

The couple, who had planned to marry in August, brought the wedding forward after Rounds was diagnosed with rare desmoid tumors, also known as aggressive fibromatosis, in June. She had surgery June 14.

Meanwhile O’Donnell has also had health issues. She revealed Aug. 20 that she recently suffered a heart attack.

Our source added, “Both women have health issues, but the prenup negotiations were pretty fraught in the days before the wedding. Rosie just wanted to get it signed under her terms. She wasn’t in the mood to make any compromises.

“Despite this, Rosie and Michelle truly love each other, and they wanted to marry before Michelle underwent surgery,” the source said.

Rounds has gone through several gastrointestinal operations to remove the tumors and is now recovering at home with O’Donnell. They are expected to have the wedding celebration later this year, when they are both feeling better.

“We married in private before her surgery, just the two of us,” O’Donnell wrote this week on her blog. “When we’re both well enough [we] will have the wedding of our dreams.”

Rounds’ lawyer, William D. London, declined to comment. O’Donnell’s rep Cindi Berger had repeatedly denied to Page Six in June and July that O’Donnell and Rounds were married.

NY Post

[mountaineer]

This girl's in for a world of hurt, I fear, like just about every other woman who ever got involved with a Kennedy.

Taylor Swift’s new album could contain songs about Conor Kennedy
Last Updated: 3:53 PM, August 29, 2012

Taylor Swift’s written some thinly veiled breakup songs about past beaus, including John Mayer, but her upcoming album “Red” could include tunes about her current love Conor Kennedy.

In Rolling Stone, Swift says it was a tough challenge to balance songs that drew from past heartbreak as well as new, hopeful romance.

"Trying to chronicle each step of the way was challenging, because you go to some really dark places with the lyric,” she tells the music magazine. “Then in the next track, you're talking about how amazing it is to meet somebody new."

Swift also says “Red,” out October 22, will continue her track record of writing confessional songs about romantic relationships.

 "I know general things about love," she says. "How to treat people well, what you deserve and when to walk away. Other than that, love is a complete mystery – and that's why I like to write about it."

Page Six recently reported Swift’s so smitten with Kennedy that she recently sent a private plane to pick him up in Massachusetts after she’d left him to head home to Nashville.

A source told us, “Taylor missed Conor so much, she sent a plane for him a few days later. He’s been with her ever since, and his family doesn’t know when he will be back. Things have become so serious between them so fast that no one in Hyannis Port would be surprised if they eloped.”

Meanwhile, Swift’s reportedly buying a house near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. “That would be so amazing,” she says in Rolling Stone on newsstands Friday. Some say that she’s already scooped up the property.

NY Post

[Rapunzel]

Yep.. Swift is in for a huge fall... probably of Britney Spears proportions if the stories since this "romance" started are even close to accurate.

[jmyrlefuller]

After hearing her last song (it was so bad I put it in the Jukebox from Hell), it's blatantly clear she has major issues. Look, I understand that dating for a musician who's constantly on the road and with a schedule like hers is extremely difficult, if not impossible (I think of the case of Cliff Richard, who has been out there doing music for 50 years but had to give up any dreams of marriage to do it), but come on! So often she places the blame on somebody else when she herself is the one acting belligerent. Yet I've never heard her do a mea culpa for her angry outbursts.

What's worse is that her teen-girl audience eats her garbage up. That song went to #1 on the Hot 100.

[mountaineer]

Speaking of the Kennedys:

Hosp duo’s demand of Kennedy
By CARL CAMPANILE
Last Updated: 3:18 AM, October 3, 2012
EXCLUSIVE

Two nurses say a healthy dose of money and a public apology on the “Today” show will help cure the “pain and suffering’’ they’ve endured since Douglas Kennedy moved his newborn son out of their hospital, The Post has learned.

But that’s not enough for Cari Luciano and Anna Lane. Their proposal also includes a weird demand that Kennedy, a Fox News Channel reporter, spend two weeks collecting garbage.

The son of slain Sen. Robert Kennedy was charged with child endangerment and physical harassment after an altercation with the nurses when he took the infant, Bo, out of the maternity ward at Northern Westchester Hospital on Jan. 7.

 “Douglas is confident that he will be fully exonerated at trial. He had no interest in making any kind of deal,” a Kennedy friend said. “This proposal smacked of a shakedown.”

