Category Archives: Celebrity
NFL vs. NOW
The NFL is in a panic over angry women and angry sportswriters, sometimes one and the same. Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference yesterday to announce a crackdown on football players behaving badly. It played to very bad reviews. He apologized and promised a new and more sensitive NFL. But no number of pink ribbons will satisfy the National Organization for Women. President Terry O’Neill immediately renewed calls for Goodell’s head.
Never mind that the arrest rate for NFL players is lower than the rate for adult men in the general population. Here’s a chart from Deadspin.
NFL vs. NOW
So, why the uproar now? Ray Rice was seen last February dragging his unconscious fiancé Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City casino elevator, caveman style. It was obvious something brutal had happened. Rice was charged with aggravated assault and placed in a one year pre-trial intervention program. The NFL suspended him for two games. With the unpleasantness behind them, Janay and Ray got married and lived happily ever after.
That is until an elevator video surfaced this month on TMZ showing Ray actually dropping Janay with a left hook. Then the NFL took action to punish the victim by taking away her husband’s of income. Rice was suspended indefinitely.
Video footage evidently concentrates the mind, whether it’s of a knockout punch or a beheading. That puts Commissioner Goodell and President Obama in the same boat. Well, not actually, NOW still likes Obama.
Ray Rice’s Knockout Game
The knockout game was played in Memphis last weekend. It’s a game in which random people get sucker punched by punks. The idea is to knock the victim senseless. The knockout game is senseless.
But after seeing Baltimore Raven Ray Rice cold-cock his fiancé in an elevator I think I get it. The knockout game is a new NFL fantasy league.
Hacked Celebrities
The media verdict is that hacking nude photos of celebrities is theft. Yet an art gallery in St. Petersburg, Florida plans to display some of the recently hacked the pics. Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and others say they will sue over any display of their stolen images. This made me wonder… what would Anthony Weiner do?
Johnny Football Hand Signals
Johnny Football hype met reality when the NFL fined Manziel $12,000 for flipping the bird to the Washington Redskins bench. Washington players were amused by the gesture. The commissioner, not so much.
Mad Mad World of Comic Genius
Jonathan Winters was a mentor to Robin Williams. Both were tormented comic geniuses. Russell Brand calls it a “divine madness” in this essay in The Guardian.
I was surprised to learn Jonathan Winters spent 8 months in a psychiatric hospital just before his brilliant performance in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He wasn’t doing research. He managed to outlast his demons and died of natural causes at age 87.
Update: Here are some thoughts from Ben Stein on comics, depression, and suicide.
