I was about to start this post with “This is why Lindsay Lohan is the way she is” but I kind of think that’s a cop-out at this point. Obviously, Lindsay, Ali and the other Lohan children would have been better off being raised by wolves, but that only excuses so much. So, Page Six decided to check in with Dina Lohan. What’s Mother Crackhead up to these days? Dining and dashing. What is she, 15 years old?

Dina Lohan and her brother Paul Anthony Sullivan left organizers of a Hamptons charity event fuming after they allegedly skipped out of the bash without paying the bill. We’re told Lindsay Lohan’s party-cougar mom and her brother were offered four complimentary tickets to new East Hampton restaurant hot spot Andrra on Saturday night to watch the Great Bonac Fireworks Show to aid the nonprofit Clamshell Foundation, which supports local health, cultural and education projects.

But Dina and Paul arrived for the seated dinner with eight others. A source told us, “They dined and dashed on a $2,500 check and didn’t leave a dime for the waiters. The understanding was they would get four free tickets. Anthony stormed up at the end and said, ‘What is this check for?’ Organizers offered a reduced bill for around $1,100, but then they just upped and left without leaving a tip. When organizers later phoned him to demand payment, Sullivan said, ‘My celebrity clients were not happy.’ ”

Andrra owner Rich Silver confirmed that Sullivan and his party left with an unpaid bill but declined to comment further.

Sullivan, who in 2008 was sentenced to a year in jail for fraud and now runs a promotions company, said, “This is a total lie. My written and verbal agreement with Rich Silver was to comp dinner for 8 to 10 guests, six people ate. There was not to be any bill. Then you get a bill for $2,500?”

He added, “Dina was strictly invited as a guest and had nothing to do with paying anything. This is totally false. There is no bill to pay. I paid $500 for drinks, and I will wire a tip tomorrow.”

Sullivan’s attorney, Phil Solages, said, “My client . . . had an arrangement to assist . . . with the promotion of an event. The establishment informed him that his entire party, including himself would be comped for the evening, then he was presented with a bill in contradiction to the agreement. Upon mutual agreement the bill was greatly reduced. He is in possession of a receipt [presumably for drinks].”

Lohan didn’t respond to an e-mail for comment last night.

[From Page Six]

THIS is where Lindsay Lohan gets her sense of entitlement, her sense of “everyone has to give me everything I want. FOR FREE.” It’s the age of entitlement, the age of I’m-a-celebrity-so-I-don’t-have-to-pay. And what’s worse is that society – for the most part – agrees with Lindsay and Dina. Lindsay doesn’t have to pay for her crimes. Dina still gets invited to and COMPED at fancy restaurants. And when someone hands a Lohan a bill, what happens? Nothing. Literally. They don’t pay, they don’t leave a tip, and when someone complains, they just throw a cracked-out hissy fit.

Also: is anyone else disturbed by the fact that Dina looks younger than Lindsay at this point?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I love seeing photos of celebrity real estate and interior design. To me, they’re like shirtless photos of hot guys, they fuel fantasies of living in those pristine, decked out mansions. Or, like in the case of tacky houses like Nicky Hilton’s, it’s fun to point and laugh at rich people with bad taste. That’s the case with this latest story on a new documentary on the world’s largest mansion under construction, a giant eyesore in Florida dubbed “Versailles.” While the nouveau riche owners were constructing it, while filming was underway, they ended up losing a lot of money after the market crashed and facing the possibility that they were in way over their heads. The mansion remains to this day just a giant, gaudy shell of a house. (You can see tons of photos of it here. The few photos where it looks super gaudy and finished are just “artist’s renditions” of what they intended to do with it.) The film ends with their insane house still under massive construction and facing foreclosure. Now the homeowners, the owners of the biggest timeshare company, want the filmmaker to edit it in order to show that they’ve since recovered control of the home. The filmmaker isn’t backing down, though. Here’s more:

The timeshare tycoon who wants to build the biggest home in the country — America’s very own Palace of Versailles — claims an upcoming documentary about his exploits is misleading.

