The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 26

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25. 2006 APPLAUSE THE SALINA JOURNAL By JAKE COYLE AP Entertainment Writer NEW by a recent Associated Press article that didn't credit him for coining the word "truthiness," Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert has struck back. The world's oldest news organization, Colbert says, is the "No. 1 threat facing America" On a recent show, Colbert placed the AP atop the Threat Down segment of "The Colbert Report" show. What was No.

Bears. In October, on Colbert's debut episode of the "Daily Show" spinoff, the comedian defined "truthiness" as truth that wouldn't stand to be held back by facts. The word caught on, and the American Dialect Society named "truthiness" the word of the year. CBS News SHATNER People in the News Crowe and Spencer expecting baby Stories and photos by the Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe says he and his wife, Danielle Spencer, are expecting their second child, a newspaper reported. "Yes, Dani is pregnant again," Crowe told TV cameras on the red carpet at the 63rd Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, on Monday, Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper reported Wednesday.

"She's due in July," he said. Crowe, 41, and Spencer, 34, have a 2-year-old son, Charles Spencer Crowe. The actor won an Oscar for his role in 2000's "Gladiator." Actor sells kidney stone; proceeds go to charity LOS ANGELES An online casino has a piece of Capt. Kirk. Actor William Shatner has sold liis kidney stone for $25,000, with the money going to a housing charity.

Shatner reached agreement on Jan. 16 to sell the stone to GoldenPalace.com. "This takes organ donors to a new height, to a new low, maybe. How much is a piece of me wortli?" he said in a telephone interview. GoldenPalace.com is noted for its collection of oddities, which includes a partially eaten cheese sandwich thought to contain the image of the Virgin Mary.

"This is a bold new addition to our fleet," GoldenPalace.com Chief Executive Officer Richard Rowe said in a statement. The money will go to Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for tlie needy. "This would be the first Habitat for Humanity house built out of stone," joked Darren Julien, president of Los Angeles- based Julien's Auctions, which handled tlie sale. Shatner, who played James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" TV show and won an Emmy for his role on "Boston Legal," passed the stone last fall.

Tlie stone was so big, Shatner said, "you'd want to wear it on your finger." "If you subjected it to extreme heat, it might tm-n out to be a diamond," he added. Shatner said the idea of selling the stone came up after "Boston Legal" raised $20,000 for Habitat for Humanity. With the money for the stone, Shatner said there is about enough funding to build half a house. GoldenPalace.com originally offered $15,000 for the stone but Shatner turned it down, noting that his "Star Trek" tunics have commanded more tlian $100,000. His counteroffer was accepted.

Amy Tan gets new job commentary LOS ANGELES Author Amy Tan, who wrote "The Joy Luck Club" and other best-selling books, has been named literary editor of West, tlie Los Angeles Times' Simday magazine. Tan, a CaUfomia native who also wrote "Saving Fish from Drowning" and "The Hundred Secret Senses," will help solicit fiction set in the Golden State for tlie magazine's "California Story" featiure. West magazine will replace the weekly Los Angeles Times Magazine begirming Feb. 5. The title marks a return to what the publication used in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

"We're aiming to capture California in the grandest sense imaginable," said Rick Wartzman, editor of West. Leif Garrett enters not guilty plea to drugs LOS ANGELES Former teen idol Leif Garrett pleaded not guilty Jan. 18 to drug possession charges after he was arrested for allegedly trying to ride the subway without a ticket. Garrett, 44, was charged with felony possession of heroin and fare evasion. He was held without bail for allegedly violating terms of his probation for a previous drug He pleaded guilty in March to attempted possession of cocaine-based narcotics and was placed on probation.

An e-mail seeking comment from a spokeswoman listed on Garrett's Web site wasn't immediately returned. Garrett was arrested by Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies Jan. 14 on the platform of the Pershing Square Red Line station downtown for allegedly not having a ticket to ride the train. Deputies then allegedly foxmd suspected narcotics on the musician-actor, officials said. If convicted, Garrett could avoid jail time imder a law that sends some convicted drug users to treatment, authorities said.

