Taco Bell has really pissed off 50 Cent. And insulted him. All due to their dumbass publicity stunt. Taco Bell offered to donate $10,000 to the charity of Fiddy’s choice if he’d change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent, or 99 Cent – to correspond with the prices on their value menu. Fiddy – being the shrewd dude that he is – instantly called Taco Bell out for being insincere and trying to use his celebrity for free publicity. And the dude is pissed.

Apparently, that was a little too much thinking outside the bun for the lawyered-up rapper, who not only took issue with the promo stunt, but threatened to sic his legal team on the chain. “When my legal team is finished with them, Taco Bell is going to have a new corporate slogan: ‘We messed with the bull and got the horns!’ ” Fiddy said.

The rapper’s rep went one further, calling out the company’s big cheese on his cheekiness. “This is a sleazy and ill-conceived publicity stunt by Taco Bell’s president, Greg Creed, whose disingenuous offer was leaked to the press before it was even presented to 50 Cent’s agent yesterday,” the rapper’s rep said.

As it is, the taco giant’s offer was sent to Fiddy—and, of course, the media—promising to donate $10,000 to a charity of the rapper’s choice if he agreed to the name change. Also requested from the franchise chief was for the newly monikered rapper to pay a visit to one of Taco Bell’s locations and rap his order at the drive-thru.

“We know that you adopted the name 50 Cent years ago as a metaphor for change,” the letter read. “We at Taco Bell are also huge advocates for change. We encourage you to ‘Think Outside the Bun’ and hope you accept our offer.”

[From E! News]

Companies do occasionally do this, but most celebs politely decline. 50 is the first I can think of to call them out. At first I kinda thought Fiddy was being a jerk for not just saying thanks but no thanks, but once I thought about it a little more, I realized it really is aggravating.

Taco Bell isn’t being generous – they know the famous rapper isn’t going to change his name – so they never intended to part with their $10,000. Instead, they’re being cheap, by trying to associate 50 Cent with their corporation to get free publicity. Which I guess I’ve just given them a little more of. Except that the Taco Bell near me is always getting closed down by the New York City Department of Health for a shockingly long list of health code violations. Like rodents and roaches. Which I’m pretty sure end up in the food. There, that should do it. I think I just negated any free publicity. Thanks, Taco Bell.

Header of 50 Cent at the Video Music Awards in Las Vegas on September 8th. Images thanks to WENN.

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag might have a better idea of what the world thinks of them than we thought. Or they have even more of an unearned sense of self-importance than previously believed. Now that they’re all “famous” (read: hated) Spencer has made some enemies (shocking!) and is supposedly fearful for his and Heidi’s safety. So they decided to do the smart, rational thing. Hire security? Nope. Why do that when you can spend ten grand on guns!

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag are the couple that America loves to hate. But while that playful animosity has bought Spencer and Heidi their own 15 minutes of fame and made them a fortune, it has also brought them some negative attention. “Spencer does have a few enemies,” one pal explains. “He’s alienated a lot of people now that he’s rich and famous.”

As Perez Hilton reported on his blog, Spencer, 24, and Heidi, 21, have been concerned about their protection. So the couple visited the Martin B. Retting store in Culver City, Calif., on June 7 and spent more than $10,000 on guns to arm themselves. They purchased two Benelli semiautomatic M4 tactical shotguns, two Wilson close quarter combat .45-caliber pistols and one Scout semiautomatic rifle. “They wanted the exact guns that the U.S. Delta Force uses,” a friend explains. Spencer wants to be prepared for anything,” says the friend.

[From In Touch]

I don’t claim to be a gun expert, but in my experience if you want the “exact guns that the U.S. Delta Force uses” you’re trying to look cool. Unsuccessfully, by the way. If your motivation is protection, that’s one thing. But I’m guessing Spencer is just suffering from a classic case of “my penis is too small, I better buy a gun to prove I’m a man.” And if your penis is so small that you require five guns… well that’s a lot to make up for. Might want to get a muscle car, too.

Here’s Heidi and Spencer at the 19th Annual “A Time For Heroes” Celebrity Carnival in Los Angeles on June 8th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Usher should just quit talking to the press. The 29 year-old singer often makes defensive, shrill statements about his misunderstood personal life that make him seem unbalanced, if not guilty of the very accusations he’s rallying against. In an interview with Vibe, he says he regrets some of the things he’s done in the public eye, including issuing that stupid “open letter” where he wrote in all caps that “I AM NOT BEING LED” by his new wife, Tameka Foster.