Kennedy has pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor count of child endangerment and two counts of harassment, which are violations. He is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 22 in Mount Kisco.

In a secret March 19 “settlement proposal” drafted by Luciano and Lane’s lawyer, Elliott Taub, and obtained by The Post, the nurses offered to withdraw their allegations — for a price.

Taub wants “a monetary settlement to each nurse the sum of which is to be agreed upon and paid, commensurate with each nurse’s physical and psychological injuries, pain and suffering, and particularly posttraumatic stress disorders.

“The nurses,” Taub said, “agree to keep this settlement amount strictly confidential.”

The deal would force Kennedy to plead guilty to “some charge in exchange for the nurses withdrawing their criminal complaints . . . with a sentence or penalty of community service to be set by the DA and/or Court — preferably collecting garbage daily in Mount Kisco or Chappaqua for at least two weeks,” said Taub, who did not respond to a request for comment.

The plan also demands Kennedy donate to a children’s health fund.

Moreover, it would require Kennedy, who has five children, to publicly apologize to the nurses on the “Today” show for his actions, including allegedly twisting the arm of one nurse and kicking the other.

Kennedy rejected the deal.

A spokesman for Westchester County DA Janet Fiore declined to comment. But a source close to the case said there was “not even a hint” of plea bargaining.

A former Brooklyn prosecutor criticized the nurses’ attempts to settle the case for a price.

“It’s wrong,’’ said David Schwartz, who is not involved in the case.

“You can’t exchange a quid pro quo of this magnitude. It’s a play for money, and they’re not going about it the right way.”

It’s the prosecutor who determines whether to pursue the case or accept a plea, he added.

NY Post, photos at link

[mountaineer]

Speaking of the dimbulb who, like the Kennedys, seems to believe she's entitled to forage at the gubmint trough as an elected official despite no particular knowledge, intellect, experience or talent:

Chelsea Clinton Exited Wall Street to Seek Career With Meaning
By Lindsey Rupp on October 03, 2012

Chelsea Clinton says she left her career on Wall Street three years ago to find more purpose.

“Intellectually, I loved my job, but I didn’t get any meaning from it,” says Clinton, 32, who worked from 2006 to 2009 as an associate at Avenue Capital Group LLC, a New York- based hedge fund firm. “I didn’t fundamentally become re- motivated every day in the way that I do now.”

Clinton has since earned a Master’s degree in public health from Columbia University, where she teaches a course in cross- national health policy, and is working on a PhD in international relations from Oxford University. She’s on the boards of IAC/Interactive Corp, the School of the American Ballet and Weill Cornell Medical College, and is a special correspondent for Comcast Corp.’s NBC television network.

She spoke about her Wall Street job in an interview at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting last week, fresh from a discussion about the future of Haiti.

She still appreciates the finance business, she says. Her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is the co-founder of the hedge fund Eaglevale Partners LP. Clinton says she believes in the industry’s ability to improve the lot of the world’s poorest citizens, by investing in their enterprises.

“They need people like those on Wall Street, who will be dispassionate about it and who will be gender-blind,” Clinton says. Increasingly, “the development world is moving toward an investment mindset.”

‘Wall Street-ese’
Financial institutions can help push it in that direction, she says. “The people I know on Wall Street are engaged and interested in our city and our country. I hope that people will just look out their proverbial back door.”

At the three-day CGI conference, Clinton joined her father, former President Bill Clinton, in cajoling bankers, executives, philanthropists and non-profit leaders to commit time and money to global quandaries, such as human trafficking, land rights for women and sustainable farming in Africa.

She watched her mother, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, talk about Libya. She hosted her own panel, called Optimism in the 21st Century, steering discussion among a teenaged cancer researcher, the president of the Ford Foundation and the finance minister of Nigeria.

“One of the things that CGI, as a platform, aims to do is to bring people together so at least conversations are happening in the same room and, hopefully over time, in the same language,” she says. “Academic-ese, Wall Street-ese and development-ese historically have all been rather distinct.”

Trading Floor
Clinton knows the spotlight. She jokes that her birth, in 1980, was front page news -- at least in Arkansas, where her father was governor. She spent her teen years in the White House, and first traveled to sub-Saharan Africa as a high school student in 1997.

Four years later, she graduated from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and saw no clear career path, she says. Her friends were typically choosing one of five pursuits: consulting, banking, law school, medical school, or “gap years to go find themselves, generally somewhere in Southeast Asia.”

