Lindsay Lohan Out of Confinement

Lindsay Lohan has left the confinement of UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Hospital, where she was in a court ordered rehab program, as part of her sentence for violating probation in a DUI case. Her doctor told the judge, handling Ms. Lohan's case, that her condition didn't justify inpatient treatment.

CBS reported, "Actress Lindsay Lohan was released from a 90-day court-ordered rehab after 23 days because doctors say she is not addicted to anything." See the video.

PEOPLE reported that sources say, "She's out and doing really well."

Good for her.

She is now in UCLA's out patient program.

"The outpatient program is just like the inpatient program, except you get to go home at night," a UCLA patient told PEOPLE.

Ms. Lohan is "is serious about her sobriety," her lawyer told PEOPLE. She left the hospital, after 23 days as an inpatient, because her doctor advised Judge Fox that her condition didn't justify inpatient treatment.

Ms. Lohan at 24 is a very talented actor with a full career waiting her. I wish her well.

Bieber As Ratings Magnet

Last night  ABC Nightline ran a repeat "news" feature titled, "The Business of Being Bieber :We're backstage with teen idol and pop sensation Justin Bieber, " on who else but Justin Bieber. It seems some news magazines are doing features on the teen idol on a regular basis to pump up the ratings.

Gossip about Justin Bieber is easier to take than news stories on the wars in the Middle East, or on the wavering economy.

Well, everybody else is doing  Justin Bieber stuff to ride on his fan base, so why not ABC?  Kim Kardashian, the twenty nine year old, did a wet clothes, beach photo shoot with the sixteen year old Justin Bieber, for that reason.

I'm not knocking the Justin Bieber kick. All hard news and no features makes for dull TV watching, and featuring the teen idol does bring teens to watch a news show, and maybe a few of them will tune in on nights when the topics of the "news features" address the war and the economy.

Thoughts on Miss Philippines: Should Beauty Pageant Winners Actually be Required to Have Brains?

No mistakes at 22. Or so claimed Miss Phillipines during the Miss Universe pageant last night. Pageant pundits believe that this may have cost the very talented and beautiful young crown-holder the chance for a title as Miss Universe.


Miss Mexico won and her articulate answer to a different question impressed the judges- she was questioned about Arizona's Immigration law and answered that, "Every country has the right to impose and enact their laws, but I tell you that all the Mexicans and the Latins that are living here in the United States are hardworking people — people who want to improve on their quality of life."

In the recent past and since the advent of Youtube, more attention has been given to the interview portion of pageants- thankfully the ability to juggle in a bikini is not the only requirement a woman must have to succeed in the outdated pageants. Examples that come to mind are last year's runner up for Miss America, Carrie Prejean who many believe lost the competition for her bigoted answer regarding same sex marriage and of course, the bumbling idiot to match all bumbling idiots, Miss Teen South Carolina, whose answer about South Africa and "the Iraq" demonstrated superior knowledge rivalling only Sarah Palin's statement about the threat of Putin and his angry head with hard-nosed journalist Katie Couric.

In an age when every verbal mistake is captured on video camera for all of the world to watch repeatedly set to techno beats, the ability to articulate and verbalize thoughts in an intelligent manner is increasingly important. As a woman, I have mixed feelings about beauty pageants in general because of outdated segments such as the bikini competition, and how young children (as seen in movies such as Little Miss Sunshine) are pushed into pageants at a young age, but making intelligence a requirement for spokesmodels and beauty pageant winners is definitely a step in the right direction.

So, back to Miss Philippines. What should she have answered? As a writer for Slate wrote, there aren't many mistakes of major significance to impress a judge at such a young age. Should she have answered that she shouldn't have made fun of her brother when she was an elementary school student? Should she have answered that she felt sorry about saying no to the many boys that probably asked her for dates when she was younger?

Miss Philippines obviously couldn't say that she regretted joining the beauty pageant in the first place or that she was disappointed in being asked a standard job interview question instead of the political questions that she had probably been preparing for. No mistakes, obviously, was not the correct answer, but in all likelihood, the media is exaggerating the stupidness of her answer by quite a bit. Sarah Palin, afterall, was once on the Republican ticket for President of the United States.

Baby Rocker

The Internet loves a jolly, dancing, happy baby. Who doesn't? Post a video of a happy little kid, dancing, and naturally, rocking to the music, and watch it go viral.

Little Sydney Foye, when she was eight months old, joined viral history. Her dad, musician Aaron Foye, was entertaining the then eight-month-Sydney, with some Bon Jovi, when she decided to rock out and dance along,

The tape of the kid's performance made it to YouTube. This week, the family, Sydney, her mom and her dad, made it to CBS Early Show.

Sidney's dad told the Early Show's Erica Hill how little Sydney got her break. Dad is a professional musician with Willie Nelson's band. He was entertaining his little baby, when, according to dad, "she crawls over, and she was just the right height to grab up on the guitar and start strumming it, and she rocked out." So, he said, he "had to tape it."

