Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  1. Janet Jackson’s overexposure at the Super Bowl.

  See, this is THE perfect celebrity scandal. There is a distasteful hint of self-promotion. There is political fallout. There is a new handy phrase that can be applied to ordinary life (wardrobe malfunction). If only Michael could keep his scandals so clean.

  2. Does Suri Cruise exist?

  I’ll admit this barely counts as a scandal—and it was all over rather quickly. But remember those few delicious days when the entertainment media were inspecting birth certificates and interviewing witnesses in an apparent effort to determine if Katie and Tom’s daughter actually exists? It was completely surreal! I read every word.

  3. A prince urinating in public.

  Ah, an oldie but goodie. Prince Ernst August of Hanover, the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, was photographed urinating outside the Turkish pavilion at the Expo 2000 fair. Can you imagine a royal scandal that is any purer in its humiliation or any harsher in its humbling? If I had not already suspected as much, this would have been THE incident that told me that royal biographies and royal scandals were ripe for parody. This is what led to my first book, Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle.

  4. Paula Abdul’s alleged relationship with Corey Clark, a contestant on American Idol, the show that Paula “judges.”

  This is, compared to the others, an actual, bona-fide scandal, because if true it would have arguably constituted an attempted rigging of a hugely popular talent show. But it’s hard to take anything involving Paula Abdul or Corey Clark too seriously. And Clay Aiken vouches for Paula Abdul. So we can all sleep peacefully.

  5. Russell Crowe assaults a hotel desk clerk.

  I always suspected he was a jerk, and when he pleaded guilty in November 2005 to a misdemeanor assault charge for throwing a phone at a hotel clerk, it rather confirmed things. (Crowe was angry that he was having trouble making a phone call to Australia. So that explains it. Don’t hotel desk clerks control the phone lines to Australia?) Crowe was lucky to be able to arrange a plea agreement to a misdemeanor; if he’d been convicted of a felony, he might not have been able to enter the United States even to make movies. See! You thought the events of this book were far-fetched!