Brad Pitt found himself desperate for some good publicity, and some publicity which didn’t involve a thirsty wannabe Instagram influencer or one of his ex-wives. So Brad arranged a lil’ photoshoot for himself doing charity work in LA – convenient how the light was just right and his mask came undone at just the right moment!

Brad Pitt spends hours delivering meals to LA housing project https://t.co/6vhZLzdnkh pic.twitter.com/eOvCHCw36a

— Page Six (@PageSix) November 19, 2020

Lainey at LaineyGossip also called shenanigans on these photos and how they were carefully released to coincide with the news about Judge Ouderkirk staying on Brad’s divorce case. I think it’s more than a tit-for-tat about the divorce though – I think Brad just wants to rebrand himself (for the millionth time) as Good Guy Brad, the dude who quietly volunteers at a worthy charity. “Quietly,” as in “arrange to have it strategically leaked to the Daily Mail.”

Brad Pitt has been quietly helping to feed the less fortunate in one of LA’s most deprived housing projects for months, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. Community leader DeAnthony Langston described the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star as a ‘Good Samaritan’ for supporting the Watts area of South LA during the pandemic. DeAnthony explained that the Oscar-winner first showed up in Watts this summer with his friend Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist.

He says Brad told him: ‘You could really use us right now because white guilt is at an all-time high.’

Since then the actor has been back some 30 times, all while dealing with the fallout from the pandemic and his messy court battle for custody of the six kids he shares with ex Angelina Jolie. DeAnthony, who runs a program teaching youngsters life skills through basketball called Real Run Foundation, says he spoke with Brad a couple of times without even realizing who it was due to the mask he used to protect himself from Covid-19.

Dad-of-two DeAnthony, 54, told DailyMail.com: ‘I met this guy a couple of times while we were handing out boxes and I didn’t know who he was. Then one of my friends was talking about Brad Pitt and I was like ”What do you mean, Brad Pitt? Why didn’t you tell me?” Turns out I had talked to Brad Pitt for 30 minutes and I didn’t even know it was him. He was just trying to find out about how everybody is doing. He was so cool. He was like ”You could really use us right now because white guilt is at an all-time high”. I had just lost some really close friends and I was talking to him about it, and since then he always asks how I’m doing.’

DeAnthony said, ‘He really puts the work in, he’s amazing. Recently he jumped on his BMW motorcycle and was riding it around the projects. Other times he has brought a big old truck with boxes of food in it. He and Flea order all kinds of food – lettuces, fruits, vegetables, onions, potatoes, milk, cheese, chicken, turkey, yogurt, juice – enough food for the whole week, and then we hand it out to the people who need it.’

[From The Daily Mail]

“You could really use us right now because white guilt is at an all-time high.” I… don’t get it? Yes, white guilt is at an all-time high, but why would a charity working primarily in Black neighborhoods particularly “need” guilty white folks? Surely it would be “I really needed to do something because my white guilt was at an all-time high”? I feel like Brad’s publicist laid out some careful talking points and maybe there was a mix-up!

Anyway, I’m actually not mad at Brad for volunteering, even if it was for show or for this little PR blitz. If he’s really buying food and delivering food, good for him. It’s a lot better than driving his motorcycle around a Black Lives Matter rally.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

When President Obama came into office in 2009, he was faced with the near-collapse of the American economy and thousands of troops engaged in two different wars. He put his head down and got to work, and in doing so, he completely dismissed calls from within his own party to investigate the Bush administration. Specifically, many Democrats wanted an investigation into how the Bushies lied us into war in Iraq. I remember also being sort of confused by why the Obama/Eric Holder Justice Dept. didn’t do a wider investigation into the massive financial fraud and “white collar crime” that led to the 2008 financial collapse (to this day, only one banker has gone to jail for any of it). Obama also rejected calls for any kind of “truth and reconciliation” commission.