Garrett has appeared in three dozen films, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, and lias released 10 albums. In 1979, he rear-ended another car while driving a Porsche, leaving his passenger disabled. Hunter gives birth to twins LOS ANGELES Holly Hunter, who voiced the role of superhero mom Helen Parr in "The Incredibles," will have maternal experience to draw on if there's a sequel. The Oscar-winning actress has given birth to twins, People magazine reported Jan. 17, citing Hunter's publicist.

Telephone messages left Wednesday for publicist Nicole Caruso were not immediately returned. People magazine reported the children are the first for Hunter and her partner, British actor Gordon MacDonald. The 47-year-old Hunter won a lead actress Oscar for her role in 1993's "The Piano. Cable felevision Colbert snubbed by Associated Press; strikes back When an AP stoiy about the designation sent coast to coast failed to mention Colbert, he began a tongue-in-cheek crusade, not imlike the kind his muse Bill O'Reilly might lead in all seriousness. "It's a sin of omission, is what it is," Colbert told The AP "You're not giving people the whole stoiy about truthiness." "It's like Shakespeare still being alive and not asking him what 'Hamlet' is about," he said.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a definition for "truthy" dating back to the 1800s. It's defined as "characterized by truth" and includes the derivation "truthi- Michael Adams, a visiting associate professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, pointed to that definition and has said Colbert's claim to inventing the word is "untrue." (Adams served as the expert opinion in tiie initial AP story.) "The fact that they looked it up in a book just shows that they don't get the idea of truthiness at all," Colbert said. "You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut" Though slight, the difference of Colbert's definition and the OED's is essential It's not your typical truth, but, as The New York Times wrote, "a summation of what(Colbert) sees as the guiding ethos of the loudest commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN." Colbert, who referred on his program to the AP omission as a "journalistic travesty," said that it was similar to the criticized weapons of mass destruction reporting leading up to the Iraq War. "Except," he said, "people got hurt this time." Search continues for anchor to replace Rather By DAVID BAUDER AP Thlevision Writer PASADENA, Calif. Even if NBC's Katie Comic doesn't make the jump, the new top anchor for CBS News wiU likely be someone who doesn't work there now, the division's new president said Jan.

18. Sean McManus, who took over in November as CBS News chief, said he was looking for a single anchor for the evening news not an anchor team like ABC's Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff and wanted a high-profile person with "a wealth of experience and credibility covering the news" at one of the Big Three broadcast networks. That sounds an awful lot like Couric, the "Today" show host who is mulling a switch to the tiiird-rated "CBS Evening News" when her contract expires in May. He wouldn't talk about her in a meeting with porters here, but McManus, who also runs CBS's sports division, has apparentiy concluded that CBS doesn't have a big enough name for the job now. Every news division, he said, should have a stable of talent ready to step in as top anchor if something happens to the person in the job a situation faced by ABC News with Peter Jennings' cancer last year.

Although correspondents like John Roberts, Russ Mitchell and Mika Brzezinski have the talent, McManus isn't certain they're ready. "The question is, do they have the profile or the reputation that they should have in that job, and that's certainly open to question," he said. McManus said that shouldn't send a message to CBS News employees that they don't have an opportunity to advance. In the coming months, he will be making changes designed to give the network's correspondents a higher profile, he said. While CBS' search for Dan Rather's replacement is in its second year, the evening news has quietiy made strides in the ratings witii Bob Schieffer at the helm.

CBS is closer competitively than it has been to ratings-leader NBC in six years, and five years to second- place ABC, according to Nielsen Media Research. Schieffer, 68, is "the oldest overnight sensation that I know" and has appealed to viewers with a folksy style, McManus said. But Schieffer isn't in the mix to do the job permanently because he has said he wants to slow down. Longtime CBS News producer Rome Hartman began running the evening news last month, and he'll stay in that job no matter who is the anchor, McManus said. McManus is trying to boost a once-legendaiy news organization bruised by low ratings and the damaging fallout from the 2004 discredited story about President Bush's National Guard service.

He said he expects to reach the top in the ratings even for the morning news show, which has never been there and put people in the news division on notice that they are being evaluated constantly. "If people are a little bit scared," he said, "then that's. OK" He said he had different plans in place for different possible evening news anchors. But he was almost tripped up when a reporter asked if it's possible a new anchor would be named be-' fore Couric's contract expires. "I don't have a timetable," he said.

