News on Octomom:

After first saying “no thanks”, Nadya Suleman has finally accepted the offer from Angels In Waiting for 24-hour nursing care for her octuplets when they come home, plus help with her other six children (three of which have special needs).  Not only that, but none other than Dr. Phil (tellingly enough, the only person who’s been able to get through to her, further making me believe that many people really do believe what they see on TV is real) has thrown her a baby shower of sorts.  Also, she’s finally pulling up stakes and moving into a new home…don’t ask me how she can afford a $500,000+ home when the one she is already living in is in foreclosure, because I don’t know.

The house is undergoing extensive renovation as we speak:

Don’t expect the Octo-Babies to be coming home this week. In a big setback for Nadya Suleman, social workers from Kaiser Permanente hospital just inspected the Octo-Mom’s new 2,500 square foot house in La Habra and they were not thrilled with what they saw.

A social worker liaison tells RadarOnline.com exclusively that Nadya’s new house needs the following work before her babies come home:

*All lighting moved up onto the ceiling. No lamps or cords on the floor.
*Fireplace needs safety guards
*Stairs need to be re-built.
*Upstairs banister on stairs raised to enclose entire 2nd floor.
*Hypo-allergenic air filters installed
*Bunk beds can not be next to window in upstairs bedrooms.
*Blinds need to be cordless
*Storage cabinets installed

The social workers were very surprised and disappointed Nadya didn’t show up for the inspection. She did give RadarOnline.com a tour of her new place last night.

They have demanded Nadya show up Thursday for another inspection at the new house. In short, the social workers say a lot of work needs to be done. The inspectors say the home is big enough but they tell RadarOnline.com exclusively they are concerned about the functionality and safety of the new home.

Workers are currently inside the house tearing up the carpet, taking appliances out, ripping up plumbing, measuring, adding storage and organizing… basically putting an entire new face on the new crib.

And just how much help will be needed once those babies come home?

Civil rights attorney Gloria Allred, founder of Angels in Waiting Linda West Conforti and Dr. Phil have entered into an agreement of care with Nadya for her octuplets. The agreement is formalized in a Declaration of Principles document with eight points.

Angels in Waiting estimates caring for the octuplets will cost approximately $135,000 per month and needs public donations. Aware of criticism of Nadya, the group released this statement about the babies: “These are innocents, born into the situation. We need help and we need help now.” Conforti confirmed it will take 11 nannies a day to make the situation work.

Allred told RadarOnline.com: “A retired judge, Dan Weinstein, will oversee the fund and ensure that all donated money will be used for the care of the children, and not one cent will go to Nadya or her family.”

Well, if you remember right, I suggested that someone outside the family oversee any financial donations to the octuplets.  Great minds and all that.

But let’s take a look at this phrase:  “Angels in Waiting estimates caring for the octuplets will cost approximately $135,000 per month and needs public donations.”  Wow.  $135,000 a month?  A charity which takes care of these sort of medically at-risk infants should have at least some money in its coffers to give it a good start, right?  After all, you wouldn’t offer to help innocent little babies unless you already had your funding in place, right?  You would at least know the bills would be met every month, right?

Well, not so fast.

But wait, there’s more…

And might I add, it’s about time, although it sounds pretty anemic.  “Launching a probe”?  Sounds like a medical procedure.  Maybe they need a headoutofbuttectomy.

The International Olympic Committee, that bastion of all things Olympic, has finally decided that perhaps it was time to stop taking China’s word for everything and try to figure out what is really going on in women’s gymnastics:

An IOC official told The Times that because of “discrepancies” that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.

The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed yesterday to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 – making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics – rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.

Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese government website. The documents, he said, stated that He’s birth date was January 1 1994 – making her 14 – and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport. [...]

[...] The ages of two other team members have also aroused suspicion: Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin. Time magazine reported that government records, that have since disappeared, showed both girls to be 14. Gymnasts must be 16 to compete.

The controversy has been swirling aroud even before the games began, giving the IOC and FIG plenty of time to act before the first competitor took to the apparatus; however, blind eyes were turned, as Dawn has said, presumably to avoid offending the host country of China.  Because, after all, people will let you break the rules if you totally have a tantrum if you get caught.