So, that’s the recent history. As mad as I was at George W. Bush and his cronies, I understood Obama’s point of view that launching a bunch of investigations and commissions would end up bogging everything down. But what about the past four years of Donald Trump’s fascism? Do we, perhaps, need President Biden to order some investigations into Trumpland’s criminality? Well, President Biden doesn’t want to do it.

President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn’t want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.

Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations. They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.”

Another Biden adviser said, “He’s going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them.”

Any decisions by Biden’s Justice Department regarding Trump, his staff, his associates, his business or his policies wouldn’t affect investigations by state officials, including Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has fought to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

As Biden tries to balance his own inclinations with pressures from within his party, his advisers stressed that he is seeking to reset the dynamic between the White House and the Justice Department from what it has been under Trump. Biden wants his Justice Department to function independently from the White House, aides said, and Biden isn’t going to tell federal law enforcement officials whom or what to investigate or not to investigate.

“His overarching view is that we need to move the country forward,” an adviser said. “But the most important thing on this is that he will not interfere with his Justice Department and not politicize his Justice Department.”

A third Biden adviser said that when it comes to any Trump-related investigations, the expectation is “it’s going to be very situational” and “depending on the merits.” Broadly, Biden’s priorities will be the economy, the coronavirus, climate change and race relations, not looking back at the Trump administration, an adviser said.

[From NBC News]

There’s more stuff in the NBC News piece, but those are the broad strokes – Biden has no personal interest in ordering any investigations into Trumpland. But! I think it’s also sort of notable that in the same breath, his team is saying that Biden wants to go back to the days where the DOJ largely operated with independence. As in, if the FBI or Biden-era Justice Dept are investigating Trumpland, then that doesn’t come from Biden and they’re completely independent. So it will be for all of the state and civil issues, of which there are plenty.

Here’s what I really think – I think that even if Biden wants to avoid investigating Trumpland, his DOJ will end up doing it anyway. There was literally criminality EVERYWHERE. The Biden administration won’t be able to walk into a room without accidentally uncovering ten criminal acts by the Trumpers. Not to mention all of the f–king criminality JUST AROUND THE ELECTION. Donald Trump is committing election fraud as we f–king speak!! Jesus Christ.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

I’ve always found it weird how Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber have rarely crossed paths — at least publicly. Justin was already a megastar by the time Shawn even stepped onto the scene, but in my head these two princes of pop, who grew up down the highway from each other, should have been buddies fr…

I’ve always found it weird how Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber have rarely crossed paths — at least publicly. Justin was already a megastar by the time Shawn even stepped onto the scene, but in my head these two princes of pop, who grew up down the highway from each other, should have been buddies fr…

In all of the discussion and Streisand-Effecting of The Crown’s Season 4, one thing is very clear: the Windsors are very unhappy with this season, the season where Lady Diana Spencer is introduced and basically thrown to the wolves as she tries to navigate a marriage to a man who doesn’t love her. I hope the actors don’t take it personally – most the ire is being directed at Peter Morgan, who writes the show. Emma Corrin was on the Tamron Hall Show (via Zoom) and she was asked about the negative reaction from the Establishment. Corrin said: “I understand why people would be upset because this is history. And even with Diana, it’s still very much fresh, everything that happens. So I do really understand if people would be upset.” Yeah – I love that she didn’t apologize. She didn’t need to. Speaking of, the Daily Beast had an excellent analysis piece about WHY the Windsors are so mad about this season.

Peter Morgan himself has said, as The Daily Beast reported, that key scenes in the first episode of Season 4 in which Charles’ great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, writes to the prince and orders him to stop his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and marry a “well-tempered girl” are “made up.” But this doesn’t invalidate what we are watching; it does not mean the palace’s whining has any validity.

If “trolling” is the most devastating insult the palace can come up with, then that is an embarrassing admission in itself. It reveals not only that the palace lacks a substantial retort to The Crown’s themes and general retelling of history, but also that what The Crown is generally showing us in Season 4 is rooted in fact.

