"I don't go around saying that I have a big heart," the outwardly icy doyenne of domesticity tells Oprah Winfrey in the upcoming issue of O. "But guess what? In your interview, Oprah, I'm going to tell you that I have a very big heart!"

Stop the presses!

Wait, that's not all. Martha also wants Oprah to know that she has a soft spot for the starving children in Africa. "I cry every day," she confesses, though it's not her work that reduces her to tears. "Every day there's something a lot more important to cry about than business. I can handle my business, but I can't handle famine in Ethiopia."

But don't go getting the idea that she's squishy all over. Oh, no. "I can almost bend steel with my mind," she shares. "I can bend anything if I try hard enough. But you can get too strong like that, so you have to be careful."

Quick. Someone fetch the homemade Kryptonite.

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Whoopi to W: Tap this

"He looks like the guy who forgot to bring the keg to the frat party."

-- Whoopi Goldberg, sharing her impression of George W. Bush at a Gore-Lieberman fundraiser.

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Sometimes, Love hurts

Looks like Courtney Love may have picked the wrong gal to call a "spoiled little rich girl" and a "whore." (Though she might have been justified in using the term "litigious.")

The film production company that worked on Love's new movie "Beat," Background Productions, is suing the Hole singer for slander. The company contends that Love called production supervisor Alexandra Cardenas a meanie, a thief and a ho in front of the film's cast and crew -- and then banished her from the set.

Cardenas claims that, due to Love's alleged ill treatment of her, she now has health problems and a hernia.

A hernia?

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Closet case

"Nothing."

-- Jennifer Lopez (giggling) on what she spends her money on ... besides clothes.

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Haaa-yah!

Everybody was kung fu fighting ...

But now, thanks to a Los Angeles judge, they've all settled down a bit. And poor David Carradine didn’t even get in a single well-placed kick.

Superior Court Judge Malcolm Mackey has thrown out the former "Kung Fu" star's year-old lawsuit against People magazine and Time Warner Inc. The judge apparently found merit-free Carradine's complaint that People magazine betrayed a "gentleman's agreement" when it ran a "nasty and mean-spirited" article about him and his wife -- it called him "washed up" and "unemployable" -- after promising a "nice" article.

Carradine contended that Time Warner had promised him a favorable piece to make amends for misidentifying his wife, Marina, as a porn star in a photo caption in its Australian magazine Who Weekly.

Ah, Grasshopper, you must learn not to trust the great media powers and rely instead only on your own self, washed-up and unemployable though you may be.

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Juicy bits

Well, that was fast. Rumor has it that Meg Ryan is done dallying with Russell Crowe and, now that their flick "Proof of Life" has wrapped in London, has hightailed it back to Los Angeles to patch things up with her estranged husband, Dennis Quaid. Could it be that, ultimately, old gladiator abs was nothing to crow about?

'Scuse me while I kiss this guy's jacket ... OK, so I might not go that far. But I wouldn't mind pocketing the proceeds from the auctioning off of Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic green silk jacket at London's Hard Rock Café next month. The jacket is expected to net in the neighborhood of $30,000. Also up for deep-pocketed grabs: a signed copy of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," a blouse worn by Madonna during her "Girlie Show" tour, a diamond ring that once graced Elvis Presley's swollen digits and the handwritten lyrics to Elton John's "Crocodile Rock." For those of you who remember when rock was young ...

Just weeks after the 20-year-old actor and his wife, Rachel Miner, announced their separation, Macaulay Culkin has entered into talks to make his London stage debut in "Madame Melville," a new play by Richard Nelson. (A source tells me it was Bijou Phillips, with whom Culkin's estranged bride is working on the indie film, "Bully," who convinced Miner to ditch her marriage for the swingin' single life.) Guess Culkin didn't like being home alone too much after all ...

Together, they couldn't weigh more than two hundred pounds in a Scottish rainstorm, but word is Beck and Winona Ryder are gettin' heavy. The Scottish Daily Record reports that the two skinny lovebirds have been spotted keeping company all over the U.K. Just so long as he doesn't get one of those "Winona Forever" tattoos ...

Video made the radio star? Two -- count 'em, two -- "Survivor" contestants are reportedly taking to the airwaves. Ousted Dr. Sean Kenniff has been discussing alternative medicine on Higher Minds Radio. And Mr. Machiavelli himself, Richard Hatch, has signed on to host a morning radio show the week of Aug. 28 in Providence, R.I. (Monday through Friday from 9 to 10 a.m., at 630wpro.com or broadcastAMERICA.com). "I don't know how the show turned out," the station's operations manager, Ron St. Pierre, observed to the Toronto Sun, but "if the guy won the million dollars, what does he need with me?" And no, I don't know if Richard will be doing the show naked.

Brilliant Careers: Sound and Vision Audio and video highlights of our Brilliant Careers profiles