Reminded that he said earlier that he had one, McManus quickly changed gears. "I don't have a timetable I can discuss," he said. with two left feeJ on ice By MATTHEW GILBERT The Boston Globe What makes a cloney- baloney reality show such as the new "Skating Witii Celebrities" bearable? For me, it's the constant awareness of how "Saturday Night Live" might milk its silliness. On a picture-in-picture in my mind, I see Amy Poehler in a black wig transforming Nancy Kerrigan into a demon pixie. It's as if I become my own private Beavis (OK, Butt-Head, too), delivering a crude commentary to myself while B-, C-, and D-listers do all kinds of cheesy things for attention.

Not surprising, "Skating With Celebrities" is chock-full of opportunities for the inner spoofer. Essentially "Dancing With the Stars" on ice, the new Fox show gives us six maybe-lebrities partnered with professional skaters for a few weeks of huffing, puffing, and bum bruising. See them practice like the "Fame" kids; see them trip and fall; see their egos get ice-picked apart by the judges. Bruce Jenner is on board as the requisite "old guy," a slot that the oh-so-dashing John O'Hurley perfected on "Dancing Wtih the Stars." tually, Jenner is more like the show's "old boy," since he's 55 but has a face that seems to be straining toward boyhood. Om a recent show, Jenner and his skating partner, Tai Babilonia, do a riff on "An Officer and a Gentieman" that is stiff, kitschy, and yet somehow impressive.

Like many of the celebrities on the show, Jenner has clearly spent time on the ice. He's not embarrassingly awful, at least not yet. It's not exactiy clear which celebrity player will serve as the rink jester, but I'm banking oh Dave Coulier firom "FuU House" over Todd Bridges firom "Diff rent Strokes." Coulier, who's teamed with Kerrigan, is most comfortable as a hockey player, and his bluster is sure to ruffle a few feathers in the more pristine realm of figure skating. He's not bad as he and Kerrigan do a cutesy Blues Brothers routine, but he clearly operates by his own rules, as he shaves the tips off his skates. And so it goes.

The Fox eye-candy slots go to Jillian Barberie and Kristy Swanson, and the good girl is and wiU always be Deborah Gibson. But as ripe for ribbing as the cast members are, there's no denying tiiat "Skating With Celebrities," like "Dancing With the Stars," requires them to display both abiOlly and nerve. This isn't a bunch of losers rooming in the "Surreal Life" house; it actually demands hard work. Ultimately, they risk themselves both physically in the rink and psychologically as they face the judges. They deserve some props.

The real meat of these shows are the judges, though, as Simon Cowell has proved so successfully on "American Idol." "Skating Wiih Celebrities" has come up with the requisite Simon knockoff in Sir John Nicks, a coach who uses his British accent to add edge to comments such as "Your artistry is nonexistent" and, as he tells Bridges, "Dump this program and go to plan Dorothy Hamill appears to have the honorary Paula Abdul spot, as she oozes maternal praise, and Mark Lund is the in-between dude. As a judging unit, they giveth praise, and they taketh it The show is hosted by Summer Sanders and Scott Hamilton, who has a bit of a Bobcat Goldthwait shrill to his voice. Maybe "SNL" can get Goldthwait to do a cameo. CHECK US OUT! Home Medical Equipment Home Nebulizers CPAPs Locally Owned Operated COMPETITIVE PRICES QUALITY PRODUCTS PROFESSIONAL FRIENDLY SERVICE Former assistant suing Laurence Fishburne By the Associated Press LOS ANGELES Fishbume's former personal assistant is suing him for allegedly firing her because she was pregnant and single, her lawyer said Kristal Crews filed the lawsuit in Superior Court on Jan. 17 for unspecified damages.

"He told her that he didn't think single women should have children," Crews' attomey NikW Tbltsaid, Fishbume's attomey. Lawrence Gartner, denied the allegations, saying in a statement that during Crews' employment "she was always treated in a and professional manner." "It is unfortunate that the visibility of actors causes people to say all kinds of things about them for what we can only assume are their own purjioses. We are confident that Mr. Fishburne will be vindicated in these proceedings," Gartner said in the statement issued by the tor's spokesman, Alan Nierob. Tblt alleged that several months after Crews became pregnant and requested special accommodation for a film shoot in New Orleans, Fishburne told his assistant she would be fired.

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