If it is not “an accurate portrayal” of what happened, what does it get wrong? How strange that the palace source—so free and easy in insulting the work of Morgan and the Crown team—doesn’t tell us. Morgan made the Queen herself intelligible and yet still mysterious in The Queen starring Helen Mirren; his writing in The Crown, similarly, is hardly that of an embittered republican. He fillets character relentlessly, but with a fascinated eye and even hand.

What the royals are really upset about is not the presence of made-up letters; it is seeing the very personal pain of that time recognizably reflected back at them. They know the public knows what a lousy husband Charles was to Diana; they know this young woman was gaslit and traumatized as soon as she entered the family. But all the books and newspaper articles about such things do not compare to seeing it on screen.

Here, the royal family is shown for what it is: an institution and machine that you either adapt to, get crushed by, or learn to craft a place within. The Crown Season 4 shows that the royal family used Diana, ignored her pain, and then were horrified when she grew strong herself and learned to dexterously play them at their own game.

The condemnation of The Crown is unmerited from the royal family because the series could have actually been much harsher towards the institution. Instead, Morgan and his collaborators are sympathetic to all the main players, even when the viewer could be forgiven for feeling very little. Even when somebody does something awful, or says something high-handed or cruel, the camera and script stay with them long enough for us to understand motives and causes.

This fourth season doesn’t just tell the story of a turbulent decade in recent royal history. It puts the royals on glossy trial. Yet somehow this interrogation—despite all the huffing and puffing from the palace—does not damn them. The Crown is relentlessly, sometimes irritatingly, fair to the royals; it seeks to understand and contextualize all their excesses, eccentricities, and frailties.

[From The Daily Beast]

Yep, all of this. It’s not like Peter Morgan has gone so far away from the actual history: the entire season is very rooted in fact, and despite the palace insults towards Morgan, he has been pretty fair to most of the Windsors throughout the series. This piece gets to the fundamental issue of why the Windsors hate this season: because they KNOW they mistreated Diana, a beautiful, charismatic, sympathetic young woman and instead of breaking her, she learned from them and threw it all back in their faces. And she’s still haunting them now. As she should.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

Dear Gossips, BTS’s new album, BE, their second album of 2020, dropped today. A video for the first track, “Life Goes On”, dropped at the same time and is already breaking records. Don’t ask me which records because this band and its ARMY break so many records so often I can’t keep track – just know…

Dear Gossips, BTS’s new album, BE, their second album of 2020, dropped today. A video for the first track, “Life Goes On”, dropped at the same time and is already breaking records. Don’t ask me which records because this band and its ARMY break so many records so often I can’t keep track – just know…

Tomorrow will mark the two-week anniversary of the election being called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Two weeks ago today, we already knew the trend lines and a majority of the votes had been counted in all the swing states, so it was completely clear that Biden-Harris had won the election even when we were talking on Thursday, November 5th and Friday, November 6th. Still, we were good and we waited for everything to become official and all of Steve Kornackis and John Kings to really say it. And it was such a relief!

Everything that’s happened around the Republican Party since then has been an absolute ratf–king catastrophe. Donald Trump, arguably the dumbest man on earth, has been committing election fraud in plain view, all while he hides away, Grey Gardens-style, in the White House bunker. He rage-tweets delusional sh-t all day and everything just feels like the biggest, weakest crybaby loser tantrum of all time. Masculine, Trump is not. But none of this would be happening if the Republican Party hadn’t allowed it for the past two weeks. They said nothing as he barked delusions on Election Night. Mitch McConnell laughingly mocked Democrats and said it was Trump’s right to try to sue and fraud his way into a second term. And now here we are.

Rudy Giuliani’s hair-melting press conference was apparently the last straw for a lot of people. The NY Times and Washington Post have similar analysis pieces today: “Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History” and “Trump uses power of presidency to try to overturn the election and stay in office.” It’s all true and everyone should be alarmed. Including Republicans.