Clinton chose McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, and moved to New York. Three years later, she joined Avenue, which was started in 1995 by Marc Lasry and his sister, Sonia Gardner, and has about $12.5 billion in assets. Lasry is close to the Clinton family and a long-time donor to Democrats.

“I wanted to understand how people thought about money who were in the business of making money,” Clinton says. She was one of about three women on a trading floor of roughly 50, and appreciated that her success was measured by the numbers.

“It was incredibly, fiercely meritocratic, and I loved that,” she says “Quite literally, there was a bottom line to my performance.”

“Ultimately,” she says, “that wasn’t the metric I wanted to judge my life by in a professional sense.”

Business Week

Her husband tried to break away and become a ski bum, but I see he was dragged back to the more "respectable" hedge fund life so as not to ruin her electability. Incredibly, literally, proverbially, that is (just speaking in BriefingRoom-ese).

[DCPatriot]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-rips-obamas-debate-performance-looked-like-he-took-my-million-and-spent-it-all-on-weed/


Bill Maher Rips Obama’s Debate Performance: Looked Like He Took My Million And Spent It All On Weed



During his opening monologue tonight, Bill Maher admitted he was not happy with how President Obama did during his first big debate this week. He told his audience that Obama undeniably “sucked” during the debate, and surmised that the million dollars he gave to the campaign was probably spent on weed.

Maher surmised that because Wednesday was Obama’s anniversary, “he apparently had the sex first and was completely spent” for the debate. He contrasted Romney looking “charged up” with Obama looking like Michael Jackson on diprivan. Maher admitted that Obama “sucked” during the debate, and made a joke referencing the money he gave to the pro-Obama Super PAC

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[mountaineer]

Maher surmised that because Wednesday was Obama’s anniversary, “he apparently had the sex first and was completely spent” for the debate.

Not with Moochelle, I'd wager.

[Rapunzel]

Not with Moochelle, I'd wager.

  for sure not with moosie.

[mountaineer]

The celebrity "First Daughter" manages to get herself in the news again. She must have a heck of a publicist.

Why Chelsea sits out Obama campaign
Last Updated: 8:27 AM, October 11, 2012


After being a prominent campaigner for her mother, Hillary Clinton, five years ago, Chelsea Clinton’s absence from the current presidential campaign is conspicuous. But sources tell us she isn’t disillusioned with President Obama, but that her contract with NBC News “prevents her from participating in the campaign.”

 Between 2007 and the end of the 2008 primaries, Chelsea played a role in her mother’s run for president, appearing at more than 100 college campuses before introducing Hillary at the August 2008 Democratic National Convention. This year, Chelsea attended both the DNC and the RNC conventions, but took a more neutral role. The former first daughter moderated a panel about millennials — 18- to 29-year-olds — at the RNC in Tampa in August. She then cheered on her father at the DNC in September and moderated a panel for the National Journal about the youth vote.

Another source told us, “Because of her work with NBC, Chelsea has been participating on both sides of the process.”

NY Post

[Lipstick on a Hillary]

“I wanted to understand how people thought about money who were in the business of making money,” Clinton says. She was one of about three women on a trading floor of roughly 50, and appreciated that her success was measured by the numbers.

“It was incredibly, fiercely meritocratic, and I loved that,” she says “Quite literally, there was a bottom line to my performance.”

“Ultimately,” she says, “that wasn’t the metric I wanted to judge my life by in a professional sense.”   

We can't have a Clinton thinking like a conservative!  Hillary probably stepped in and tamped down THAT urge.

[mountaineer]

NYC acts for Prez
Last Updated: 8:29 AM, October 15, 2012
Page Six

A host of top actors are being invited to take part in a New York fund-raiser for President Obama attended by First Lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday. “Presidential actors” — who have played the president or the first lady on TV and film — are being invited to join in a performance directed by “The Graduate” director Mike Nichols.

We’re told that actors on the wish list include Geena Davis, Cherry Jones, Cynthia Nixon, Sam Waterston, Blair Underwood, Sigourney Weaver and James Earl Jones. The event will take place at event space 583 Park Ave., and tickets cost from $500 to $5,000, which gives you a great seat and a photo opportunity with the first lady.
_______________________
Wide-angle lenses suggested.

[mountaineer]

Is Tinseltown turning on Obama?
by Andrea Peyser

Look out. Hollywood is having a Republican crisis.