And because of that, Westgate Resorts President David Siegel wants the director of “The Queen of Versailles” to tweak the ending.

In a letter obtained by TheWrap.com, Siegel wrote to director Lauren Greenfield’s attorney that his real estate company is currently healthy and “the most profitable” in its 32-year history.

He said he’s having no problem finishing construction of the palatial 90,000-square-foot mansion on 10 acres in Windermere, Fla.

Today’s economic troubles served as a backdrop for the film’s drama.

“Versailles does not face foreclosure because it was refinanced, and construction is starting again,” Siegel wrote in a letter dated Monday.

He’s asking the filmmaker to update the postscript with that information.
“As it stands now, it’s like ending an account of a basketball game after the third quarter,” he added. “I believe that it’s only fair that (Greenfield) complete the story honestly and with integrity.”

Siegel, 76, also has a lawsuit against Greenfield, executive producer Frank Evers and the Sundance Institute for alleged defamation, claiming the documentary contains harmful statements, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Those include: “Their timeshare empire collapses” and “their house is foreclosed.”
The documentary first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and opens in limited release Friday. Cable TV network Bravo is supposed to air it in 2013.

Siegel, meanwhile, also contends that some of the scenes were orchestrated, with the whole documentary coming off as a “Real Housewives of Orlando pilot,” he wrote.
But Martin Garbus, the director’s attorney, told TheWrap.com that the film will not be changed.

“It tells a story about a time in America and everybody should see it and make their own judgement (sic),” Garbus said in a statement. “Nothing in The Queen of Versailles is staged. There is no reason to update the film.”

The documentary also features Siegel’s 46-year-old wife, Jackie, and the eight children they are raising together.
Construction on Versailles began about six years ago, but work was halted in 2009 after Siegel said he had to refocus on his company, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just two-thirds of the home was completed.

In the meantime, Siegel looked into selling the opulent stunner — at one point dropping the asking price from $100 million finished or $75 million as-is to $65 million as-is.

Siegel was recently approved for a $25 million loan to help finish construction, according to reports, after the documentary completed filming.
And with 13 bedrooms, 22 bathrooms, three pools, two movie theaters, a bowling alley, a ballroom for 500 guests and Italian white marble in the designs, Siegel isn’t exactly motivated to sell the house, he told The Journal last week.

“Then again, I don’t need it, either,” he added.

[From The NY Daily News]

There are photos below of the home as it is now (as I gather), under construction – I guess the Seigels are shown in their other giant mansion while this one is getting prepared. They needed a $25 million loan to finish it and that think that somehow means they’re not in too deep? I found several real estate listings for this “house.” It has its own website, Lake Butler Mansion, and it’s also listed on PriceyPads.com, which has a link to over a hundred photos of the place. Inside, it just looks like a big cathedral or a public building under construction. It’s just a tacky, overpriced dream. It reminds me of Candy Spelling’s house, but she was able to offload that one to a young heiress with gaudy taste. Candy also had much better, albeit early 90s, taste in decor. What billionaire would drop $65 million on this monstrosity or pay $100 million to get it completed? The Seigels are stuck with it.

Here’s the trailer for The Queen of Versailles

Photo credit: Magnolia films

Will.I.Am has a new interview in Elle Magazine that has been offending pretty much everyone. Since I never really cared about Will as a person, I think this is the first interview I’ve ever read with him… and good God, he is a screwed up person. He claims he didn’t masturbate until he was 19, how it’s “tacky” for women to have condoms and how everything is better with a baby wipe. It’s all… really gross. The full Elle piece is here (there’s a lot of stuff about his mother, all of which just screams “mother issues” to me), and here are the highlights:

ELLE: Who from popular culture did you fantasize most about as an adolescent?
will.i.am: Who’s the lady that did “cuchi-cuchi”? Charo! I loved me some Charo. Back in the ’80s, she was everywhere—The Love Boat, Fantasy Island.