Meanwhile, Trump has been telling people (from the baby bunker, one would assume) that this is all payback for Democrats… being concerned that he’s a Russian asset. Which he is.

President Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President’s thinking told CNN on Thursday.

The President’s refusal to concede, as CNN has previously reported, stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him have said. Trump continues to hold a grudge against those who he claims undercut his election by pointing to Russian interference efforts, and he has suggested it is fair game to not recognize Joe Biden as the President-elect, even though Clinton conceded on election night in 2016 and the Trump transition was able to begin immediately.

Trump has heard from a multitude of friends and business associates who have been urging him to at least let the transition begin, even if he doesn’t want to concede, another source who is also familiar with the President’s thinking told CNN. His answer: No. You’re wrong. “Absolutely wrong,” according to one source.

When Trump has been told to get Rudy Giuliani and other members of his legal team off the case, the President has disagreed. He wants to continue the fight, and people close to the President have even expressed concern that he is buying into Giuliani’s false claims that his legal efforts can change the election’s outcome. He has shown no signs of backing down, even as those around him continue indicating that the end is near. Those allies have expressed worry that a sizable faction of the country thinks the election was stolen from Trump and that Biden isn’t receiving national security briefings.

Trump is listening to his friends, this source said, but hurriedly ends conversations because he disagrees. He doesn’t want to hear what he doesn’t believe. Inside the White House, it seems as if many people have decided to let this play out, either because they want to or because they have no choice. Son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is playing it cool, this source said, while daughter Ivanka Trump has pretty much removed herself from this, as CNN reported last week.

[From CNN]

This is terrifying. All of it. Remember when one of the Trump kids told the story about their grandfather having dementia and still wanting to go into work, so they just let him sit in the office with a stack of papers? That’s what the Republicans are doing with Donald Trump right now, only he’s doing crimes and he’s supposed to be RUNNING THE COUNTRY. He is not mentally “there” and all he does is sit around and pout and spin his delusional crap and… no one f–king stops him. Dart him, net him and drag his ass out of there.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

I’m late coming to this story, but I promise that it’s worth it. So, you know how Pope Francis likes a juicy ass, right? Sorry, let me start at the beginning. Pope Francis is on Instagram. His handle is @franciscus and he mostly ‘grams about God. There are clips of his sermons and nice photos of him hanging out in the Vatican. The man is 83 years old and while I think Franny is “hip” for a man his age, I have no doubt that he has people managing his social media accounts. Or does he? Because it definitely feels like the Pope is sitting up there in the Vatican, looking at bubble-butt Instagrams.

The Vatican said it was seeking explanations from Instagram after Pope Francis’s official account liked a photo of a scantily dressed Brazilian model. It is unclear when the photo of Natalia Garibotto was given an endorsement by the pope’s verified account, but the “like” was still visible on 13 November before being unliked the next day, according to the Catholic News Agency (CNA).

COY Co, Garibotto’s management company, made the most of the publicity and reposted the image on its own Instagram account last Friday saying the company had “received the POPE’S OFFICIAL BLESSING”. Garibotto, who has 2.4 million Instagram followers, is also reported to have joked: “At least I’m going to heaven.”

Citing sources close to the Vatican’s press office, CNA said an investigation was under way to determine how the photo came to be liked. A team of people manage the pope’s various social media accounts.

A Vatican spokesperson told the Guardian: “We can exclude that the ‘like’ came from the Holy See, and it has turned to Instagram for explanations.”

[From The Guardian]

What’s funnier, the fact that the Holy See is an ass man, or that the Vatican is now scrambling and launching a g-ddamn investigation into the Pope’s ass fixation? Let the old guy look at ass photos, damn!! He’s not hurting anybody. And wow, suddenly it’s a big deal that a grown man likes looking at adult women, huh? Anyway, I hope people at Instagram are laughing about this. Their contribution to the investigation will be telling the Vatican, “well, this happened because the Pope hit the ‘like’ button, case closed.” I mean, obviously someone on the Vatican staff did it. But if you have any tips for the Vatican’s crack team of investigators, you can call the Vatican Tip Line at 1-800-BIG-BUTTZ.