When talking about the criticism of his marriage, he went off on a rant. She seemed to claim that women are lesbians because there aren’t enough men to go around, particularly in the black community:

“Am I so much of a bad guy because I decided to get married? Am I so much of a bad guy [because once I got in the situation], I decided to stand for something, build a foundation, and think about my future?” he asked. “As a man, you would respect me for not turning my back on it. … It can never be bad to have a foundation as a man — a black man — in a time when women are dying for men. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men. Are you not studying the stories? Wake up! Black love is a good thing.”

[From MTV.com via D-Listed]

Maybe he meant that there are some women who are primarily straight who decide to turn to their girlfriends or something for lack of men. Surely he’s not saying that lesbianism is a result of a scarcity of opposite sex mates. Either way, it’s a stupid thing to say and Usher sounds like a fool. Look for an obnoxious and screeching statement from Usher claiming his statement was taken out of context, and that the journalist and the entire Internet is out to get him.

One more thing I got out of this is that he’s saying he deserves credit for sticking with Tameka and what he presumes to be his child. He said in an interview published last week that “It’s a conscious decision every day to love the person you’re with.” Usually when you’re happily married, especially in the beginning, you talk about how elated you are and how lucky you feel to be with that person, not how you should be applauded for even marrying them and sticking around. Usher did praise Tameka in the Vibe interview, though. He said “The swagger I possess now definitely comes from my wife. And my son completes me. He changes my perspective on what life is, and what matters.”

Usher said that Tameka is outspoken and that “If something doesn’t look right or she feels like it could look better, she’ll say something.” Unfortunately she can’t censor the idiotic things he says to the press, although maybe she also has 19th century notions of same sex relationships.

Usher is shown performing on Good Morning America on 5/30/08, thanks to WENN.

Yesterday we published the video above of Shia LaBeouf, who turns 22 today - Happy Birthday Shia! - drunk at what looks like a house party. He’s interacting with another party guest, encouraging the guy to smack him. During their stupid banter before Shia gets smacked, Shia calls the guy a “faggot” in order to encourage him to land the blow.

Today Shia’s rep has issued a statement about the video. He says it was taken several years ago, and that could be true because Shia has such a baby face it’s hard to tell if he’s aged since, and that Shia regrets saying the word in any context and is embarrassed that the video got out. It comes across like a sincere apology and is one that can serve as an example for other celebrities who need to issue statements after saying or doing idiotic things:

“The videotape that is currently being circulated is several years old and captures Shia playing a game among friends in which he uses a derogatory word toward a friend,” LaBeouf’s rep tells me exclusively. “He regrets having used the word in any capacity and is very embarrassed that this footage is being seen by anyone.”

[From Mark Malkin on E! Online]

A lot of you pointed out that Shia pretty openly flipped off David Letterman during an appearance on the show in May. Dave and Shia were talking about Shia’s drunken Walgreen’s arrest, in which he described returning to the drug store twice times in an attempt to get cigarettes after a security guard made fun of him and distracted him from his purchase. Dave joked about Shia changing clothes for his second trip to the store, and Shia subtly flipped him off for a moment. You could tell it was deliberate and not just the way he was gesturing with that hand.

The kid is 22 years old and he’s foolish, but his worst offenses are shopping drunk and smoking outside, and unlike a lot of his peers he’s never been busted for DUI. While he did use a very obnoxious and offensive word in a video taken at a party, he apologized properly and sounds like he regrets it.

Amy Winehouse has also sort-of apologized for the many slurs she used in a stupid sing-song rant in which she called four groups “deaf, dumb, blind and gay.” She told photographers “I don’t want to play anything down, but I’m the least racist person going.” Some people commented on that story that it was more like a child’s song and was something her husband encouraged her to sing. Other people said there’s no excuse for what Amy did, even if it was in private. Maybe she needs a good PR person like Shia’s so she can apologize with feeling and explain how that happened. Unlike Shia, she didn’t just use one offensive name for a group, it was a string of them and included mean comments specifically about those groups.

Shia LaBeouf is shown below outside a fan screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in NY on 5/21/08, thanks to WENN.

