Binside TV

OPRAH USES TWITTER AFTER ASHTON KUTCHER BEATS CNN GETS 1 MILLION FOLLOWERS

Oprah is the newest member of the celebrity Twitter club.  Ashton Kutcher had a Twitter contest with CNN and hit the million Twitter follower mark before the news channel. How long do you think it will be before Lady O passes a million followers? Congrats to Oprah.

If there's something to be done, you can bet Oprah Winfrey will be all over it once she sets her mind to the task at hand. Now that the daytime diva has signed up for Twitter, at around 9 a.m. ET today, she's already going full-steam ahead with six updates!

She started off a little unsure it seems, in all caps (the equivalent of shouting), with: "HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY . "

She then moved on to the issue of her lunch, tweeting, "hi jimmy order a reuben for me," before addressing the health of her dog Sadie, writing, "hi everyone. sadie's great. gets her rabies vaccine today."

Oprah's such a savvy Twitterer, she's already figured out how to reply to people like Demi Moore, saying "@mrskutcher count me in for 20,thousand nets," referring to Ashton Kutcher's promise to donate 10,000 for World Malaria day when he beat CNN to 1 million followers on Twitter.

Since there's no such thing as too much of a good thing, we can't wait to see Oprah's Twitter. [OK!]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Oprah Crowns Kutcher King of Twitter (abcnews.go.com)
• Oprah Uses Twitter For First Time Today! (daytimetalk.com)
• Ashton Kutcher Beats CNN In Twitter-Off (mtv.com)

OPRAH WINFREY TOPS FORBES CELEBRITY 100 LIST OF THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL CELEBRITIES

Media Mogul Oprah Winfrey topped the Forbes Celebrity 100 List of the Most Powerful Celebrities in the World. The Big O beat golf pro Tiger Woods to the top spot on this year's list.   David Beckham, Oscar winning actress Angelina Jolie her baby daddy Brad Pitt and newlyweds Beyonce and Jay-Z also made it on the Forbes Top 10 Celebrity power list. Rapper/Action star Will Smith made it to number 11 on the list. Will Smith was very close. Maybe next year Will can make it into the top 10. His action comedy movie Hitch opens on July 2nd. source

The top ranking is based on income over the past 12 months, as well as web references, press clippings, broadcast mentions and leading magazine covers devoted to the celebrity, Forbes said on its website yesterday.

Winfrey, 54, the high priestess of US daytime television, beat out golfer Tiger Woods in second place and Hollywood heavyweight Angelina Jolie in the annual survey.

Winfrey earned $US275million ($290million) from June last year to this month, while Woods pocketed $US115million.

Jolie earned a fraction of that - $US14 million - but the actor secured her ranking via web hits.

In fourth place was singer Beyonce Knowles, who finished three places above her husband, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, with earnings of $US80million and third overall for the number of web hits.

English soccer superstar David Beckham's move to the Los Angeles Galaxy team helped catapult him from 15th last year to fifth, with earnings of $US50million, ahead of actor Johnny Depp in sixth.

Beckham's wife, Victoria, appears as part of the Spice Girls in 50th place. In eighth place, just behind Jay-Z, rock band The Police made the top 10 after a year on the road in an international reunion tour.

JK Rowling, the billionaire author of the Harry Potter books, was in ninth, earning more than any other celebrity on the list over the same period - $US300million.

As actor Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie's partner, rounded out the top 10, the upper echelons were notable for some absentees. Music legends Madonna, the Rolling Stones and Elton John fell out of the top 10, as did film star Tom Cruise. source

 

STAR JONES SPEAKS OUT ABOUT BARBARA WALTERS ON OPRAH TALKS ABOUT AFFAIR WITH MARRIED SENATOR EDWARD BROOKE

Star Jones is speaking out after the controversial Barbara Walters appearance on Oprah. In her interview Barbara Walters explains why she fired Star Jones due to her rapid weight loss. Barbara Walters admitted to lying about the Star Jones situation.  But why did she over react to Star Jones getting her stomach surgery?  Barbara Walters looks like she has undergone cosmetic surgery and face lifts. Barbara and The View co-host Joy Behar have both admitted to receiving Botox injections.

Barbara Walters has revealed that Star Jones had her ‘View’ co-hosts hide the fact she’d had gastric bypass surgery.“She decided to have a gastric bypass operation, but then she decided not to tell anybody,” Walters told Oprah Winfrey Tuesday. “Then we had to lie on the set everyday because she said it was portion control and Pilates,” Walters said. “Well, we knew it wasn’t portion control and Pilates.”

Winfrey responded, “We in the audience go, that’s some damn Pilates teacher!” source

Barbara also talked about Rosie O'Donnell's  feud with Donald Trump and her departure from The View.

Donald Trump versus Rosie O'Donnell

Barbara Walters explains her "jungle fever" in the new memoir Audition and the details of her 70's affair with then married African-American Senator Edward W. Brooke. Watch Barbara Walters discuss  Rosie O'Donnell's departure from the View. Click here to see the catfight between Rosie and conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasseback that led to Rosie getting fired from the View.

