Her own full-figured days are long behind her, but now Star Jones Reynolds stands accused of turning her back on an organization dedicated to helping plus-size women and teens. Sharon Dumas-Pugh, the founder of Full & Fabulous, told TMZ her group hired Star to speak at an event last year, but despite accepting perks and partial payments, the lawyer and sometimes-TV host never showed up to the function.
After holding a number of fundraisers to pay Star’s appearance fee and expenses, relations between Full & Fabulous and Star went south. Sharon claims they gave Star a $10,000 deposit and another $6,000. In addition to that, they provided the celeb and her husband, Al Reynolds, with first-class plane tickets to the event in Detroit. According to Sharon, Star says she never got that $6,000, and apparently those airline tickets weren’t good enough, either.
Among the many e-mails and documents TMZ published regarding the whole mess is a letter from Sharon to both Power Performers (Star’s booking agent) and AAA Travels stating that Star switched to a later and more expensive flight and booked it on Sharon’s credit card “unauthorized.” To add insult to injury, Sharon told TMZ that after Star bailed on the function, she used those tickets to promote her book and enjoy some Super Bowl festivities.
Now Full & Fabulous is left throwing fundraisers for legal fees, trying to enforce a $20,000 default judgment they have against Star.
Jessica Seinfeld rewrites another story Even as “Jessica Seinfeld plagiarism” rises in ranking as one of Yahoo’s most popular search terms, there’s a much older scandal the contested cookbook author and comedian’s wife seeks to set straight.
Celebrity Sightings
In a recent New York Times profile, Jessica attempts to clarify how she became romantically entangled with Jerry Seinfeld at a gym within weeks of her first marriage in 1998. Back then, Gotham gossips painted the portrait of a social-climbing gold digger who abandoned Broadway aristocrat Eric Nederlander the second she got a better offer.
“I had never been in a gossip column before, and I was completely unprepared for what was about to happen,” Jessica wrote in an e-mail regarding the reason she didn’t address the issue initially. “But I hadn’t yet come clean, even to some of my own family, about the disintegration of my marriage or the dysfunctional relationship that preceded it. So when columnists first asked about Jerry and me, overwhelmed and under tremendous pressure, I compounded the mistake. I denied the truth, naïvely trying to protect everyone involved, including Eric, from the pain of the breakup and from the embarrassment of public humiliation.”
But according to Eric, whose current wife just gave birth to their first child, Jessica’s version of history isn’t quite accurate. “She’s trying to make the past look like it never existed,” he told the Times, “so people don’t look at her anymore as a bad person.”
Dish on the fly While rockin’ father of four Jon Bon Jovi fears the ribbing he’d receive should his kids catch a look at his hair-sprayed ‘80s mane, he willingly fesses up to his drug dealings back in the day. "I was entrepreneurial even then, buying quarter pounds of dope and trying to make a couple of bucks," the still-hunky front man is quoted as confessing on Female First. Still, kids, Jon learned his lesson: "I did the drug thing very young and wised up very young too, because I was into drugs a little too much.” … Though Marilyn Manson’s ex-wife, Dita Von Teese, is hardly one to go unnoticed, the burlesque beauty nevertheless is set to star as World War I spy Mata Hari, reports ContactMusic. "Dita has done a little acting before and I think she can handle it," said the film's director, Martha Fiennes, younger sister of actors Ralph and Joseph. "In fact, I approached her myself. She is perfect for the part.”
Tabloid Tidbits is compiled by Ree Hines and Helen A.S. Popkin.