Sharon Stone has issued an apology for her ignorant and obnoxious remarks about the Chinese earthquake. She was asked on the red carpet at Cannes what she thought of the crisis in China and she got really haughty about it. Instead of focusing on the terrible humanitarian crisis there or even mentioning the fact that tens of thousands of people are dead with thousands more missing, injured and homeless she said “You know it was very interesting. At first I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else… And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma?”

The news came out Monday and Stone finally issued an apology that was released today. At least she apologized and said she was deeply sorry, not something like “I regret if people were offended.” The way she’s following up on it sounds kind of half-assed. She said she was “willing” to do charity work. She didn’t pledge money or say she had arranged to work for a charity, she just said she was “willing” to. It’s something I guess and maybe she didn’t have time to make specific plans yet.

“Due to my inappropriate words and acts during the interview, I feel deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people,” the actress, 50, said in the statement. “I am willing to take part in the relief work of China’s earthquake, and wholly devote myself to helping affected Chinese people.”

Christian Dior — which released the statement from the actress — also dropped her from its Chinese ads after her remark last week at the Cannes Film Festival.

Stone (a staunch Tibetan rights advocate) had tied the natural disaster — which has claimed at least 65,000 lives — to Beijing’s policy on Tibet.

[From US Weekly]

There could have been more groveling in there, but it’s not a bad apology as far as they go. I was looking for a large monetary donation from Stone, but her money is probably all tied up in furs and jewelry and it’s not like she’s getting a lot of work lately. She could auction off some of her luxury items for the affected Tibetans, if she only cares about them and not the rest of the innocent people affected by this horrible natural disaster. Saying she’s willing to help is a start I guess. When she’s down on her knees sifting through rubble and helping cleanup efforts, that’s when I’ll consider her apology sincere.

Sharon Stone is shown at the Dior and Elle evening dinner at Cannes on 5/23/08, thanks to WENN.

Magazines must love it when celebrities give controversial comments, because it’s a surefire way to get a lot of publicity. In this case singer Alicia Keys was widely quoted as telling Bender Magazine that the US Government invented gangster rap as a means to incite violence in the African American community. But Keys now says that her comments were misconstrued and she didn’t say that it was all a big conspiracy. She claims that what she meant was that the term “Gangster Rap” was overused by the media to stereotype and dismiss a genre of music that has important messages about the experience of inner city blacks. That’s a decent point, but it’s not likely to be taken at face value after the big hoopla she created with what initially sounded like a whacked out conspiracy theory:

According to an interview in the magazine’s May issue, the 27-year-old singer says: “`Gangsta rap’ was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. `Gangsta rap’ didn’t exist.” She also is quoted as saying that she wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck “to symbolize strength, power and killing ‘em dead.”

“We stand by our story,” Blender spokeswoman Kate Cafaro told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“My comments about `gangsta rap’ were in no way trying to suggest that the government is responsible for creating this genre of rap music,” Keys said in a statement issued by J Records. “The point that I was trying to make was that the term was oversloganized by some of the media causing reactions that were not always positive. Many of the `gangsta rap’ lyrics articulate the problems of the artists’ experiences and I think all of us, including our leaders, could be doing more to address these problems including drugs, gang violence, crime, and other related social issues.”

As for the AK-47 remark, Keys said Tuesday that AK-47 is a nickname given to her by friends “as an acronym for Alicia Keys and a metaphor for wowing people with my music and performances, `killing ‘em dead’ on stage. The reference was in no way meant to have a literal, political or negative connotation.”

[AP Story from The Huffington Post]

I’ve had to rely on secondhand accounts of this interview because the excerpt available on the Blender website doesn’t include these quotes from Alicia that are causing a stir. You kind of assume that she did make some broad sweeping comments like this if Blender stands by their story. As the Ent Lawyer on Crazy Days and Nights said, it’s not like the government suits were “sitting around listening to The Sugar Hill Gang and [speculating] that if they could just make it more violent that it would lead to black people killing each other.”

As for the media overusing the term “Gangster Rap” to stereotype music they didn’t understand or want to grasp the meaning of, that’s entirely plausible and probably true. A singer who wears a gun pendant around her neck isn’t the one who should be pointing that out to everyone as if it’s a big plot, though. She can really belt out a tune, though, and she should probably stick to that for the immediate future.

Thanks to The YBF for these photos from Blender.

