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Goody's career

The tabloid life of Big Brother's biggest star

Limbaugh: "Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk"

On the August 12 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh said of former Sen. John Edwards' recent disclosure of an extramarital affair: "I've got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don't know that I could -- I don't know that I can put this one on the air." Discussing his "theory," Limbaugh said, "We know -- we've been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That's part of the puff pieces on them that we've seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go." Limbaugh later added, "It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." Limbaugh went on to say in a subsequent segment: "my theory that I just explained to you about why -- you know, what could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk." Limbaugh also highlighted his comments on his website, RushLimbaugh.com (subscription required). From the August 12 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show: LIMBAUGH: Back to the phones. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this is James. Nice to have you here, sir. Hello. Is he gone? James, you there? Aw, darn. He wanted to talk about Edwards and who knew and what were the motivations. And I've got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don't know that I could -- I don't know that I can put this one on the air. JAMES GOLDEN (contributor known on-air as "Bo Snerdley"): Why not? LIMBAUGH: Well, it's -- I mean, at some point, at some point, you gotta exhibit maturity and restraint. You know, and I do that constantly. But -- well, I don't -- look, let me see if I can run you through this and get you to think what I'm thinking without my actually saying it. That might be a pretty big talent if I could do that -- make you think what I'm going to say without my having to say it, therefore if anybody gets in trouble for saying it, you say it. We know -- we've been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That's part of the puff pieces on them that we've seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go. Well, you're -- Snerdley says he's missing something. If you're missing it, you're going to have to provide it. What are you missing? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I can't close the loop on it. I can't close the loop on it. I'm on -- you know, I'm in a little quicksand already today talking about how the chicks are giving us boring pictures of the female athletes from the Olympics. Because I know -- you -- the diversity crowd's going to be upset. They're going to -- "Ooh, do you mean the Olympics are just so you guys can ogle wom--" Yes, because we do not care to watch 'em compete. But back to Elizabeth and the Breck Girl. I'm sorry, my friends, I just -- I can't. It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk. [...] LIMBAUGH: OK, we're back. Ladies and gentleman, my theory that I just explained to you about why -- you know, what could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk. I think I can back this up from her. We have a sound bite. This is February 2007. She was on the tabloid show Extra. And this is what she said. Listen very carefully. HUNTER [audio clip]: The whole experience was life-altering for me. One of the great things about John Edwards is that he's so open and willing to try new things and do things in new ways. LIMBAUGH: "Open to new things." Folks, it is what it is. You get mad at me for bringing the truth to you, but it is what it is.

Former archbishop Lord Carey attacks Max Mosley court win

The Former Archbishop of Cantebury has criticised Max Mosley's victory over a British tabloid as a loss for press freedom.

Dominatrix "sorry" for racing chief orgy row

LONDON (Reuters) - The woman who filmed motor racing chief Max Mosley taking part in a sado-masochistic orgy and sold the story to a British tabloid newspaper has apologized for the trouble it caused.