ELLE: I have a pet theory about Fantasy Island—that it was created to provide, uh, bathroom fodder for 14-year-old boys.
W: I didn’t do that until I was 19.

ELLE: Really?
W: Yep. I think my mom had a big role in it. It was a subject we never talked about growing up.

ELLE: I don’t imagine many mothers encourage their sons to do that sort of thing. From talking to other men, did you ever consider that you might be less sexual than other guys?
W: To me, sex isn’t like an extracurricular activity that you do because you’re [feeling amorous]. Because I was raised around girls, I think I’ve adopted that perspective on sex. When you’re with somebody and you love them, then you’re going to do it and you’re going to do it a lot. On tour, the band started calling me G. S., for the Good Samaritan.

ELLE: Do you think there are women you’ve dated who have told their friends, “I just cannot for the life of me get into this guy’s pants”?
W: Yeah, I’m pretty sure there are women I’ve dated that are probably like, “What’s up with him?”

ELLE: If you walked into a woman’s house, what one item would convince you that you weren’t compatible?
W: If she had condoms in her house, that would just f-ckin’ throw me off. That’s just tacky.

ELLE: Well, okay, I could see if she had a candy bowl full of them on the coffee table. But if she’s got a few in a drawer, wouldn’t that simply suggest she’s health-conscious?
W: I just think, like, if you’re into someone and you guys get to that level, then that’s something you should converse about together and say, “Hey, maybe we should get some.” Another pet peeve is wet sinks.

ELLE: Wet sinks?
W: Yeah, like a wet sink. You don’t wipe the sink after you use it? Dry it off! And if she’s got only dry toilet paper and no baby wipes next to the toilet. You ain’t got no baby wipes?

ELLE: I’ve heard about this particular deal breaker before. Why is that a big deal to you?
W: Here’s proof on why people should have baby wipes. Get some chocolate, wipe it on a wooden floor, and then try to get it up with some dry towels. You’re going to get chocolate in the cracks. That’s why you gotta get them baby wipes.

[From Elle]

You know what else is tacky? Will.I.Am. Other things that are tacky: men who want your biscuits to smell like baby wipes, men who turn in to massive bitches over wet sinks, STDs and AIDS. Ladies, do not listen to Will. Carry condoms in your purse, and have them in your bedside drawer. Trust me. Oh, and ladies? Don’t even think of sleeping with “Mother Issues” Will.

Your move, Terrence Howard.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t mind being associated with fraud trainer Tracy Anderson. And when I call Tracy a “fraud” I mean she’s an honest-to-God fraud who has bilked business partners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention the “fraud” of telling women that she can remake their body if they only drop to 1,000 calories a day while working out 2 hours a day (how could that NOT work?). Anyway, Gwyneth is now business partners with Tracy, and they co-own some gyms or something. This is all happened around the same time that Madonna dropped Tracy like a hot potato, and I’ve always believed that Tracy is one of the main reasons that Gwyneth and Madge aren’t friends anymore. But I digress – Gwyneth associates herself with Chipmunk McBoltOns, and now Gwyneth is shilling Tracy’s “Method” yet again in her Goop newsletter:

By now, I think you all know how amazing I think my trainer, partner and friend Tracy Anderson is, how she kicked my twice pregnant ass into shape, and keeps taking me to new levels. Tracy’s dream has always been to be able to make her ingenious customized-to-your-problem-areas program available to any woman who is up for the challenge—and now she has. See below! It’s pretty f’ing great ’cause it works!

[From Goop]

Then Goop gives the newsletter over to Tracy for what amounts to a commercial for her “method”. Goop also included this video:

Ugh. Okay, I’ve stopped feeling sorry for Gwyneth temporarily. Now I’m back to just wanting to smack the snot out of her. How tacky is this? How cheap and budget is it to promote your fraudulent business partner on your “newsletter”? When did Gwyneth become so “f’ing” tacky?