Once America’s most dependable bastion of liberal blather, the land of make believe has gone rogue. Each week, the new movie season brings another defection to Camp Romney, a place where taxes are less punishing, foreign policy is reliably pro-Israel, and stupid movies like “Innocence of Muslims’’ are not blamed for costing American lives.

It’s the terrorists, stupid.

You can see this sea change in the new Ben Affleck-directed movie, “Argo.” Once an ardent Obama-phile, the disaffected Hollywood hunk has chosen this election season to take on flaccid Democratic ex-President Jimmy Carter with a terrific and damning (to the government) new film about the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis. It seems no accident that the film brilliantly foretells today’s bloody events in the Middle East.

The land that once loved Obama is not stupid when it comes to selling tickets. The unexpected hit of the summer was Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, “2016: Obama’s America.’’ The stinging big-screen indictment of Obama’s socialist leanings and disloyalty to the state of Israel was — surprise! — produced by the Oscar winner behind “Schindler’s List,” “Rain Man” and “Jurassic Park,” Gerald Molen.

“All of my movies have been about telling the truth,” Molen, a rare Hollywood Republican — who knew? — told The Hollywood Reporter.

Even hard-left filmmaker Michael Moore has grown weary of a commander-in-chief who doesn’t appear up to the job. After Obama’s disastrous performance in the debate against Mitt Romney, Moore tweeted, “If Romney keeps this up . . . Obama is going to vote for him!”

Four years ago, I doubt that the anti-union movie “Won’t Back Down’’ would have been green-lighted, let alone attract an A-list cast including Oscar nominees Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis. The poorly reviewed film (by lefty journalists) broadcast the message that Americans are fed up with liberal teachers unions that care nothing about kids while protecting rotten teachers and obstructing efforts at school reform.

Even loopy actress Lindsay Lohan, who once called Obama’s elevation to president “amazing,” said she’s endorsing Romney this time, although I suspect La Linz’s loyalty is not a great score for Mitt.

“Argo,” with its early Oscar buzz, stellar cast and formerly reliably liberal director in Affleck, may present the most chilling depiction of our enemies since “The Manchurian Candidate.’’

The flick’s backdrop is the snatching of 52 American hostages by Iranians at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The hostage crisis carried on for months, as an impotent Carter couldn’t do anything right.

“Carter’s s--tting enough bricks to build a pyramid,’’ remarks a CIA superior Jack O’Connell (Bryan Cranston).

The CIA, meanwhile, hatches a plot to extract six Americans who’ve escaped the embassy and are holed up at the Canadian ambassador’s house. In a real-life drama that was kept secret until the Clinton administration, CIA operative Tony Mendez (Affleck) rescues the six Americans after 87 days, convincing the Iranians that the Americans are really part of a Canadian film crew.

The remaining 52 hostages finally came home after a mind-boggling 444 days in captivity. By then, fed-up voters replaced Carter with Republican President Ronald Reagan.

Affleck, no big fan of Romney, has soured on Obama. “I voted for Obama last time, although he got to be all things to all people then,” he said while promoting his film. “And now, he’s got a record, which makes it really different . . . I obviously have more complicated feelings.”

“Argo” evokes another complicated recent Middle East crisis: the murders of American Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three colleagues. Five days after the event, UN Ambassador Susan Rice hit the talk shows, insisting that Stevens’ killing resulted from a “spontaneous” protest rally against “Innocence of Muslims,” a schlocky film seen as insulting to the prophet Mohammed.

The Obama administration wanted to blame the deaths on something out of its control but has since backed off the claim, looking as weak as Jimmy Carter at his most impotent.

In 2012, the Hollywood brain trust knows that images of American strength sell better than those of self-flagellation.

There is hope.

[mountaineer]

And this ...

Tim stuns H’wood with Bam slams
By SEAN DALY
NY Post
Last Updated: 6:16 AM, October 15, 2012


Comedian Tim Allen has an idea for a home improvement at the White House: Get a new tenant!

A rare Republican in Democrat-loving Hollywood — let alone in prime time — Allen delivers a comic smackdown in the season premiere of his ABC sitcom, “Last Man Standing.”

It’s the first sign the GOP may be making inroads in what has been nearly solid support for the president on the left coast.

In the episode, airing four days before the election, Allen’s uber-conservative character, Mike Baxter, tries to persuade his impressionable 18-year-old daughter to vote for Mitt Romney.

