PETA does the E Street shuffle

Plus: My Big Fat Greek Cleavage

Michael Dwyer / AP file

PETE didn't want to offend the Boss.

By Jeannette Walls with Ashley Pearson

msnbc.com

updated 2:51 a.m. ET April 7, 2004

Those attack dogs at PETA have pulled in their fangs in deference to Bruce Springsteen.

The activist animal-rights group — which specializes in harassing celebs who are unkind to critters — killed an ad because Springsteen’s people said it might upset the star.

The ad is a send-up of the 1984 album “Born in the USA” with the famous cover image of the Boss’s behind, but PETA’s version shows a big bottom with what is unaffectionately known as repairman cleavage and the tagline: “Obese in the USA.”

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Springsteen’s people saw the ad and asked PETA to pull it, says a source.

IMAGE: Ad

“The ad was intended to parody the sad shape a meat-addicted America has taken since this classic album came out 2 decades ago,” PETA execs wrote in a memo.

“But Mr. Springsteen’s management felt that people might think we are spoofing Bruce himself, which was never the case.”

Out of deference to the Boss, who has a pro-animal history, PETA is yanking the ads.

My Big Fat Greek Cleavage
Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
Did Ladies Home Journal airbrush Nia Vardalos to give her more bodacious bosoms? That’s the charge that Vardalos made — then withdrew after an upset call from the mag.

The star of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” is on the cover of the April issue, and she had claimed that the big fat cleavage shown wasn’t hers. “Please let people know they airbrushed that cleavage,” Vardalos told a reporter for the Toronto Sun. “This unattainable body image that people are shown every day — nobody looks like that!”

Ladies Home Journal’s editor insists no one tinkered with Vardalos' bod. “As a matter of principle we do not doctor our photos or our images,” LHJ editor-in-chief Diane Salvatore said in a statement to The Scoop. “When we first heard Nia make this inaccurate statement we called the publicist who apologized and explained Nia thought she was being funny. But she has now assured us that she will take full prideful responsibility for her own God-given breasts. We applaud that.”

Notes from all over
Matthew Peyton / Getty Images
Moby’s side career as a DJ has its limits. The techno musician did a guest stint at a Manhattan nightclub called NASA on Saturday, but had to leave when the place got crowded. “I tend to get a bit claustrophobic in crowds” he confessed, “’cause I’m a wussie.” . . . Al Sharpton was a guest preacher at Cissy Houston’s vigil for drug-addicted children, like her daughter Whitney. . . . Debbie Harry, who knew how to be a messed-up blonde when Courtney Love was still a toddler, has mixed reviews for Love. “She’s an incredible performer, and her madness is such a great part of that,” Harry tells Rolling Stone in its upcoming issue. “But the band, musically, was really very ... nothing.”