And despite what anyone wants to claim, the documents that were found were posted on a state-run website, by the General Administration Of Sport Of China, not on some rinky-dink page by a pimply-faced geek:

The man who uncovered the allegations about the underage athlete told The Times that he was not even a sports a fan, but decided to investigate the issue to determine if Chinese authorities were lying. He eventually discovered that two Excel spreadsheets on the Chinese government’s official sports website – www.sport.gov.cn – that mentioned her name had recently being removed.

“There was a conclusion here,” Mr Walker said. “These documents existed, on a state-wide website, and now they don’t exist, and this change has taken place recently. I was interested because these were documents that no-one could find. If there’s information to be found on the internet I’m a citizen journalist – it was a challenge.”

He turned to a Chinese search engine, Baidu. In its cache he found both documents. “The listing in there, quite clearly, is He Kexin’s birth date, January 1, 1994,” Mr Walker said.

Plus, for all who claim He Kexin is unaware of the duplicity:

He insists that she is old enough to compete. Asked by journalists about the debate, she said: “My real age is 16. I don’t care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age.”

Now, I want to make clear, she may in fact be forced to say this by her government, because she is in fear for some reason.  We don’t know, because like all things from China, it is shrouded in mystery.  Quite honestly, I feel for the girl…to be used as a pawn for nationalistic pride.  Unlike our gymnasts, she has to say what is put into her mouth.  And this is not bigotry against the Chinese.  So understand, this is in no way a personal attack on the young lady or her nationality, but on sport in China, subtle cheating and bold-faced lies, and the censoring of news.

Not only have there been questions about the age of some of China’s gymnasts, but there is also controversy swirling around the judging of the competitions, with on-air commentators openly wondering at how gymnasts who fall and who do not stick landings were still awarded high scores.  If judging in ice skating is algebra, judging in gymnastics is trigonometry…also, it is wildly subjective while at the same time being tightly controlled.  It has been suggested that the judges in question did not have the experience required to judge gymnastics at an Olympic level, which could account for some of the marks…but even I know that certain errors are certain tenths of a point off, even accounting for the difficulty rating.  Perhaps they blinked or had something in their eye and missed crucial moments.

And I have to point out once again that this is not a question of being sore losers because we took the silver medal.  This is a question of following the rules as they are laid out by the IOC.  All competitors and coaches take an oath that they will compete fairly and will follow the rules.  So that is all out the window if you’re the host nation with a history of atrocities against your own people?  It seems to me that if you are underage, then you are ineligible to compete, and a tenth of a point deduction for a mistake should be for all teams.  All anyone is asking for is for each and every team to follow the rules as they are laid out.

Was the Chinese gymnastic team better than the other teams?  Possibly…but then again, they did have a bit of help from the judges, receiving higher scores for routines that should have had deductions.  Yes, the US team messed up big on some things, but so did the Chinese.  This isn’t a question of who is better…we have a junior high football player who is better than some of our high school players, but he can’t play on the high school team because, say it with me, it’s against the rules.  We have to wait until he is eligible to play.

This is also not about how “young” or “old” the gymnasts look, although I will once again point out that there are certain characteristics to the bone structure of preteens, teens, and adults, and it is pretty obvious that some of these so-called sixteen-year-olds are not sixteen based on this criteria.  They can appear young in the face, but there are certain other marks of age you just cannot hide or have a harder time covering up.  And this is also not about whether one agrees or disagrees with the age rule…some think fourteen or even younger should be eligible to compete, some think sixteen is just right (I personally would move it up to eighteen, but then I am all for children having a childhood and not frittering it away in a gym).  You can disagree with the rules all you want, but the fact is that disagreeing won’t change anything.  In high school sports, if you have one ineligible player play in a game, and it is found out after the fact, the whole game is forfeited and the entire team is punished.  So this is different how?

I can disagree with the rule that tells me I have to go a certain MPH on a certain stretch of road, since my car is super cool and faster than my neighbor’s, and I can surreptitiously break that rule every chance I get.  But sooner or later I’ll get caught and punished.  Why?  Because I broke the rules.  Rules are rules whether we agree with them or not and if we break them we will pay the consequences.

The IOC asked Paul Hamm to return his medal after their judges made a mistake.  The IOC made Sale and Pelletier share a gold medal with the Russians when a judging scandal was unearthed.  The IOC was going to take the word of China (well-known for their openness and truthfulness) and hope this all blew over.  Yeah, fat chance.  Way to underestimate teh powah of de internets!