July 25: Four Women Who Made a Difference

July 25: In science and technology, spheres of society where women are woefully underrepresented, this day in history offers a bountiful exception. Here are the milestones: In 1865, "James Barry," the first woman physician in modern times, compelled to disguise herself as a man in order to practice her profession, dies. In 1920, Rosalind Franklin, the unheralded co-discoverer of DNA, is born. In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, is born. In 1984, cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space. James Barry Barry, whose actual identity remains unknown, was born somewhere around 1795. After finishing medical school (at the age of 13, and already in disguise), "James Barry" waited a few years before joining the British army in 1813, where "he" served with distinction in a number of colonial postings, including India, South Africa and Canada. While in South Africa, Barry became the first doctor-surgeon in the British Empire to perform a Caesarean section in which both the mother and child survived. Prior to that, C-sections were generally performed only when the mother was dead or dying. Barry rose to the rank of inspector general in the army, but also worked with the Royal Navy, while stationed in Malta and Corfu, to improve the harsh conditions for sailors at sea. It wasn't until Barry died in 1865 that it was discovered at the autopsy that "he" was really a "she." Somehow, Barry had managed to conceal her actual sex (and to give birth to a child herself) for more than 40 years. She was also the first woman to receive a medical degree, although the dons had no idea they were handing their sheepskin to a woman. The first woman to earn a medical degree when her sex was known was Elizabeth Blackwell, who received her diploma barely two months after Barry died. Rosalind Franklin In April 1962, three men -- James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins -- shared the Nobel Prize for their discovery a decade earlier of the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin, a chemist whose X-ray diffusion photographs of DNA molecules showed their essential structure and paved the way for the trio's work, received nothing. The extent to which Franklin was dismissed by her peers varies in the telling, although it was real enough: In his memoir, Watson wrote unflatteringly of her and downplayed her role in the discovery. Wilkins, a colleague of Franklin's who disliked her feminist attitudes, was equally critical. He'd also provided Watson, without Franklin's knowledge, with her key photograph, which showed -- for the first time -- the double-helix shape that underlies the structure of DNA. The photograph caused Watson to remark later: "The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race." Crick was far more gracious, crediting Franklin with having done "the key experimental work." He also said that Franklin's early critique of their theoretical work caused them to rethink things, helping to set them on the right path. The most recent scholarship, a 2002 biography (Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox), paints Franklin neither as a feminist hero nor a spurned woman. Her role in helping to solve the mystery of DNA is unquestioned, and her place in science history is secure. Unhappily, Franklin died of cancer in 1958, only 37 years old. This has been cited as the reason she was not included with the others: The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. Louise Joy Brown Today is Brown's 30th birthday. Brown, a British postal worker, is married and the mother of a 19-month-old boy. She is also the first person ever to be conceived by in vitro fertilization: the world's first test-tube baby. Louise is the daughter of John and Lesley Brown, who had tried for nine years to conceive, before an infertility expert referred them to Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist. Steptoe, working with physiologist Robert Edwards, had also been trying -- and failing -- to conceive a child since 1966. The difference, of course, is that Messrs. Steptoe and Edwards were hoping to conceive theirs in a laboratory petri dish. ("Test-tube baby" was a media invention, but as long as it's in glass, it's in vitro.) They did succeed, however, in developing the method for fertilizing an egg outside a woman's body, which gave them hope. Enter Lesley Brown, whose fallopian tubes were blocked, a condition that makes it impossible to become pregnant through sexual intercourse. Steptoe surgically removed an egg from one of her ovaries on Nov. 10, 1977, fertilized it in his laboratory and returned two nights later (after a dinner party for his wife's birthday) to find that the egg had evolved into an eight-cell embryo. Steptoe implanted the embryo into Lesley Brown's uterus and hoped for the best. For nearly four years, every attempt at in vitro fertilization had failed, a fact the physicians didn't bother mentioning to the Browns during their interview. But in December, they were able to confirm that their patient was pregnant. The most difficult part of Lesley Brown's pregnancy was dealing with the British tabloid press, which hounded the prospective mother and father unmercifully until the Browns wised up and sold the exclusive rights to their story to one of the jackals. Louise Joy Brown was delivered by Caesarean section at 11:47 p.m. July 25. She weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces: small, but not exceptionally so. As Steptoe described it: "I laid her down, all pink and furious, and saw at once that she was externally perfect and beautiful." Steptoe died when Louise was 10, but Edwards attended her wedding. She told the Daily Mail earlier this month, "It's nice to have a close relationship. He's like a granddad to me." Svetlana Savitskaya Cosmonaut Savitskaya carried on the socialist egalitarian tradition by becoming the first woman to walk in space. She accomplished this while serving as flight engineer aboard the Soyuz T-12 mission to the Salyut 7 space station. Her EVA, or extravehicular activity, came 19 years after cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to leave an orbiting spacecraft, and she beat American astronaut Kathryn Sullivan out the door by three months. Comrade Savitskaya was, simply, born to be a cosmonaut. Her father was a fighter pilot during World War II, later becoming deputy commander of the Soviet Air Defense, and was twice named a Hero of the Soviet Union. Without her father's knowledge, Savitskaya, who took an avid interest in flying from childhood, learned to parachute. She made 450 jumps by her 17th birthday. She applied to pilot school at age 16, but was rejected because of her age. At 17, after jumping from 46,750 feet and free-falling more than eight miles before deploying her chute -- a record at the time -- Savitskaya began training as a pilot. By the time she was 24, Savitskaya was licensed to fly 20 different types of aircraft, including the MiG-21, which she piloted to a speed of 1,667 mph. Savitskaya became a cosmonaut in 1980 and was the second woman to go into space, preceded only by fellow cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Savitskaya was accompanied in her 1984 EVA by cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov. The pair performed external experiments on the Salyut station and remained outside their Soyuz capsule for more than three-and-a-half hours. Following her return, Savitskaya was selected to command an all-female Soyuz crew for a visit to Salyut 7, in observance of National Women's Day. The mission had to be scrubbed, however, because of problems aboard the space station. Source: Various

Fancy a night at the opera? Then pick up a tabloid....

