Link: My Way – Celebrity Gossip – New York Post.

Winona Ryder and other celebrity "intimates" of fictitious writer JT Leroy were part of the conspiracy that pulled off the biggest literary hoax this side of James Frey.

Courtney Love, Rosario Dawson, Tatum O’Neal and Susan Dey all claimed they were friends of the made-up teen hooker-turned-bard. And Italian actress Asia Argento even once told PAGE SIX that she was having Leroy’s baby.

It seems clear now that at least Ryder and Argento always knew that "JT Leroy" was actually Savannah Knoop,
a California woman who posed as the imaginary writer under wigs and
oversize sunglasses at book readings, and that Leroy’s prose was
actually written by Laura Albert.

Link: The Huffington Post.

When U,S, Tech Companies Cave to Chinese Censors, Who’s Really to Blame?

Danish cartoons was subsiding, a Congressional committee in D.C. last
week was shining a spotlight on another collision of censorious
tendencies and demands for free speech. This time the setting was the
Far East, not the Middle East, but the reaction in the U.S. was the
same: outrage.

[snip]

Already, according to the New York Times, there are 13 million bloggers in China. This is but one of many indications that the Chinese government is playing a losing game as it tries to enlist American companies in its censorship campaign. The American companies know this, even if the Chinese government doesn’t yet, which is why they want to stay. The free exchange of ideas is a growth market in China.

 

Plus, as the companies and others have pointed out, there is a bit of hypocrisy at play among the angered Congressional leaders. If they think doing business with China so unconscionably supports a regime that violates American free-speech values, why have they allowed the U.S. government to grant China "most favored nation" trading status, encouraging American companies to do business there in the first place?

Guardian Unlimited: Charles the political dissident, as revealed by his former aide.

Pince Charles regards himself as a "dissident working against the prevailing political consensus", who scatters furious letters to ministers on contentious issues and denounces elected leaders of other countries, it was revealed yesterday.

The views and practices of the heir to the throne were detailed in a remarkable witness statement by his former deputy private secretary and spin doctor, Mark Bolland, who claimed the prince routinely meddled in political issues and wrote sometimes in extreme terms to ministers, MPs and others in positions of political power and influence.