OPRAH BARBARA WALTERS PART 3

 

One part of her book that's been getting attention is the revelation of her affair in the '70s with the then-married Senator EDWARD BROOKE, and on page 256 she opens up about their secret trysts and something he once said to her.

"Sometimes when he said that I was the oldest woman he had ever been with, I thought of telling him: 'Oh yeah? Well you are the blackest man I have ever been with.' But the truth is, it didn't matter." source

Oprah conducted a recap show with updates on her past interviews from the week. Oprah expressed her shock over Mariah Carey's marriage. But everyone agreed that the Barbara Walters "tell all" about who she's had sex with should have been kept under wraps.  Barbara Walters reluctantly admitted to sleeping with her first television boss on the Audition television special with Charles Gibson. Barbara Walters said she already had her job when she had sex with her boss. But hasn't anyone noticed that Barbara Walters has the habit of not always telling the truth when the camera is rolling?

We've gotta agree with that one about the Barbara Walters sex talk. Does anyone want to hear about their grandparents sex lives? We all know they did "it" at least one time to make our parents... but it still makes you go...ewww...that's too much information.  Barbara Walters' remark about her desire to call Senator Brooke the "blackest man I have ever been with"   wasn't a compliment to the reputation of the first African-American elected by popular vote to the United States Senate. Many people would actually consider the phrase "the blackest man I have ever been with" to be an offensive derogatory term or ethnic slur.   source

Star Jones is speaking out against Barbara Walters for including her in her new memoir, Audition.

In the book, Walters claims Jones forced her to lie about her gastric bypass surgery on The View. Walters also reveals that she had an affair with then-married Senator Edward Brooke during the 1970s.

Usmagazine.com caught up with Jones (who recently split from husband Al Reynolds) as she left a tennis workout in NYC Wednesday.

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book," Jones told Us. "It speaks to her true character.”source

When contacted by Us, Walters' rep said, "I will not dignify this with a comment. Barbara's written words say it all!"

PREGNANT MAN THOMAS BEATIE INTERVIEW ON OPRAH | PREGNANT TRANSGENDER MAN THOMAS BEATIE WHO WAS BORN A WOMAN SPEAKS

Oprah Winfrey aired her exclusive People Magazine interview with "The World's First Pregnant Man" on April 3rd. Pregnant man Thomas Beatie was born a female whose birth name was Tracy Lagondino before it was legally changed.

The buzz in the blogosphere and on Oprah's message boards after the show aired was that the "Pregnant Man" episode created a low point for the Oprah Winfrey show and set the tone for a Jerry Springer type media circus.   Some viewers also stated their beliefs that the pregnancy of Thomas Beattie who was born a female and is a now a transgender man was a hoax and not newsworthy because women get pregnant and have babies everyday. Thomas Beatie stated, "I see pregnancy as a process and it doesn't define who I am. Ironically, being pregnant doesn't make me feel any more female or feminine." 

Thomas Beatie's sex change surgery involved chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, but he chose to keep his female reproductive organs.Though he was legally a man, when the couple decided to have children he stopped taking male hormones and began getting his period again.

Beatie was then easily able to conceive a child using donor sperm, without fertility treatments. After losing a life-threatening initial pregnancy, with triplets, he and wife Nancy are expecting a healthy baby girl in July, he wrote in The Advocate, which shows a shirtless photo of him with a baby bump at 22 weeks.

He plans to continue living as a man as his pregnancy becomes increasingly obvious to the world. "Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am," he wrote in The Advocate.

Despite discrimination from doctors, some of whom refused to provide medical care for the pregnant man, as well as questions about how the baby might be affected by having a father for a mother, Beatie seems to think whatever obstacles his family might face are well worth it. "I will be my daughter's father and Nancy will be her mother," he said. "We will be a family." source

Many Oprah fans have vowed never to watch the show again.

DSNYFAN02 wrote on the Oprah message boards.

I was in the studio audience for this show, and I have to say I felt like I was watching the taping of an episode of Jerry Springer, or Maury Povitch (who's your Daddy?, no wait, he's your Mommy!). What the heck were the producers thinking? Must be sweeps week. Thomas and Nancy were there to promote his new book, nothing else. No matter how much testosterone she took, Thomas was born a female, and genetically will always be female. A hormonally-challenged pregnant female? Not newsworthy. Thomas told his story as if he and Nancy were forced to announce the pregnancy against their wishes, and would suffer and dread any additional publicity. Yeah, right. In the few days since the taping, I've learned that Thomas initiated the uproar by posting an announcement that he is the "World's First Pregnant Man" on Advocate.com. And, prior to his surgeries, Thomas, then Tracy, was a major and outspoken lesbian activist in Hawaii. Oprah herself mentioned their upcoming interview in People magazine. Serveral times during the taping, Nancy referred to Thomas's soon to be published book. This just reeks of a self-promoting publicity stunt. Sorry. My family and I have waited a very long time to attend the Oprah show, and we left after the taping feeling stunned and slightly disgusted.