I heard this story last week, but People Magazine is reporting it now, so we may as well cover it: A gay blogger and playwright is slamming Jay Leno for careless remarks he made when Ryan Phillippe was on his show. Ryan played the first gay teenager on television in his first acting job. He played Billy Douglas in the opera soap opera “One Life to Live,” and said that it caused some controversy with the Baptist church in his small town in Delaware. (Phillippe later told Ellen Degeneres that he received letters from gay teens saying he saved them from suicide, but he didn’t realize the importance of his role at the time, because he was 17 and was just glad to have a job.)

Jay told Ryan to show the camera his “gayest look,” but he was talking about the way that soap operas make everything melodramatic for effect, and how the actors look at the camera with piercing eyes. I took it in that context and not as something he came up with as a stereotype of a gay man:

Apparently attempting to become playful during his interview with guest Ryan Phillippe (whose appearance was keyed to his new movie Stop-Loss), Leno, 57, said to the actor, “Can you give me, like – say that camera is your gay lover …”

Despite Phillippe’s instant discomfort, Leno went on to say, “Can you give me your ‘gayest look’? Say that camera is Billy Bob – Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.”

“Wow,” replied Phillippe, 33. “That is so something I don’t want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or … ?”

“No,” said Leno. “I got more stuff. This is the least of it.”

Among those in the home audience who quickly took offense, reports USA Today, was Tony-winning Avenue Q librettist Jeff Whitty, 36.

On his personal blog, Whitty flashes Leno what he considers his “gayest look” – which involves a well-known gesture with his middle finger. Whitty also asks, “Would you ask a guest to make their ‘blackest face?’ Their ‘Jewiest face?’ ”

Following suit, others have posted their “gayest looks” for Leno – also involving the same gesture – at the newly created Web site, My Gayest Look.

[From People.com]

I didn’t cover this when I first heard it, because I watched that whole interview carefully and even transcribed some of it, and the comments Leno made did not seem offensive or targeted at gay men to me. Jay was talking about the way that soap operas exaggerate things, from my perspective. Plus I didn’t want to stir up a controversy. Sure Jay Leno made some stupid remarks, but I felt that as a semi-straight woman I’m not the one to say whether it was offensive to gay people or not, and frankly I felt stupid for not recognizing it as potentially offensive in the first place.

Whitty has some valid points that Jay wouldn’t ask someone to make their blackest or Jewiest face, and Leno even seemed uncomfortable when Halle Berry said that a photo of her with her nose photoshopped to look big was her “Jewish cousin.” Producers recognized that Berry’s remark was offensive and removed it prior to the show being aired, but someone has to hit them over the head to see that Jay is doing a similar thing here.

The best thing to come out of this is the website My Gayest Look, which involves tons of people giving Jay the finger. Now that this has some media attention, expect an apology from Jay. Maybe this will make media personalities think twice before making offhand stupid comments about groups of people. Also - I think that Asians are routinely stereotyped and made fun of in the media and that it gets hardly any attention. It’s good that people speak out and let us know when someone is out of line and I feel enlightened in this case, but am kind of humbled that I didn’t see it myself.

Update: Leno has apologized for his comments, saying that he agrees that it was dumb and that is came out wrong. He should have said “most melodramatic look” or “best soap opera stare”

“In talking about Ryan’s first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong,” the host of NBC’s Tonight Show said in a statement to PEOPLE. “I certainly didn’t mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize.”

[From People.com]

Here’s the video. The “gayest look” comment is about 2 minutes in:

Ted, whose shirt made me lol

They should paginate that Gayest Look site and add advertising, because it’s a lot of fun to look through all the photos of people giving the brid.

Paris Hilton was in South Africa over the weekend with her boyfriend, Benji Madden, for his band Good Charlotte’s tour. She finally did some of that charity work she was contemplating during her stint in jail for DUI and parole violations. Paris spent a whole two hours at an orphanage on Friday.

When asked recently how she liked South Africa, Paris didn’t want to leave the other countries in Africa out, so she also said she loved “West Africa,” that giant country on the right side of the continent.

Paris said, “I love Africa in general — South Africa and West Africa, they are both great countries.”

Paris is a high school dropout who earned a GED, but don’t you have to know basic geography to pass a GED exam?

On Friday night the gawky heiress with the size 11 feet hosted a party in Johannesburg, telling the crowd she “loved South Africa, the accent and everyone.”

Here are photos of Paris in Africa at the orphanage on Friday, via D-Listed. You can almost see the wheels turning in her head in the photo below.