Oh, well. I guess we should be grateful that Gwyneth wasn’t telling us about some NEW FANCY juice detox. AGAIN. Because Goop can’t poop naturally. That’s for peasants.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame.

Kate Middleton is famously “middle class” in England. That doesn’t mean her family is struggling financially at all – it means that her parents were born middle class, and are now very, very wealthy (nouveau riche) because they started a successful business called Party Pieces. It’s a catalog company which sells, for the most part, “kits” to help facilitate parties. Like, kids’ parties and party favors and disposable dishwear and paper hats and tea sets, that sort of thing. Our Little Waity allegedly “worked” for her parents’ company for years, although I tend to think it was the kind of “work” where she got to take off 11 times a year to go on holiday with her prince boyfriend, plus all the time off she wanted to follow him around for various events, shopping excursions, nights out, etc. Quite honestly, I think Carole Middleton, Kate’s mother, agreed and cosigned with her daughter’s “career goal” of getting the ring, and the Middletons helped facilitate the ring-getting however possible.

Now that Kate has gotten the ring and is slowly being introduced to her “royal duties,” it’s time for the Middletons to cash in. Fortunately, no one is writing a tell-all book, and no one is giving some kind of major interview to a tabloid. Unfortunately, their sell-out does involve tacky corgi-themed wedding party crap.

This probably won’t sit too well with the royal in-laws! Princess-to-be Kate Middleton’s parents, Michael and Carole, are hocking items on their online store, Party Pieces, perfect for throwing at-home wedding celebrations for their daughter and Prince William. Although the Middletons deny they’re cashing in on their daughter’s big day, their British Street Party Collection – which includes windmills, Union Jack teapot vases and corgi cake toppers – will coincidentally be available on their site just six weeks before Kate’s April 29 wedding.

[From Star Magazine, print edition]

Yeah… this is totally not as bad as it could be, but it’s still pretty tacky. You’d think that the Middletons – who have played everything so beautifully up until now – would have stopped and asked themselves, “Hey, our daughter is going to be queen one day… maybe we shouldn’t try to profit from her wedding with cheap corgi wedding-cake-toppers?”

Photos courtesy of WENN.

On Friday, after singing at the school of her fiance Eddie Cibrian’s seven year-old son, Mason, LeAnn Rimes unprotected her Twitter account so she could gloat about it. Mason’s mom Brandi Glanville told LeAnn on twitter last Tuesday that it was “highly inappropriate” for her to sing at school on family week and that “it isn’t ur place… You are not his parent.” LeAnn of course didn’t heed Brandi’s warning and went on to do it anyway, after which she tweeted about it, noting all the cute questions the kids asked her about her celebrity status. One of the first things she tweeted about after opening her account was a thank you letter she received from Barbra Streisand presumably. LeAnn performed at the tribute concert to Barbra a little over a week ago.

Note that is is an extremely small sample, like less than 10%, of the tweets that LeAnn has made in the past few days. I had to look through pages and pages of inane chatter to find these.

Think I’m going to unblock my tweets. I can’t keep up with my sweet fans who want to follow and would love to (cont) http://tl.gd/8tvb0c
5:45 PM Feb 18th via TwitLonger Beta

Received a thank you note from Barbara today. It’s so incredible to get a letter from your idol. Just to know (cont) http://tl.gd/8u0321
Fri Feb 18 2011 20:36:47 (Eastern Standard Time) via TwitLonger Beta

@diaryofadivamom Happy to hear that! Stepmom’s are mother’s too and beautiful caretakers that deserve thanks and praise
3:26 PM Feb 19th via web in reply to diaryofadivamom

@amejean On Friday, a little girl blurted out “when you get married how many kids are you gonna have!” plant for US Weekly maybe?! Lol

@Rosebud it was like all these kids read the rags weekly lol…moms, if you’re gonna read them throw them away after!!! Still so innocent
11:22 PM Feb 19th via Twitter for iPhone in reply to Rosebud

@irishfern0302 it was just funny when one child asked who I was and the other was like DUH don’t you know!!!! Lol total attitude! Funny
11:24 PM Feb 19th via Twitter for iPhone in reply to irishfern0302

@amejean Come to my house and I’ll throw you one! I sang at @darrellbrown’s wedding!