Vatican probing Pope Francis’ Instagram ‘liking’ Natalia Garibotto photo https://t.co/WaVu5ye7Ze pic.twitter.com/YvonkrbcVD

— New York Post (@nypost) November 18, 2020

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Anna Wintour has been somewhat unproblematic about the pandemic. Her son is a doctor, so she took the pandemic seriously early on. At Conde Nast publications, they encouraged their employees to work from home whenever possible. Anna personally encouraged mask-wearing from the start. She may be tone-deaf about almost everything, but there wasn’t much to criticize about her pandemic behavior. Except that Vogue is still gonna Vogue, which included greenlighting a sappy article and photo editorial of a glamorous, well-attended wedding in Martha’s Vineyard. The article got pulled when there were complaints, especially given that the wedding in question was likely the source of a spike in Covid cases in Martha’s Vineyard.

Vogue abruptly pulled a piece from its Web site that gushed over a Martha’s Vineyard destination wedding — after it was discovered that the nuptials were potentially a superspreader event on the tony enclave. On Monday, Vogue posted “This Outdoor Martha’s Vineyard Wedding Was All Fall Elegance,” about the wedding of an NYC beauty publicist and a financial analyst. By Tuesday, the article was removed. The piece was reportedly 1,000 words with 68 photos.

A high-powered attorney on the island sent an angry e-mail to Anna Wintour, blasting her mag for “praising” the event, which the Vineyard Gazette covered as the potential origin of the uptick in COVID-19 cases in the area. A spokesperson for Vogue explained to Page Six that the story was taken down before the e-mail, but that someone else had been in contact and “an editorial decision (which of course Anna is involved in) was made.”

The rep added that as part of the coverage, “our edit team ensured that appropriate measures were being taken to prevent the spread … However, as no gathering has zero risk, we found out afterward that guests had contracted COVID-19 — and believe they did at the wedding.”

A local told us, “Celebs and powerful people here on the island are pissed off at Anna for featuring the wedding … It’s been a safe place and people were upset.” Another angry local added, “It glorified having a wedding with people during COVID. A potential bride reading that article could think, ‘Gee whiz, I could do it just like that and we won’t have any problem.’ [The article could have had] a real benefit if Vogue disclosed that despite the fact that precautions were taken, people were exposed.”

While many seem to blame this specific ceremony, a local health official told us, “I can only confirm that a wedding was held on Martha’s Vineyard in October that resulted in 10 positive cases, eight of them on the island. Whether or not this wedding was the root cause of infections on the island has not been determined.”

[From Page Six]

Was this all Anna Wintour’s fault? Of course not. There’s enough blame to go around – to the bride and groom who insisted on throwing their wedding in the middle of a pandemic, to the Vogue staffers who apparently were on the ground to cover the wedding, and to all of the people who put together the Vogue piece, none of whom stopped to think “is this a terrible message to be sending?” And “are we killing people just to showcase a glamorous wedding in a pandemic?” The fact that this wedding was probably a superspreader event… well. I really don’t get it with the big weddings, people. Like, if you just *have* to get married this year (or next year), just do it with a handful of people and wear masks and do it that way. You shouldn’t start your married life by infecting dozens of people with a deadly virus.

(Oh, and since this wedding, the island has had 118 positive cases.)

Vogue described the October event as “This outdoor wedding on Martha’s Vineyard was all fall elegance.” The Martha’s Vineyard Times reported, “Photos showed very few people wearing masks, and guests sitting elbow-to-elbow.” Result: super-spreader event. https://t.co/cH9NVXSHKE

— Walter Shapiro (@MrWalterShapiro) November 19, 2020

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, IG.