“The Democrats will tax [your] inheritance and probably use that money to throw gay weddings for illegal aliens,” Allen’s character tells the Kardashian-loving teen, who thinks Bill Clinton’s mother is secretary of state.

“Democrats love spending other people’s money. Free health care for everybody . . . Whoopee! Now lazy people can go around licking doorknobs.”

While Allen squeezed some jokes in at the president’s expense, he wasn’t given an unlimited leash to bite into Bam. Allen told The Post that the Disney-owned network scrapped numerous jokes, including one in which his character calls the president “a communist.”

“I love communist jokes,” Allen said. “The right sees everything as a communist.”

“We also had this line about the Clintons where I say, ‘They’re like shingles; just when you think they are gone, they pop back up.’ ”

That, too, got cut.

Among the lines that survived:

* “Romney is a doer. It’s easy to be consistent, like Obama, when all you have done is ‘organize communities.’ ”

* “He did a great job with that South Side of Chicago. It runs like a watch down there. Of course, you can’t wear one.”

Allen said there are plenty of jokes aimed at Romney — because the network thought it was necessary to give the show some balance.

[mountaineer]

RFK Jr. and late wife didn't pay for many of renovations to make Westchester mansion eco-friendly
By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN
Last Updated: 8:02 AM, October 28, 2012
NY Post EXCLUSIVE

For the Kennedys, it was easy being green.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his late wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, didn’t pay a penny for the high-end kitchen appliances, dual-flush toilets, solid brass and zinc faucets, hardwood flooring and hypoallergenic rugs when they created their eco-friendly Westchester mansion. Even the bamboo hangers and the cleaning products were free — a $1.3 million bonanza of swag.

Now five months after Mary Richardson Kennedy’s suicide at the sprawling estate in Bedford, her husband is set to make a windfall.

RFK Jr. claims he already has a buyer after listing the house last week for $3.995 million. He and his first wife bought the original 1920 clapboard farmhouse on the site for $745,000 in 1985.

  Kennedy married Mary Richardson in 1994, and they were raising their four children in the house, which flooded in a 2003 storm. Mold infested the home and made it uninhabitable. The Kennedys, along with interior designer Robin Wilson, crafted a plan to raze it and rebuild with as little outlay as possible.

Contractors and vendors donated their services or slashed their rates for the promise of free publicity. There were offers of “platinum sponsorships” and talk of tours to showcase the mansion and its products. Home-improvement TV host Bob Vila started filming a show chronicling the construction, “Our Green House,” for NBC. It does not appear the show ever aired.

“He didn’t think he should pay for anything; even the suits he wears were donated,” a source said of RFK Jr. “He felt people should pay for him. He had an enormous sense of entitlement.”

Bedford town records show the cost of the renovation project was $2.5 million, but it’s unclear if that includes all the freebies the family got. They took out a $1 million loan in September 2009, records show.

The project was a win-win for the Kennedys and Wilson. The family even got a tax deduction for donating the remains of the old house to a nonprofit.

Wilson got a book deal out of it, writing “Kennedy Green House” to highlight her work. Wilson portrays the Kennedys as being financially squeezed as the project went over budget and they lived in a rental home during construction, which started in the fall of 2008.

RFK Jr. could hardly be described as poor. He is a professor of environmental law at Pace University and in 2009 earned $2.2 million in speaking fees alone, according to someone who saw his tax returns.

Yet Wilson was calling vendors asking for free bulletin boards.

Scott Kochlefl, who owns Ideation Design Services Inc., said he thought it was odd that the Kennedys would ask for a handout of his product — an eco-friendly alternative to a corkboard. He supplied seven boards worth $189.87.

The kitchen was designed for free, and the craftsman who did the bookcases and fireplace mantels charged half his rate.

Jeff Bridgman, an antique-flag dealer, loaned the couple some 35 framed flags to hang on their walls in a kind of rotating art gallery.

Builder Jim Blansfield, who led the two-year construction project, said he charged “very, very much less than what I would normally charge. I felt the project had great merit.”

Blansfield said he was proud of the house, but it has not resulted in any increase in his business.

The Kennedys showed off their newly finished estate to reporters in April 2010.

But the couple’s marriage was already in shambles. RFK Jr. filed for divorce a month after the press tour and moved out in 2011. The TV show never aired.

