Morning Briefing:
Whitney Houston's decline continues: This week's National Enquirer runs more dirt on poor, messed-up Whitney Houston. The tabloid contends that when she's on crack, Houston "takes part in lesbian sex, chases any man who comes into her house, and locks herself for hours on end in her bathroom to use her vast collection of sex toys." The source is the same as in last week's drug den revelations, Houston's sister-in-law Tina Brown. "She locks herself in the bathroom and you hear the 'Vrooom!'" says Brown. "She smokes some crack and says, 'I gotta go.' You know what she's gonna do. It's constant. She be in there for hours, and then I have to call out, 'You all right?' She'll say, 'Yeah,' and she can't talk. Her voice is so hoarse." (National Enquirer via Perez Hilton)
Why we should feel sorry for Tom Cruise: In a long, "revealing" interview in Parade, Tom Cruise takes us back to his childhood, which, from his description, doesn't sound all that rosy. He calls his father a "a merchant of chaos" and vaguely insinuates he was abusive. Cruise also says he never had any friends growing up: "I was always the new kid with the wrong shoes, the wrong accent. I didn't have the friend to share things with and confide in." Toward the end of the piece, Katie Holmes -- who, with Cruise, is on the cover of Us Weekly again -- shows up, looking "dazed, passive and vacant," while Cruise began his couch-jumping shtick, "hooting how beautiful she was, touching and kissing her like a teenage boy on his first backseat date, aware that he was being watched." (TMZ, Us Weekly)
Eminem divorces Kim, redux: After just under three months of remarried bliss, Eminem has filed for divorce from Kim Mathers again. First married in 1999, they divorced in 2001, and then got remarried in January of this year. No real details are out about the split; the court papers, filed in Macomb County, Mich., simply cite "a breakdown in the marriage relationship to the extent that the objects of matrimony have been destroyed." (Detroit Free Press)
"South Park," Peabody winner: The winners of the 65th annual Peabody Awards, the broadcasting and cable awards, include the four diminutive lads from "South Park." "We see it as a bold show that deals with issues of censorship and social and cultural topics," awards director Horace Newcomb told E! Online. Sci Fi's "Battlestar Galactica" was a winner, too, for similar reasons: "In a way it's almost a counterpart to 'South Park' which just throws everything up there," says Newcomb, "while 'Battlestar' considers them in a dramatic narrative." You can see a complete list of winners here. (E! Online, Peabody)
Also:
Maybe CBS should have found this out before agreeing to pay Katie Couric $75 million over five years to do the nightly news: A joint Associated Press/TV Guide poll says 49 percent of people would prefer that Couric stay in her morning slot on "Today," while only 29 percent said they'd like to see her in the evening. (Associated Press via Yahoo! News) ... J.K. Rowling is no fan of thin culture: After calling Paris Hilton a "talking toothpick," the "Harry Potter" author says she'd prefer that her own daughters "were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny -- a thousand things before thin." (FemaleFirst) ... Lindsay Lohan's 12-year-old sister, Ali, is being groomed to be the next Lohan star; she's currently at work recording a Christmas album. (Page Six) ... The Rolling Stones have landed in Shanghai for their first-ever concert in China, where as recently as 2002, censors banned songs like "Honky Tonk Women" and "Beast of Burden." (Associated Press)
Money Quote:
Alec Baldwin on who he'd rather sleep with, neocon pundit Ann Coulter or Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: "I gotta go with Feinstein. With Coulter, we'd have sex and I'd have to jump out the window. I wouldn't even get dressed." (Elle via Lowdown)
-- Scott Lamb
Turn On:
Juliette Lewis shows up as a nasty ex-girlfriend on "My Name Is Earl" (NBC, 9 p.m. EDT), HBO airs the 2004 Rosie O'Donnell documentary "All Aboard: Rosie's Family Cruise" (8 p.m. EDT), and on Fox's "The O.C." (9 p.m. EDT) the teens get their college acceptance (and rejection) letters.
-- Joe DiMento
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