Hey Stephen King — nice glass house!

Courtney Hazlett The Scoop

During a recent Q&A with Time magazine, novelist Stephen King recounted an interview he did with “Nightline,” in which he discussed his take on the torture technique of waterboarding. “If the Bush administration didn’t think it was torture,” King said, “they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.” 

The fantastic inappropriateness of King’s comments — suggesting that the President’s daughter be subjected to waterboarding — is the most headline-worthy statement of the interview, and rightly so. However, a closer look at the context of his comments reveals another disturbing revelation. The backdrop to King’s waterboarding comments was actually his suggestion that Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears be named Time’s “Person of the Year” because the entertainment stories are what the media are focusing on. After meandering through several points about the demise of American culture, King says, “The difference is that Britney is now famous for being famous. Her sales have gone down with almost every album, bigger and bigger jumps, so that nobody really cares about her music anymore.

Stephen King, please consider the following two words: Glass houses.

You don’t have to look far to find an instance where King’s stone throwing is inappropriate. King’s film “The Mist” opened last weekend and earned $8.9 million — meager by nearly all studio standards. In the Time interview, it’s pointed out that many of the miniseries and movies in King’s franchises were “stinkers,” to which King responded, “I don't try to maintain quality control.”

The point is not to highlight every perceived failure in King’s extremely prolific career. The point is that it’s foolish for King to suggest that Spears is the first celebrity famous for being famous. Doing so only further dilutes the larger political statement King is attempting to make, and it creates an appearance that King holds himself above a definition of celebrity that he seems to benefit greatly from.

Marie backs Romney for ’08
Marie Osmond has been all but consumed by “Dancing With the Stars,” but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been paying attention to current events — namely the upcoming presidential election.

“She’s leaning very heavily toward Mitt Romney,” says a source very close to Osmond. “Just because she brought her 90-or-so Mormon relatives on the Oprah show, it doesn’t mean she’s backing exactly who Oprah is backing. She’s interested in seeing a Mormon become president.”

Amy Winehouse: Behind the tour cancellation
Brit rocker Amy Winehouse canceled the remainder of her 2007 tour, and although it hardly comes as a surprise to her loyal fans, Blender magazine isn’t exactly shocked, either. The mag chronicles its interview with Winehouse, saying, “her words are slurred, her eyelids drooping.  Her head wobbles into a nod.  She falls asleep for a second, wakes with a start, mutters and drops off again. The smoldering cigarette in her left hand falls to the floor.” Yikes.

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