Blogger Sandra Rose criticized the show calling it "Oprah Puts on a Freak Show" and wrote the following on her blog sandrarose.com.

Oprah Winfrey featured transsexual Thomas Beattie, who is 5 months pregnant, and his “wife” on her show yesterday. I shook my head as Oprah fed into the couple’s delusions that Beattie was a pregnant man. Over and over Oprah repeated (for the benefit of Beattie’s psyche) that Beattie was a man and she incorrectly stated that Beattie had a penis. In fact, Beattie’s vagina is intact as are her female reproductive organs.  Beattie has no penis.

In his interview for The Oprah Winfrey Show, to be broadcast in the US tonight, Mr Beatie reveals that, as a female called Tracy Lagondino, he used to date men in his teens. Before having gender reassignment surgery, Miss Lagondino was encouraged to model by her dad and even became a Miss Hawaii Teen USA finalist. She had always felt male however and was apparently shocked by her physical changes during puberty. In her 20s she became more masculine, had a lesbian relationship and researched what it meant to be a transgender male.She began taking testosterone with the help of a physician, and met the woman who was later to become Mr Beatie's wife, Nancy.He is now legally male after having his breasts surgically removed but making the decision to keep his female reproductive organs."I wanted to have a child one day," he told Oprah. "I didn't know how. It was just a dream."He conceived through donor sperm as Mrs Beatie was unable to, having suffered severe endometriosis and undergone a hysterectomy."I have a very stable male gender identity," he said. "I see pregnancy as a process, and it doesn't define who I am. It's not a male or female desire to want to have a child…it's a human desire."I'm a person, and I have the right to have my own biological child."An article written by Mr Beatie last month, in which he was pictured topless with a swollen belly, made headlines around the world. The news triggered heated discussion among ethicists and family groups. Armen Hareyan, publisher and CEO of eMaxHealth, an independent health news website, said: "As a Christian I believe this is morally wrong. I feel that this is just too far and that they are trying to do an experiment with the child.

"If they wanted to have a child, they could take an infant from an orphanage. They should not be doing this." source

OPRAH BOOK SCANDAL AUTHOR MARGARET B. JONES ADMITS SHE FAKED GANG MEMOIR LOVE AND CONSEQUENCES

When an author writes an autobiography it's based on true events that took place in their life, right?  At least that's our understanding of what a memoir should be. 

PHOTO VIA NYT

Well, apparently Margaret Seltzer didn't get that memo.  It turns out that she wrote and published Love and Consequences using the false name Margaret B. Jones and the entire book is fabricated.  Her book Love and Consequences is all about her life in the hood. Truth be told, she's from the suburbs and has been living good, not 'hood, her whole life.

And now, without further delay, we proudly present When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong: Lies and Consequences....

Check this out, Love and Consequences, by Margaret B. Jones a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, is a hoax.  Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.  Seltzer vividly wrote about her African-American foster brothers, Terrell and Taye, who joined the Bloods gang when they were 11 and 13.   Oh no she didn't go there, you've gotta be kidding!

Hold up, there's more.... She chronicled her experiences making drug deliveries for gang leaders at age 13 and how she was given her first gun as a birthday present when she was 14.  Seltzer told The New York Times, "One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot."  Come on, are you serious?

She was keeping it gangster but its all lies and none of it was true.  So, if she isn't a gang-banger, who is she really?  Home-girl has a vivid imagination and this would have been a great piece of fiction.  Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is white, grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. 

Seltzer graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood.  She never lived with a foster family, she never ran drugs for any gang members, nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon as she claimed in the book.

This is how she got busted.  Ms. Seltzer admitted to the hoax only after Cyndi Hoffman, Seltzer's older sister saw an article in the House & Home section of The New York Times which included a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya.  Ms. Hoffman called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer's story was untrue.  We'll see what happens next, stay tuned..... (source)

Oprah Winfrey Announces New Network 'OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network'

 

The talk-show queen, publisher, humanitarian and multi-media titan announced her new joint venture with Discovery Communications to form the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). 

Oprah will be named Chairman of The Oprah Winfrey Network, LLC at the end of 2008. OWN will replace the Discovery Health Channel and debut in the second-half of 2009 in more than 70  million US homes.

The cashless deal announced Tuesday, is a 50-50 partnership between Discovery and Ms. Winfrey's privately held Harpo Productions, Inc. and also includes the Oprah.com website.

She said the latest venture fulfilled a goal she had written in her personal diary 15 years ago to own a network that would create "mindful - not mindless - television." [SOURCE]

OPRAH WINFREY LAUNCHING HER OWN CABLE NETWORK

Talk show Queen Oprah Winfrey is launching her own cable network.

Winfrey says the network will debut in 2009. Her production company, Harpo Productions, is collaborating with Discovery Communications to launch the channel. “Fifteen years ago, I wrote in my journal that one day I would create a television network, as I always felt my show was just the beginning of what the future could hold. For me, the launch of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Network’ is the evolution of the work I’ve been doing on television all these years and a natural extension of my show,” the 53-year-old said. [SOURCE]