Joss Stone has been complaining that British fans no longer like her because she has an American accent now – anyone who returns from an overseas trip with an accent is held in contempt in England. They don’t have to dislike her for the way she talks, but rather for the stupid things that she says.

British singer Joss Stone shocked guests at a heart disease benefit, by singing the praises of cigarettes. The star was one of a number of celebrity guests at a New York Fashion Week bash on Saturday (2FEB08) to promote U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) annual Heart Truth awareness campaign. When asked what she did to protect her heart, Stone, 20, revealed she smoked hand-rolled cigarettes - which she wrongly claimed are less harmful than pre-packaged ones. She told the New York Daily News, “In England we smoked rolled cigarettes. It’s better to smoke rollies than straights because straights have chemicals that keep them burning. So if you have to really smoke, smoke rollies.”

[From Contact Music]

Contact Music points out that hand-rolled cigarettes are more likely to cause lung and esophageal cancer.

If Joss Stone was even a little bit clever, she might have just lied a little and said ‘I exercise’ or ‘I try to eat right’. Not something like ‘I only smoke hand-rolled ciggies’.

It’s not just that what she said was wrong, but it’s also the venue in which she shared her medical expertise. I’m guessing she wasn’t at the bash for the free food, but to actually learn about heart disease, since she obviously knows nothing about it.

By the way, eating well and exercising, as well as not smoking, are good ways to improve heart and lung health. For more information check out the United States National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute website.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Joss Stone is shown wearing a dress similar to the one Lindsay Lohan wore to the Maxim Hot 100 party back in May of last year. She is shown outside the Herve Leger By Max Azria show at fashion week on 2/3/08, thanks to PRPhotos.

While you were enjoying your egg nog, Christmas cookies, and those excellent peanut butter chocolate ball things that only seem to appear around the holidays, Will Smith said something incredibly stupid that he quickly backtracked from. Smith’s comments were so taboo that they could lead to a career setback - he invoked the name of Hitler to make a philosophical point. Many news outlets are claiming that Smith is dismissing the atrocities that Hitler committed, and the Jewish Defense League called for theaters to stop showing Smith’s blockbuster film “I am Legend.” In a recent interview, Smith tried to make an asinine point that no one is essentially bad by using Hitler as an example and saying the mass murderer set out to do what he thought was “good,” using “twisted… logic.” When you read the next part of Smith’s statement, though, it’s quite clear where he’s getting these ideas and why he would be making such an outlandish claim. He went on to say that “Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.”

Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good.

“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today’,” said Will. “I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.”

[Daily Record via http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20071223/ten-smith-hitler-was-a-good-person-c60bd6d_1.html">We Smirch]

Smith isn’t saying that Hitler was good, but that he somehow thought what he was doing was good through his own faulty reasoning. Sociopaths feel little or no guilt over the very manipulative and cruel acts they are capable of committing, and it’s not like they feel they have to justify their behavior even to themselves, so good and bad don’t enter into the equation for them. They just don’t care about other people or feel more than superficially expressed remorse.

Smith is making an argument that Hitler could have been cured through “reprogramming,” an essential component of the Scientology cult, which maintains that their own methods can cure all problems and that psychological disorders should not be treated with medication. Let’s hope that he got the stupid idea directly from his good buddy Tom Cruise and that he’s not personally going through Scientology training, but there may be no hope for him now.

This is the guy who was so excited over butt wipes and bidets that he had to personally spread the word, so he’s quite easily impressed and has the need to let everyone know about it. Just like his claim that Scientology is 97% similar to the bible, he has issued a follow-up statement in an attempt to do damage control. At first I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it maybe wasn’t an original interview and that someone either put words in his mouth or re-worked an older statement, but no, he really said this, and just said it was “misinterpreted.” He’s probably referring to the writer’s benign editorial comment that Smith “believes everyone is basically good.”

“It is an awful and disgusting lie,” Smith said in a statement. “It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation.”

“Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.”

[From DailySnack.com via Fark]

It took Tom Cruise a long time to recover after he told Matt Lauer that postpartum depression should not be treated with medication, and that it could be cured with vitamins. Smith should realize that he should keep all his newfound “knowledge” to himself or it will cost him millions in future revenue. There’s a reason why the rest of the population doesn’t agree with that belief system.

Here are Tom Cruise and Will Smith at the “I am Legend” premiere in NY on 12/11/07, thanks to PRPhotos.