Why is Janeane Garofalo touting a Scientology-linked project?
The actress and talk-show host has done two segments on her Air America radio show “Majority Report,” heaping praise on the controversial New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a program based on the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
On one show, her guests included Leah Remini, star of “King of Queens” and a devout Scientologist, who sang the praises of the detox project.
Although the Detoxification Project has been heralded by some Sept. 11 first responders, it has also been blasted by the chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department after its validity was questioned by a number of health-care workers.
“The usually sharp, well informed and at times cynical Garofalo is typically more skeptical,” noted Rick Ross of Cultnews.com, who said one show “came across as something like an infomercial.”
Even some of Garofalo’s regular listeners were disappointed. “I lost all respect for this show tonight,” one listener posted on the “Majority Report” Web site. “Why are they pumping up Scientology and junk science?”
Yet some fans are sticking by her. “Janeane is usually a great talker, good with guests, and very insightful,” noted one. “The fact that she’s insanely in the wrong tonight won’t make me dismiss all the great radio she’s contributed, that would be Scientology thinking.”
Connery’s ex-wife tells allSome Sean Connery fans are shaken — not stirred — by allegations the former James Bond star’s ex-wife is making.
Diane Cilento, who was married to Connery for 11 years starting in 1962, has written her autobiography and in it, she discusses those long-whispered about rumors that he hit her. In “My Nine Lives,” which is being published in the U.K later this week, According to an interview in the London Times, Cilento writes that in 1965, after she danced with a wedding party at a hotel in Spain where the couple was staying, she returned to her room and felt a blow to the face and Connery knocked her to the floor. “She got to her feet, but a second blow knocked her back,” reports the paper.
Connery has always denied that he hit his wife, but that year he was quoted in Playboy as saying, “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman, though I don’t recommend you do it in the same way you hit a man.” And in 1993, he was quoted In Vanity Fair as saying “Sometimes there are women who take it to the wire. That’s what they are looking for — the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.” Connery has said that those comments were taken out of context.
“It has been gone over millions of times,” Cilento told the London Times, “but what’s in the book is exactly what happened. I wouldn’t have said anything about it if Sean hadn’t done all those interviews about slapping ladies around.”
Notes from all overIan McKellan says he knows why “Brokeback Mountain” didn’t win an Oscar for Best Picture. “It’s called homophobia,” the “Lord of the Rings” actor told the London Observer. “Nobody has ever looked to Hollywood for social advance. Hollywood is a dream factory. I love the way that conservatives think that Hollywood is a bed of radicalism — it couldn’t be more staid and old-ladyship if it tried.” . . .Boxers or briefs? That’s the decision celebs had to make when they stopped by the freebie booth at the Daytime Emmys. Natalia Livingston called sweetie Tyler Christopher (Eva Longoria’s ex) to find out his size, and Barbara Walters walked way with free skivvies for her hairdresser. . . . Lori Forte, producer of “Ice Age: The Meltdown” gloated a bit over the animated flick’s success over “Basic Instinct 2” at the box office. “Just goes to show,” she quipped to the Montreal Gazette, “that people would rather hear Ray Romano as a fully clothed hairy mammoth than see an unclothed Sharon Stone.”
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