You can follow GlossLip’s continuing coverage of this story here.

You know, it really makes you wonder where the heads of the IOC and FIG are.  Oh wait.

I don’t claim to be some sort of computer guru, and I don’t have epic haXX0r skillz, but I can read and do simple math, and even I recognize that 1994 from 2008 is not 16.  Deceiver found a great page…it seems a blogger/hacker found some pretty damning evidence that He Kexin is not sixteen after all, as China so desperately wants us to believe:

In the Baidu cache, which apparently has not been hit with the scrub brush (yet), two spreadsheets published by the Chinese government on sport.gov.cn both list He Kexin’s birthday as 01-01-1994, making her 14 years old. For as long as these links work, you can access the documents directly, either using the directions and screenshots above, or these links: cache1 cache2

I do not even pretend to understand some of the technical stuff (although I am learning…I’ve taught myself things that surprise people).  But even I can grasp that the Chinese government is working feverishly to remove any traces of He Kexin’s true age from the internets.  The country of China is behind both athletics and news organizations, and everything that comes out of China is monitored.  This is not an accident or a series of typographical errors.  They know what is going out, before it goes out.

As Dawn has so astutely pointed out, there is something major wrong in the sport of gymnastics and the willingness of the Olympics to look the other way in this.  There’s a problem, as she has said again, when one country is expected to adhere to the set rules, but another country can get by with breaking them just because they are the host.  Oh, and then there’s that whole terrorizing your countrymen thing if they don’t toe the party line (no pun intended…well, maybe a little).

Not only is the age of more than one Chinese gymnast in question, but the subject of the judging must also come up.  It was suggested during the broadcasts that some of the judges do not have the experience needed to judge gymnastics at this level, and that could account for the Chinese team receiving points even when they did things like fail to stick the landing or falling off the apparatus.  Personally, I think that is a diplomatic way of saying that the Chinese team was favored in the points, because who wants to offend the Chinese?  Yes, we made big mistakes…so did the Chinese.

It also occurs to me that another indicator of the young age of these girls are the mistakes in question.  If they were truly of Olympic age, that would mean they would have one to two more years of national/international competition under their tiny belts than they actually do.  Perhaps the mistakes were simply competitors who are unused to competing at this level.  Having said that, I realize mistakes happen, even to the best and most seasoned competitor.  It’s just my theory.

So many say this is just “sour grapes” because we lost so many medals to China in the Olympics.  And I would repeat that this isn’t about who won what, but about following the rules as they are set forth.  If the rules state that you have to be sixteen in an Olympic year, then them’s the rules, and you have to follow them.  If the rules state you deduct so many tenths of a point for a mistake, then that is what should happen.  Period.  All athletes AND coaches (even those who’s teams are run by the state) take an Olympic oath that they will follow the rules.  All anyone who truly loves sport asks is that all compeitors be subject to the same rules.  What, when we solemnly swear to uphold something, those words are meaningless, as long as we do what we do in the name of national pride?  When one censors the internets, claiming one thing is truth and now the corrected thing is truth, forget that first thing…where does that leave us?

What is this post really about? I don’t really feel that it’s about the gymnastics age limit, or even really about whether fraud occurred. At this point, I believe that any reasonable observer already understands that age records have been forged. This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet. Will this stand?

A bunch of bloggers and hackers have found what the IOC and FIG swear do not exist.

You can follow GlossLip’s continuing coverage of this scandal here.

UPDATE:  The IOC has ordered the FIG to investigate this matter further.  ‘Bout time.

I didn’t need a commentator telling me that there was a question of age to realize, as I was watching the female gymnasts compete earlier in the Olympic games, that I was looking at girls who definitely were not sixteen years old.  Look, I was a teenager once.  I have a teenage daughter.  I have kids who have teenage friends.  Some of these girls in question are definitely not sixteen…but the problem has been that nobody can prove it.  The Chinese have produced the girls’ passports and apparently that is all the IOC needs, because China has such a long history of being completely open and trustworthy:

Just last week, questions were raised about the ages of two of Yang’s teammates. The New York Times reported that online records listed the gymnasts, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan, as being too young for this Olympics, perhaps as young as 14.

A national registry of gymnasts, which had been blocked online but was viewable through Google cache, listed He’s birthday as Jan. 1, 1994. That date was also listed for her on a registration for an intercity competition in Chengdu, China.