Tickets for the opening night of the new Royal Opera House season will only be available to readers of the Sun newspaper, it is announced.

Facebook: Too Creepy, Childish for the Workplace

News from Portfolio.com Also on Portfolio Ewwww, Google First Bytes: Yahoo, Google, S.F. Muni-Hacker Update, More... Holy Bottom Line, Batman! Subscribe to Portfolio magazine Bill Gates doesn't get a lot of credit these days for being a visionary. But when it comes to his relationship with Facebook, he may still be a step ahead of the rest of us. The Sun, a British tabloid, reported this year that Gates had quit his half-hour-a-day Facebook habit, partly because he was getting more than 8,000 "friend" requests daily but also because he was finding "weird fan sites about him." (View a slideshow of several "weird fan sites.") A Microsoft representative confirms that the boss has gone cold turkey but wouldn't disclose whether Gates knew of a Facebook group called "Would you have sex with Bill Gates for half of his money?" Actually, it's a wonder that Gates was on Facebook in the first place (Microsoft's $240 million investment in it notwithstanding). Bill Gates obviously doesn't need to schmooze on Facebook. And neither do you, despite the pressure you've doubtless felt to join it (because, y?know, everyone is on Facebook). Perhaps you're like Ben Rosen, who co-founded venture-capital fund Sevin Rosen, which has bankrolled such companies as Electronic Arts and Compaq (which he once led as C.E.O.). Rosen is hardly averse to sharing personal information online; he says his blog, BenRosen.com, has become a small social network of sorts. But he has yet to use his Facebook account. "I'm trying to figure out the utility for me," he says. Or perhaps, like Gates, you just find Facebook a little ? creepy. Businesspeople often claim to use Facebook for vague "market research" purposes or to satisfy idle curiosity. But the social norms of social networking are still in flux, making privacy a real issue, says internet-marketing writer David Weinberger. "Younger people violate older people's idea of proper behavior when it comes to privacy," he says. "It's kind of eerie how much information is available about you on a social network," says Michael Fertik, C.E.O. of online-privacy service ReputationDefender, "and how many conclusions, tentative or otherwise, can be made so handily, fairly or unfairly, based on that information." Fertik estimates that all 55 of his employees use Facebook, and although he doesn't, he's unsettled by the all-consuming, constant-update M.O. it encourages. "I?ve seen a lot of quiet, passive-aggressive resentments and rumors that come from people just knowing that much about your business," he says. "If you're updating people, like, 'I?m at a barbecue at my colleague's house,' someone you work with might ask, 'Why am I not at that barbecue?'" The ease with which Facebook can be used to broadcast your whereabouts adds a particularly disturbing dimension for executives who would surround themselves with security in real life but are lulled into complacency by Facebook's tidy veneer. Last year, the British military sent a directive to its army units to avoid revealing their service connections online?"Be particularly careful if you are on Facebook, MySpace, or Friends Reunited"?fearing that, yes, Al Qaeda could use them to track prey. Your business competitors might not be terrorists per se, but Facebook can be useful for anyone trying to poach your M.V.P.?s. Even social-networking evangelists are legitimately nervous about Facebook, given its fiasco last fall with Beacon, an advertising engine that automatically announced users' activities on other sites?revealing their purchases, for example?without the users' necessarily realizing that their every click was being chronicled. Facebook apologized, but that sort of unwitting dissemination of potentially sensitive information has strengthened the market for Connect Beam, a consultancy that sets up secure social networks for the corporate intranets of Fortune 500 companies. "Companies like Honeywell," says Puneet Gupta, Connect Beam?s C.E.O., "could not take a chance to put their information on someone else's cloud"?meaning on the servers of a social-networking site the company doesn?t control. But Facebook's ick factor in the executive suite might have as much to do with its shiny, happy world of "friendship" as with security. "There's almost an inverse relationship between seriousness and how much you participate in social networking," says ReputationDefender's Fertik, laughing. That basically nails it: Facebook is simply unserious?particularly given how it prompts hard-driving business executives to regress into adolescent vernacular. "Poking" people, requesting "friends," writing on someone?s "wall": It?s cute when you're in high school or college. But in a corporate environment, it sounds disingenuous and downright silly. Ultimately, Facebook candy-coats the true nature of business relationships. And it will rot your teeth.

Another storm?

The tabloid editor in the spotlight over the Mosley case