@amejean I sang Some People IN TEARS for D and R
about 6 hours ago via web in reply to amejean

For that last tweet, I thought that LeAnn was saying that people were crying at her performance at Eddie’s son’s school, but she was actually referring to a wedding she sang at for music producer Darrell Brown, during which her performance supposedly brought people to tears. I wanted to cry just having to read through the insane amount of tweets she made to all the fans singing her praises.

As Kaiser said back when LeAnn joined the PTA at Mason’s school, I get why she wants to get involved with the boys and on some level it’s nice that she cares for them and wants to be there for them. She’s not their mother, though, and she has no respect for Brandi to the point where she’ll tweet about taking one of the boys to the emergency room before she’ll bother to call Brandi. All you have to do is read through LeAnn’s tweets (if you can stomach it) to see how much farther she takes it with those children and with her fans. There is something incredibly desperate about LeAnn, and the sheer amount of tweets she makes show how much she seeks validation for everything she does. She unlocked her twitter account because she wasn’t getting enough adoring tweets from fans, and that outweighed the inevitable criticism she gets for her narcissism. She needs constant praise like she needs to shove her relationship and personal business in our faces.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

For the past few days, Elisabetta Canalis has been acting as some kind of hostess/presenter woman at the San Remo Film Festival. I have no idea if that’s true. Mostly because I have no idea how this festival works, but it seems to involve lots of photo-ops, lots of stages and now, lap dances. According to the Mail:

“Elisabetta Canalis took to the stage at the 61st Italian Music Festival in San Remo in a highly provocative outfit and performed a seductive dance routine with one lucky male dancer. The 32-year-old took to the stage in a skimpy black leotard, fishnet tights, black jacket and matching trilby hat and a cane for the performance which saw her perform a lap dance to her male companion. She then fell back into her partners arms as he titled her down and pushed his hand up her thigh as she arched her back towards the floor. Elisabetta was then lifted into the air and she lay horizontally in the arms of her dance partner with her hair flowing to the floor. And if the outfit wasn’t revealing enough at one point the model removed her jacket to show leaving her bottom on full display in the low cut leotard.”

[From The Mail]

Which sounds… cheesy, right? Just wait. There’s video too. And now that I’ve watched the video… I have to say, I understand exactly why George Clooney is with this woman. It’s not just that her maternal instincts are satisfied with her dog (or Clooney in a dog collar). It’s this. She’s the kind of girl who will give this kind of stage “performance”:

She really does have a spectacular ass. Like, that alone is enough to get her a ticket to The Clooney Show, but now there’s no question as to why they’ve been together for nearly two years. Lap dances. Leather, fishnets, great ass and lap dances.

Oh, and even though the girl’s body is insane and she‘s pretty sexy (in a trashy way), she can’t dance. Like, she’s totally off cue the whole way through.

Photos from the Sanremo festival, courtesy of WENN. Additional screen caps from the video are mine.

Monchichi-looking* Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice has blamed the economy for her family’s debts of $11 million and claimed that the television show exaggerated her spending. Looking at the contents of her tacky Mcmansion in foreclosure and up for auction, it’s clear how she blew money. Among her family’s effects are a mahogany bar, a suit of armour, and a bronze-colored vanity table that puts the “T” in tacky. Everything in the home is ornate, gilded, bronzed and ostentatious. We’ve previously seen Teresa’s mansion in In Touch and now we get to see more of the crap she wasted other people’s money on. On an episode of Real Housewives, Teresa bragged that “My whole house has nothing but marble, granite and onyx,” and said that she had it custom built because “I don’t want to live in somebody else’s house, that’s gross.” Now other people will be living in her house and sitting on the obnoxious furniture she went heavily into hock for:

In June, a trustee for their bankruptcy case alleged in court documents that the Real Housewives of New Jersey star and her husband Joe had hidden assets, including profits from her book Skinny Italian and his stake in a pizzeria, which was also featured on the Bravo show.