Jiang was born on Oct. 1, 1993 and is not yet 15, according to a listing of junior competitors from the Zhejiang Province sports administration. The list of athletes included national identification card numbers into which birth dates are embedded. Chinese officials have produced passports showing that He and Jiang are 16, making them old enough to compete at the Games.

Well, the IOC may want to take a look at moar web documents recently found that show the age of some of these girls is definitely not sixteen:

Olympic gymnastics title contenders suddenly have one more thing to worry about other than the eight gold medals China claimed at the Tianjin World Cup last week. Her name is He Kexin.

The 14-year-old newcomer to the national team, who was recruited last year, has raised a lot of eyebrows recently after she broke two world records on the uneven bars in as many months. She will be just one more weapon on an already star-studded Chinese Olympic squad.

Yeah, so?  Well, this article was posted on May 23, 2008.  Yep, this year.  Ineligible to compete in Olympic gymnastics.  And worse, China has “cleaned up” the article to now read that she is sixteen years old.

Plus, in a translated page (from the original Chinese), an article from November 2007 says she is thirteen years old, which means she turned fourteen sometime between November of 2007 and May of 2008, making her fourteen years old as of now.

You can see the full article with other photos here.  There’s this great thing called the World Wide Internet Computer Web, and the IOC and FIG might want to join the twentieth century and use some updated methods to fact-check.  A bunch of bloggers (including our own Dawn, who did a write-up on this very scandal earlier) found the information that the IOC and the FIG can’t seem to locate.

The question of age was raised before the Olympics even began, giving anyone in charge plenty of time to act:

Yang Yilin, a top contender for gold in the all-around and the uneven bars, could be 14 instead of the minimum age of 16, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

She is the third of six Olympians on the Chinese women’s gymnastics team whose age has been questioned in the lead-up to these Olympics.

Registration lists from 2003 to 2006, previously posted on the Web site of the General Administration of Sport of China, said Yang was born on Aug. 26, 1993, which means she will turn 15 later this month. Gymnasts must turn 16 during the year of the Olympics to be eligible to compete in the Games.

On the 2007 registration list, Yang’s birthday changed to Aug. 26, 1992, suddenly making her old enough for the Olympics, The A.P. said.

Chinese gymnastics officials have not yet addressed the question of Yang’s age. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a news conference Saturday that age eligibility was not an I.O.C. issue, and that the International Gymnastics Federation, known by the acronym F.I.G., is in charge of making sure gymnasts are old enough to compete.

But perhaps more controversial than an underage, ineligible competitor is the news that China may, in fact, be stunting the growth of their gymnasts to make them smaller, lighter, and more limber:

A 2005 book called Operation Yao Ming suggested that Chinese sporting authorities may be engaging in borderline-eugenic practices; it is no harder in principle to select the very young, and even informally “breed”, for small size than it is for superhuman height. And once you’ve got your candidates, it is frankly far easier to stunt their growth than it is to hasten it. [...]

[...] The whole reason for age limits in gymnastics is that smaller performers are inherently capable of more difficult flips, flexes, and flimflamadoos than larger ones; their centre of mass is less far from the physical centre of their bodies, allowing them to achieve a higher rate of rotation in gymnastic manoeuvres.

But this shouldn’t be surprising when you take into account China’s history.  They are about the collective, about national unity superceding individual feelings.  It doesn’t matter if you’re tired, injured, hungry, lonely, parentally deprived, or underage, you drag your behind out there and tumble for the pride of your country, and God help you if you don’t.  A fine attitude for the military, perhaps (taking out the underage part), but hardly conducive to the emotions of young children.

I realize that gymnastics creates athletic girls who, if they rigorously train, can be smaller and leaner and even less developed than their peers, but you can’t hide bone structure and baby teeth.  There are certain characteristics to the bone structure of children, preteens, teens, and adults, and no amount of passport tampering can change that.  Yes, the Chinese gymnasts outperformed our girls (albeit with a few questionable calls).  This isn’t a case of USA sour grapes.  This is a case of wanting peers to compete against peers and following the set rules of the competiton, and when you have children competing who are ineligible because of age then that is clearly against the rules, regardless of talent or skill.

So should China give their gold medal back?  Will there be another Olympic scandal on the level of Salé and Pelletier?  Thus far, it doesn’t seem like the IOC is going to do much of anything.  Way to cheapen the Olympic spirit.