Although Mary Richardson Kennedy — an architect by trade who is barely mentioned in Wilson’s book — was involved in every detail of the project, she resented the house being used as a showplace, according to the source.

“It wasn’t a private place for her and the kids,” the source said. “It was like living in one of the windows at Macy’s.”

[Rapunzel]

I have long found him to be the most reprehensible of all of RFK's children.

[mountaineer]

Chris Brown dresses as ‘terrorist’ for Halloween
Last Updated: 9:49 AM, November 1, 2012
NY Post

As you can see, Chris Brown and his friends decided to dress as what appeared to be armed terrorists for Halloween last night. The R&B singer posted this incredibly offensive photo onto his Instagram account, causing his 1.5 million followers to get instant whiplash from shaking their heads in disgust.

Brown and his idiot posse are standing in front of an expensive looking car and wave their presumably fake guns at the camera. The singer is front and center with a fake beard, holding a machine gun high above his head.

"Ain't nobody [bleep]ing wit my clique!!!!" he captioned with the pic, referring to the song “Clique” by Kanye West and Jay-Z.

Chris Brown via Instagram
Chris Brown (middle) and his friends dressed as terrorists for Halloween

 No stranger to controversy, Brown made headlines a month back when he debuted a neck tattoo that looked suspiciously like the images of Rihanna after he sent her to the hospital in 2009. He denied the tattoo was of Rihanna, but the damage was done.

Chris Brown, please stick to music.

[mountaineer]

The Kennedys are just a never-ending mess of disgustingness.

RFK Jr. and late wife asked Al Franken to help them receive no-cost home renovations: designer
By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN
Last Updated: 6:12 AM, November 4, 2012
Posted: 1:40 AM, November 4, 2012
EXCLUSIVE

A discount isn’t good enough — for the Kennedys, it has to be free.

That was the message from Mary Richardson Kennedy, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while they were remaking their mold-infested 1920 house as a green showpiece, according to Robin Wilson, the interior designer who worked on the project.

The Bedford, NY, house’s energy-efficient windows were being provided by a local distributor for a Minnesota company, Marvin Windows and Doors, at a discount of more than $100,000.

But Richardson called Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and an ally of her husband, and asked him to push the company to donate the windows.

“Mary reached out to many people and corporations, including Al Franken,” Wilson told The Post.

A spokesman for Franken denied the claim, saying the senator “was never asked by Mary Richardson Kennedy for help with renovations.”

The windows are just one example of the many items the Kennedys coveted when they remodeled their seven-bedroom mansion. They raked in more than $1.3 million in free products and got deep discounts from the builder and other contractors — with the promise of publicity and credit on a never-aired Bob Vila television show for NBC.

RFK Jr. put the house on the market last month for $3.9 million — five months after his estranged wife committed suicide on the property.

Vila was on board through another Kennedy connection — Sarah Johnson Redlich, a film producer who lived in Bedford and wanted to work on the Vila show. Redlich had worked on a documentary based on RFK Jr.’s book “Crimes Against Nature.”

Wilson said it was a part of her job with the Kennedys to secure products and services for “free or as free as possible” during the renovation project, which stretched from 2008 to 2010.

“Robin Wilson kept saying, ‘If you don’t thoroughly donate the windows to us then we are going to completely omit the fact that you were even a part of this project,’ ” said a source familiar with the construction work. Despite the hard sell from Wilson and Mary Richardson Kennedy, the window distributor refused to budge. The Kennedys paid $230,000 for the windows, which had a retail price of $350,000, the source said.

The company got no credit for its work in Wilson’s book about the house, “Kennedy Green House,” or on the book’s Web site.

“This was purely a scenario of someone just trying to take advantage of their status, and it was almost to the point of grotesque,” the source said. “There was a complete abuse of power.”

Free Benjamin Moore paint for the mansion did not go far enough for the Kennedys. They also wanted enough paint for their vacation house in Hyannis Port, Mass., and to cover a float in the village’s annual July 4th parade, another source told The Post.

But Wilson herself got stiffed. Mary Richardson Kennedy fired her just as the project was winding down and paid only a part of her final bill, Wilson said.

RFK Jr. would not comment.

NY Post

[Rapunzel]

Celebrities are so used to getting tax-free swag it boggles the mind.. I remember reading several years ago about Demi Moore going to buy a new bed and being incensed the store was not going to give it to her because of who she was....