$35K for Murdoch's Pocket?!

Just got an email from Media Matters concerning the $1 million donation the News Corp, parent company of Fox News, donated to the Republican Governors Association, "to help defeat Democrats this November."

Media Matters reports that while the news of the donation was covered "extensively," by national media outlets, it was barely mentioned on Fox. Media Matters says, "Fox devoted 37 seconds of air time to the story." Media Matters figures -- because, the "Fox viewers have been left in the dark, as to the (Fox) network's direct involvement in the political races this fall," it needs to take action to remedy this. So the folks at Media Matters' solution is to put a commercial (see the video) about the Fox donation on Fox, by buying a national ad, at the cost of $35k, to air next week during The O'Reilly Factor.

My take on this: I have loads of respect for the people at Media Matters, but who ever came up with the idea to pay Fox $35, 000 needs to think again. No one should pay Fox a cent. I suspect that the Fox crowd would take the $35 K and use the paid ad as the starting point for a big joke. Besides, Fox News is marketed to the fringe. The $1 million bucks came from the News Corporation, which owns a vast media empire, most of its units market to a mass audience. If one wants the News Corporation to act more responsibly, a better use for that $35k would be to use it to inform the viewers of Fox TV's American Idol why they should skip the show next season, and why folks shouldn't go to see Fox Films, and shouldn't buy music produced or distributed. by the Fox Corporation. It's time to take the focus off the fringe and to place it on the center of the News Corporation beast and on Rupert Murdoch where it belongs.

A really big baby.

An infant as big as a six-year-old

In Hunan province, in southern.China, a ten-month-old baby boy, who was born at normal weight (around 7.7 lbs) has grown to be as big as a six-year-old in a matter of months. ITN News reports, that the kid weighs around 44 lbs, equivalent to the weight of normal six-year-old child.

What does this mean? I'm sure that kid and his mama both will be studied. The fears are that he may have been exposed to tainted food. But his mother said, "I feed my son with my breast milk. I've never had him take any milk powder or anything that contains hormones."

The boy is in the hospital enduring a series of tests. One could speculate that he may have some kind of giant gene. If the kid keeps growing, pretty soon he'll be ready for professional wrestling. ITN News reports that the kid is so big now, that carrying him in her arms, is tough work for his mum. See the video.

Bull fighting, bad

Item: A video of protest against bullfighting.

The AP reports, "More than 100 semi-naked protesters lay down in the shape of a dying bull Saturday outside one of Spain's most iconic buildings -- the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao -- to demand an end to bullfighting in the Basque Region. " See the video.

In the Catalonia region of Spain, the residents have voted to ban bull fighting, starting January 2012. It should have been banned already, yesterday. Anyway, the rest of Spain, and those Latin American countries, and the parts of France, where this horror is practiced upon innocent animals need to be shamed.

The 21st century should have no room for bullfighting. The torture of bulls and of other animals should be banned. How anyone can enjoy watching the spectacle of an animal being tortured to death? It's pretty sick. It is indefensible. It is barbaric to the point of sheer craziness.

Harold Dow, R.I.P

Harold Dow, a reporter on CBS News 48 hours, died yesterday, Saturday morning. He was only sixty two. The Associated Press reports that Mr. Dow died suddenly. In the orbit, the AP lists Mr. Dow's numerous awards: five news Emmys, television journalism's Peabody Award.

He had worked for CBS for nearly 40 years. Mr Dow was one of network television's first African-American reporters. I remember seeing him co-anchor CBS News Nightwatch, reporting on the nightly news programs, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and on the Sunday show, CBS News Sunday Morning.

Susan Zirinsky, executive producer of 48 Hours Mystery, said in a statement that Harold Dow was, "Insatiably curious, he was happiest when he was on the road deep into a story, It was his humanity, which was felt by everyone he encountered, even in his toughest interviews, that truly defined the greatness of his work. He was the most selfless man I have known."

Harold Dow, R.I.P.

Bill O'Reilly Playing for the Press

Bill O'Reilly is back on the morality kick. Talking morality is a more popular topic than talking politics. He hasn't stopped running his yapper on politics. His butt is propped in one of Fox News chairs. O'Reilly is an entertainer. He is likely to say anything that will get him ratings. I mean, anything that pops into his head, whether its something rude about President Obama or something rude about a nasty wart that might pop up on his bottom. Any topic that he thinks will draw the eyeballs, it will draw his mouth -- to the topic.

A week ago, Jennifer Aniston new movie, The Switch, in which she plays a single mom, drew O'Reilly's mouth. He railed against Ms. Aniston's sense of lack of morality. He said that she was "destructive to society." O'Reilly railed -- How dare she try to make being a single mom seem like something attractive!

This past Friday, he turned his mouth on Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.

Ms. Kardashian and young Mr. Bieber, posed together by the beach for an Elle magazine photo shoot, O'Reilly screamed: immoral!

My lord! Does that man listen to himself?!

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