Will new pope help
PETA’s cause?

PETA believes it may have a powerful new ally: the pope.

The star-studded animal rights group — whose high-profile spokespeople include Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson — is saying that Pope Benedict XVI is an animal-rights supporter and they’re hoping he will join their cause.

PETA wasted no time in firing off a letter to the pope yesterday, congratulating him and asking, “Would you please encourage people to consider the suffering of animals by lending a supportive word to our efforts?”

The letter cited comments made by the pope three years ago when he was Cardinal Ratzinger: “Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”

“We’re not expecting him to appear in one of our ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’ ads,” a PETA spokesman told The Scoop, “but he’s got a history of speaking out about animal rights and now maybe Christians will understand and support our campaign against KFC.”

Host gets crass with Kidman

Mj Kim / Getty Images

Usually unflappable Nicole Kidman got so flustered during a recent BBC interview that she looked like she wanted to stop the conversation in the middle, according to viewers.

Kidman sat down with host Jonathan Ross, who repeatedly made lewd remarks to the star of “The Interpreter.” He said he’d like to share a Jacuzzi with Kidman and at another point, when she repeated some advice her mother gave her, he suggested that her mother was a “hard-nosed [bleep].”

“He also asked her if she was a ‘natural’ redhead and then launched into a story about his friend whose wife had gone to get a Brazilian bikini wax and when she got home her husband was like ‘what is that? It looks like a fish finger,’” says a source. “It was GROSS and Nicole got visibly upset and the next few questions she answered in one syllable only. All things considered, she was a pretty good sport about it.”

Notes from all over

Mj Kim / Getty Images

Lauren Bacall checks phone books in various cities for people trying to cash in on her late husband’s name by referring to him, and allegedly sics her lawyers on them, even if it’s just a shoestring business. “She’d say, ‘Why are they making money off him? I have only a rent-controlled apartment,’” Toronto based lecture producer Bob Benia told the Toronto Star. “She’s angry as a barbed-wire fence to keep people out of her zone because she is not comfortable in her own skin.”   . . . Kevin Bacon says he and wife Kyra Sedgwick have hurt their careers by living in New York, rather than L.A. “Definitely, it’s a huge sacrifice,” Bacon told the Hollywood Reporter. “There’s no doubt about the fact that both Kyra and I would have really different careers if we lived in L.A. It’s a company town; it’s where you need to be.”  . . .Failed VP candidate John Edwards was spotted shopping around Christ Child Opportunity, a Georgetown thrift store. “He was with a woman, I think it was his wife, and they were just poking around the merchandise,” a source tells The Scoop. “It’s a very hoity-toity thrift store.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC.com

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