The trustee, John Sywilok, also accused the pair of undervaluing items listed as personal property exempt from the bankruptcy filing, including a pool table ($1000) and even their wedding bands ($400).

Now, those items will be going up at auction on Aug. 22 at 12 p.m. (EST) at their Towaco, N.J., mansion…

Reached by PEOPLE last week, an attorney for the Giudices, Jim Kridel, said he hoped an auction wouldn’t take place, and also said the couple had not mislead the court about their assets at the time of their bankruptcy filing.

He also denied that their had undervalued their personal property, saying, “You can’t sell used, personal property for the sticker price. A $5,000 chandelier won’t sell for $5,000. Nobody will buy a used mattress. The real issue in bankruptcy is, what’s the value of everything? And at the time of the bankruptcy, these things didn’t have any value.”

Although Giudice denied that her belongings will be auctioned through her rep, her attorney, Kridel, said that the auction is currently slated for Aug. 22, but adds that he is appealing the decision.

“Obviously we have objections to what they’re trying to do,” he says, noting that many of the items listed were purchased after the bankruptcy filing with money earned post-petition, meaning they should not be included among the bankruptcy assets.

“I don’t think Teresa is happy seeing all her belongings displayed on the Internet,” he says, adding that she feels it should have been handled in court before being made public. “Clearly they are under the microscope because they are famous.”

[From People]

Teresa and her husband made less than $100,000 a year officially, and Teresa was regularly seen on the show paying for high ticket items in cash. It’s not much of a logical leap to assume they were hiding assets, as alleged in their bankruptcy case. No one feels sorry for this greedy woman with no sense of personal responsibility or decorum. Hopefully her family’s creditors can recoup a small percentage of the cash that went to fund a lifestyle that should have been as unattainable as it was frivolous.

*I’m sure I got the Monchichi reference from Michael K at D-Listed.

Here are photos of some of the contents of Teresa and Joe Guidice’s home, thanks to ajwillnerauctions.com. Photos of Teresa are from 5/26 and 6/24. Credit: WENN.com.

Last week, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart got married in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the governor’s mansion. In fact, the ceremony was presided over by New Mexico’s chief justice, and NM governor Bill Richardson hosted some kind of reception for them. All in all, it had the potential to be a very swanky affair. Not so much, as it turns out. People Magazine says that Harrison was wearing Wrangler jeans for the ceremony. Calista wore a sundress.

Who needs an Armani tux? When Harrison Ford married longtime girlfriend Calista Flockhart on June 15, the movie star opted to tie the knot in more offbeat designer duds: Wrangler jeans.

Completing the laid-back approach to their surprise Santa Fe, New Mexico, nuptials, Flockhart donned a casual white sundress for the outdoor ceremony on the grounds of Gov. Bill Richardson’s hilltop mansion.

Flockhart’s son, Liam, 9, served as ring bearer as the couple exchanged bands and simple vows. Looking on were Gov. Richardson, who performed the simple ceremony; his wife, Barbara; the governor’s official counsel; and New Mexico’s chief justice, Charles W. Daniels, who officially pronounced Ford, 67, and Flockhart, 45, husband and wife.

The intimate, no-frills wedding underscored what those close to them have long known: Ford and Flockhart are in it for the long haul.

“They’re both honest in their approach to life and to each other,” says Bernie Pollack, a Ford pal and his longtime go-to costume designer. “This [marriage] will only enhance what they already had.”

Ford, who is in New Mexico shooting the action-fantasy Cowboys & Aliens, had a day off from work for his wedding, but was back on-set a few days later.

[From People]

Personally, I think it’s tacky to wear jeans only because it was at the governor’s mansion. If they were getting married on some beach somewhere, sure, wear jeans or a sundress, that’s fine. But the location of the ceremony seemed to demand something a bit more formal. I would even have gone for khakis. Some stone-washed chinos perhaps. In any case, now that I know jeans are allowed, I plan to get married in sweatpants. What? They’re comfortable!