On Saturday morning, yet another town in northeastern Missouri was inundated by the ever-advancing floodwaters from the Mississippi River.  The small town of Winfield, Missouri, was the latest casualty in the fight against the flood, with its makeshift sandbag levee failing in the early morning hours.

To date, countless small towns, hamlets, roads, and homes have been overtaken or somehow damaged by the Flood of ‘o8, with damages reported in the billions of dollars, while recovery estimates are calculated from months to years.  The states of Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana have all been hit in some way since March with floodwaters and residual effects of too much snow, too much rain, and not enough riverbed to hold it all.

So far, there are twenty-four people reported dead and 150 injured.  Tens of thousands of Midwestern folks have been displaced, living anywhere from the houses of friends and relatives to motels to Red Cross shelters to their own rooftops.  Millions of sandbags have been filled by town residents and volunteers from several states away to shore up existing levees and create new, temporary ones.  I can’t possibly link to all the sites with stories about the floodwaters and the people trying to survive.

However, there is a question I would like to ask:

Where are the celebrities?

But wait, there’s more…

You learn something new every day!

In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore made the decision to not use actual footage of collapsing ice shelves in Antartica, but instead to use special-effects shots created for the movie The Day After Tomorrow:

Al Gore’s “traveling global warming show,” the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

Karen Goulekas, the special effects supervisor for “The Day After Tomorrow” said the shot is a digital image. She was glad Al Gore used it in the documentary since “It is one hell of a shot.” Both movies use the shot to convincingly portray global warming, but it is left to the audience to decide if this created image can both entertain and educate us about our changing planet.

Wait, what was that again?  Styrofoam?

Well, it’s fake but accurate, you might say. “Just because Big Al manipulated my emotions with spectacular Hollywood fakery doesn’t mean we’re not ALL GONNA DIE FROM GLOBAL WARMING!!!” If you really believe that, there’s no point in arguing with you. But you’ll have to forgive me for laughing at the look on your face when you find out what the effects guys used to make all those “glaciers”:

Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

That’s right, Styrofoam! You know, the evil, evil stuff that’s being banned all over the place because it’s destroying the environment. Wonder what the studio did with it when they were done with their dumb movie? Five hundred years from now, will the last few survivors of the human race stumble upon those beautifully sculpted glaciers, completely intact, in some forgotten landfill?

Uhm…mmmmkay.  I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

hattip Deceiver

Jay-Z and Beyonce have been dating for six years. They are essentially scandal free, relatively uninteresting (except Beyonce’s deplorable taste in fashion) and have been threatening to get married for the last two years. At some point, the media says “Ehh, quite crying wolf.”

What am I talking about you ask? Good question. I stumbled upon an article on Ben Widdecombe’s Gatecrasher (NYDN) where he asks: Were mags biased against Beyonce and Jay-Z?

As someone who covers celeb gossip (well, sometimes anyways) my first reaction was: no. When it comes to celebrities at the levels of Jay-Z and Beyonce (A-Listers for sure) race isn’t the issue. When all things are essentially equal, the only difference in any moderately educated and cultured person’s view is socio-economic, not race. From my perspective, race plays no part in my judgment of an individual, but a person’s values and how this effects their world view absolutely does, and sadly this is often predicated on their socio-economic standings. But this isn’t the point of the story.

Ben Widdiecomb’s article:

Are the celebrity media racist?

A top tabloid editor tells me that Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s wedding was played down by the weeklies because “African-Americans don’t sell covers.”

Of the big five celebrity glossies out midweek, only Us Weekly gave Beyoncé the top spot on the cover. Other magazines gave her second billing to the likes of Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Aniston.

“None of the magazines landed an exclusive on wedding pictures, which would have made the story bigger,” said one tabloid insider, justifying why Beyoncé was relegated to a small cover box on his magazine.

But even wedding photos make less money for black stars, says another source. “Eva Longoria can get $1 million for wedding photos, but without the expectation of cover sales, Beyoncé might have gotten as little as $250,000 if she had sold hers,” says a top editor.

Magazine publisher and black gossip pioneer Flo Anthony responds: “That sounds to me a very racist statement. Beyoncé is one of the biggest stars in the world, much bigger than Eva Longoria.”