Harrison Ford in jeans on December 22, 2009 & September 29, 2009 Credit: WENN.

So M.I.A. is still giving crazy interviews. And when reporters simply transcribe the crazy, M.I.A. throws a childish tantrum and tweets their actual phone number. Case in point: M.I.A. was interviewed by Lynn Hirschberg for the New York Times in a piece calling “M.I.A.’s Agitprop Pop”. Clever. Anyway, there’s a lot of politics in the interview, as there was in her recent Complex Magazine interview. M.I.A. drops lines like, “And my giving birth is nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp.” She also says that the Los Angeles Sinhalese community was harassing her after she began to speak out on Sri Lankan issues, saying, “We went to the Grammys, we had the baby and we bought the house… A month later, all this stuff was happening in Sri Lanka… and I started speaking up against it. And then, within a month, I found out my house was being bugged, my phones were being tapped and my e-mails were being hacked into. I was getting death threats, like ‘hope your baby dies.’ The biggest Sinhalese community is in Santa Monica, people who are sworn enemies of the Tamils, which is me.”

There’s more stuff in the piece, but suffice to say, M.I.A. did not appreciate being quoted, I suppose. So she tweeted Hirschberg’s phone number (which I’m not going to print) with the message “CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE NYT TRUTH ISSUE, ill be taking calls all days bitches.” As Gawker notes, “The poor writer is probably being besieged by confused fauxhemians right now and will have to screen her calls for months or change her number. It would be really awesome if Hirschberg retaliated by Tweeting M.I.A.’s number, but we have a feeling that there are still people out there with some tact.”

By the way, would anyone like another taste of M.I.A.’s crazy? From her Complex Mag interview (the one where she kind of says Jay-Z is a sell-out)… here is M.I.A.’s thoughts on Google:

“Google is the most powerful corporation in the world, and why do you think that is? It’s ’cause they log the most data and they collect the most information and that’s the thing that everyone’s gonna want and that’s the thing that no one’s gonna have. That’s what it’s about and it’s important to tell people in the street or poor people to arm themselves with knowledge ’cause that sh-t’s a commodity… America’s not raising its generations saying, “Knowledge is currency.” Corporations are raising themselves saying, “Knowledge is currency, and we’re gonna collect it all.” And the people are not being told that. Do you get that from watching My Super Sweet 16 or reality TV, that they’re trying to tell the masses that it’s about knowledge? No. You can Google the words “Sri Lanka” and it doesn’t come up that all these people have been murdered or bombed, it’s pages of: “Come to Sri Lanka on vacation, there are beautiful beaches.” You’re not gonna get the truth ’til you hit like page 56, you know what I mean? When Ikhyd goes on the Internet and taps in some words, he’s gonna get exactly what they want him to get.”

[From Complex Magazine]

I know what point she’s trying to make – about media and corporations and who controls the news, et cetera. And Google does do some sketchy sh-t (and I say that knowing that we have Google ads – MY BAD GOOGLE GODS). But to call Google “the most powerful corporation in the world”? How limited is her scope? That’s kind of the point of the NYT piece too – Hirschberg quotes Ahilan Kadirgamar, the spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, at length and his point seems to be overwhelmingly that M.I.A. is out-of-touch and lacking in a wide-ranging comprehension of the vastness of Sri Lankan politics specifically and international politics in general. At one point he says: “People in exile tend to be more nationalistic… And Maya took a very simplistic explanation of the problems between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese government and the Tamils. It’s very unfair when you condemn one side of this conflict. The Tigers were killing people, and the government was killing people. It was a brutal war, and M.I.A. had a role in putting the Tigers on the map. She doesn’t seem to know the complexity of what these groups do.” Probably because at this point, she’s just the wife/fiancee of a billionaire’s son who spends her days drinking wine with reporters from the New York Times?

Photos courtesy of The NYT.