Anthony publishes Black Noir for women, as well as Toy Box, a black parenting magazine with a celebrity focus. She said: “It is hard for African-Americans in magazines. Only a few people, like Will Smith and Halle Berry, are mainstream. Editors really still think that only blond hair and blue eyes sell magazines.”

As another tabloid source says: “We have a saying, ‘Only Oprah.’ Oprah is the only black celebrity big enough to put on our cover.”

But Us Weekly editor in chief Janice Min tells me: “Janet Jackson has been on our cover twice, for two of our best-selling issues we’ve ever had.”

Min is also the only non-Caucasian to helm a top celebrity magazine. She acknowledges there is a perception in her industry that black stars don’t sell covers, but adds: “Typically, you will hear that discussion among a group of all-white editors.”

Well, unless celebrity magazine editors represent an entirely different demographic than mainstream America, this sounds like a tempest in a teapot. Real racism exists, there is no doubt, and it is UGLY and reprehensible, but when you get to the level of celebritydom of Jay-Z and Beyonce, it’s just not applicable.

Admittedly, what may have been a factor in the lack of value for putting Jay-Z and Beyonce’s wedding on magazine covers, may have more to do with the celeb magazine consumer demographics as a whole. Flyover country (middle-America) who make up the majority of celeb magazine’s market share, are not your average listeners of rap or even R&B, which is the music Jay-Z and Beyonce predominately make. Especially Jay-Z, white kids may be buying this music, but they don’t much care about who Jay-Z does or doesn’t marry. Again, no one who buys celeb magazines care much about this “non” story.

And again, it’s not like they invited the media. They made several efforts to keep the media out.

When mainstream media starts making racist accusations where they don’t exist, it takes away from the real dangers of racism, which directly effect the poorest segments of society, not the rich A-Listers. When you boil it down, it just wasn’t breaking news – merely a foregone conclusion minus the pretty pictures.

Us Magazine is quoting a source as saying that Angelina Jolie gave her one-time co-star and reported former flame, Oliver Martinez a lapdance while the two were out together for an afterparty to celebrate her directorial debut in the documentary, A Place In Time.

Martinez participated in the film with Jolie and previously on the movie Taking Lives - when the two are said to have had a fling before Jolie hooked up with current partner of two years Brad Pitt.

From the Us Magazine story titled, Angelina Gives Ex Lapdance While Brad Babysits:

After an official bash at Hotel Gansevoort – where the star drank wine and, a source tells Us, was “really outgoing and very chatty” – Jolie headed to a small VIP afterparty at nearby eatery Gin Lane. Encouraged by a group of drummers, the actress eventually began waving her arms around. But it wasn’t until Jolie started dancing for Martinez that things got really wild.

“She turned to him on the banquette and was shaking it in front of him. She was giving him a lap dance, ” another reveler tells Us. “She was looking over her shoulder, tossing a glance his way.” As another partygoer describes it, “It was very, very flirty.” “When she is with someone she knows, she might appear to be flirtatious, but it’s just affection.”

Where was boyfriend Brad Pitt? Should he be worried about the couple’s recent outing? When are Brad and Angie going to see each other next? For more details on Angelina’s recent flirtation and how it will affect her relationship with Brad, check out the current issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands this week.

I would LOVE to believe this story. Why? Because I have made it no secret that I think Angelina is some kind of man-eating she-devil with the moral fiber of an ethnic-cleansing third-world-leader. This story is like low-hanging fruit, ripe for my brutal picking.

But after dealing with Us Magazine recently and unraveling a blatant fabrication that they refused to acknowledge, their mode of operation hast has become abundantly clear to me. Us Magazine, like some mainstream media sources, have ZERO interest in the facts and are in the business of selling magazines even if it destroys lives.

Do I suffer from some sort of crippling naivete? Is it so wrong for me to want to find safe harbor in the MSM — the last vestige of credibility — in a field that lives and breathe untruths and misrepresentations. I have genuinely formed opinions about people I don’t know based on news items I have taken at face value. Some people will brush off my incredulity as silly. Many times I have heard “Well, those are tabloid rags, you don’t really believe what they write do you?” Yes, in fact I do. I don’t read the OBVIOUS sources full of outrageous claims. I assume(d) that a magazine like Us is believable. I assume they fact-check. I assume they know what libel is.

Yes, I know I am screaming into a vacuum of non-interest. Whatever, I hope this one’s true, because I would love to believe that Angie Jolie is a dirty two-timing whore. But really, who gives a crap. It’s a headline worth repeating whether it’s true or not.

Janet Gabriel knows this story was false. Why? Because she was there on stage with Paris when she declined. Not because she can’t sing, but because she didn’t know the song. No shame in that is there?

I wrote about this over the weekend and didn’t want to go too far with the story until I heard back from Janet Gabriel, the woman who stated she was on stage with Paris Hilton at the Club 3121 for the Prince concert in Las Vegas, April 20.

I have heard back from her and she has offered verifiable proof that not only was she there, but the story that made headlines last week about Prince inviting Paris Hilton on stage just to humiliate her were false. According to Ms. Gabriel, members of the audience were invited on stage which included Paris Hilton and Ms. Gabriel. The chosen song was “Play That Funky Music” (Wild Cherry had the hit btw) and the reason Paris didn’t sing was she didn’t know the words. A perfectly reasonable reason to decline. This doesn’t mean that Paris Hilton can sing live, but it doesn’t mean she can’t either.

I contacted Us Magazine for a comment on this story and was referred to a Mark Neschis. After asking for my credentials he stated he would call me back. I waited for about an hour and a half. I then called him back asking if Us wanted to give their side of the story. His response, “I don’t know who are,” “You haven’t give me enough time,” and “Why are you being belligerent?” To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t belligerent, but I was persistent. I tried to offer him more time, but he cut me off with, “You want a statement from Us, the statement is “No comment.”

No word on whether they plan to print a retraction of their story.

I have contacted Paris Hilton’s representation at her company Paris Hilton Entertainment, and Endeavor Agency (her talent agency) in an effort to get in contact with Elliot Mintz, Paris’ spokesperson. I was given her PR assistant email – I am waiting to hear back from them.

The story — though hardly a matter of national security — was picked up and covered by just about every celeb site out there, as well as mainstream media, including MSNBC, Blender and The Boston Globe. By the time I gave up counting the links, it was well over 100.

As I stated in my previous post, most of us found this story too good to pass up. Clearly, so did Us Magazine who originally printed it, both in their May 7th issue and on their website. The story, in their “HOT STUFF!” section is aptly titled: Paris Hilton, DISSED BY PRINCE!

Surely they new that would be a great story to cover – Paris is the celeb we love to trash. She often makes it easy with her flamboyant and unabashed nature. I am no angel in that regard, I have posted many nasty and unpleasant things with great relish on this site about Paris Hilton. But I, like most online sites, get my celeb news from the mainstream media. Their tone and their coverage set the stage for who we love and who we love to hate.

The story in Us just says “A source tells Hot Stuff that Hilton, 26, was in the audience at the Purple One’s April 20 Club 3121 gig at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas when he invited her to join him.” And that’s where the truth ends.

Here’s what soul singer Janet Gabriel, had to say about that night at the club:

“Unfortunately, I did not meet Paris Hilton anywhere apart from on Princes stage. We were mere inches apart, facing each other for a few seconds with Prince['s] backing singer between us while I sung the first bar of the song with the mic in Shelby’s hand. She [Paris] actually appeared relieved that I got her off the hook of singing a song she didn’t know the words to and she smiled shyly, yet appreciatively at me then I turned towards Prince, then the audience to finish the song. She did not storm off in anger at all and all that stuff about Prince attempting to humiliate her was not true at all. His shows in Vegas are all about audience participation and he was only trying to recognize her presence. I heard he did the same when Gnarls Barkley singer CeLo attended a previous gig in Vegas.

Given, Paris has made a few mistakes in the past, and I do admire her ability to keep going on despite all the negative publicity for which she may be partially responsible, but it really doesn’t give anybody any excuse to keep using every opportunity to pull the poor lady down and keep her her a laughing stock. Hence I appreciate your efforts to get US Magazine to admit their mistake.”

Ms. Gabriel, a software developer, has invested all her money and efforts into a music career as a soul/jazz singer with her backing band the Neophonics. Despite being in the midst of getting ready to leave her native UK to go on tour in Nigeria, she said she couldn’t let the story stand unchallenged. She left comments on Us’ website, Glosslip and here.

As someone at the beginning of their journey into building a name for themselves as an artist, she understands all too well how the media can make or break you. I thank her for setting the record straight. Maybe Paris will too.