From what I hear of France’s domestic political situation, President Macron is getting his ass handed to him on a regular basis. But his presidency has been marked by his internationalism, and his ability to showcase France in the best light on an international stage. He is, frankly, really good at the diplomatic and foreign policy part of his job. It was so smart for the French government to stage a huge celebration for the reopening of Notre Dame, after a five-year restoration-and-repair job following the 2019 fire. Macron invited world leaders and titans of business to attend. Every major attendee got a photo with President Macron and Madame Macron inside the cathedral. Special VIPs also got a special greeting at Palais de l’Élysée.

Well, Prince William did not get the special VIP greeting at Elysee. That was seemingly reserved for Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. First, Macron outmaneuvered Trump’s stupid handshake sh-t, then Macron made Trump and Zelenskyy pose together. This speaks volumes about Macron’s concern and NATO’s concern about what the incoming Trump administration is going to do about Ukraine. Macron is openly trying to influence Trump to NOT do whatever Putin tells him to do.

The Macrons did give Prince William his own photo-op inside the cathedral. In case you’re looking at President Macron and William and wondering what the age difference is… Macron turns 47 years old in two weeks. William just turned 42 in June. William looks about ten years older. William was supposed to meet with First Lady Jill Biden before the reopening ceremony, but that meeting was canceled because of the weather. They did speak inside the cathedral, and Trump and William also shook hands on camera. Kensington Palace briefed everyone far and wide that William is an emerging statesman and that he met with Jill Biden and Donald Trump to “discuss the special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K.” Some people theorized that William probably brought up deporting Harry from the US. Sh-t, I don’t know. It sounds like something he would do.

The Prince of Wales has become the first member of the Royal Family to meet @realDonaldTrump since he became President Elect. The pair have met in Paris at the re-opening of Notre Dame. The PE told the media William ‘was doing a fantastic job’. pic.twitter.com/LxPoyzrAjn

— Rebecca English (@RE_DailyMail) December 7, 2024

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.

On Friday, the Wales family attended the Princess of Wales’s Together at Christmas event at Westminster Abbey. This is now the fourth year of this “Christmas carol” event and this year’s was notable not for anything that happened during the show, but because Kate “planned” it and attended it. This is basically of only three annual events on her schedule which she bothers with at this point – this, Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday. That’s it. Her appearance this year obviously comes after her health struggles in the past twelve months, although unnamed sources have indicated that Kate was actually having health issues long before her January “planned abdominal surgery.”

For this year’s Together at Christmas event, Kate wore a new (?) coat by Sarah Burton for McQueen. She keeps wearing Burton-for-McQueen pieces, and I keep wondering if she’s pulling out pieces from her storage, because Sarah Burton hasn’t been creative director of McQueen in over a year. Has this coat been languishing in some storage set for a few years? It’s “timeless” in the sense that it looks really dated, and that’s what Kate likes. She asks designers to make coats and dresses which look like sh-t her mother wore in the ‘80s. As you can tell, I rolled my eyes at the gigantic black chest bow. Are bows the new buttons? Oh, wait, the coat has giant buttons too. Apparently, underneath the coat, Kate wore an Emilia Wickstead skirt. We didn’t see it because Kate did not remove her coat inside the Abbey.

As for the kids… I went back and double-checked, Princess Charlotte is wearing the same burgundy coat she wore to last year’s Together at Christmas event. Did Charlotte’s clothing allowance get slashed too?? Prince William, Louis and George all wore ties in the burgundy/red range, so the family was all coordinated, although I do think Kate and Charlotte’s coats clashed with one another.

Paloma Faith (of all people) asked Kate about her health at the event, and Kate told her: “I didn’t know this year was going to be the year that I’ve just had… The unplanned, exactly. But I think lots of people this year have had such challenging times, and many who are here today.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Before Friday, we hadn’t seen Carole and Michael Middleton since Wimbledon back in July. They really can disappear for months at a time and the whole thing has gotten so mysterious. More than anything, the messy situation with the Middletons has convinced me that some serious sh-t has gone down in the past year and a half. The Middletons’ business collapsed last year, they practically went into hiding, the royalist press published many highly critical articles about their grift, and then magically, it was all forgotten in May/June of this year. Carole got sh-thoused at Royal Ascot AND got photo-ops with Prince William and various royals. Then she was seated in the Royal Box at Wimbledon. A deal was struck and the biggest “tell” is that no one in the British media is talking about the Party Pieces lies and catastrophes.

So Carole and Michael Middleton came out on Friday for the Princess of Wales’s Together at Christmas event. The whole Middleton clan was there – Pippa, James Middleton and James’s wife Alizee. The only one missing was Pippa’s terribly moderately wealthy husband. TMW James Matthews went to last year’s event. I wonder why he skipped this year. A professional separation, perchance??

I actually like what Pippa wore – a bouclé coat-dress from Karen Millen, paired with red pumps and a red clutch. The dress is very “ladies who lunch,” but Pippa really is a lady who lunches. Alizee wore a midnight-blue velvet pantsuit with a white pussybow blouse. It’s sort of offbeat but fine. Carole wore a clean white coat and her hair seems to be a few shades darker these days. I would love to know how she fills her days.

Meanwhile, something really bizarre happened. At one point, Carole walked side-by-side with Lady Gabriella Windsor. Now, Gabriella is reportedly close to Prince William, and you could make the argument that maybe Gabriella gets along with the Middletons. But what was bizarre about it is… Gabriella’s parents were at the event too. Why was she hanging with Carole and not Princess Michael of Kent? Why did Gabriella and Carole make a point of walking out together??

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Cover Images.

For several months, the British media has been trying to make “the Sussexes are professionally separated” into a storyline. The evidence of this “separation” is that Meghan and Harry have done some separate work events, and Harry has traveled solo for business. So, we’ve now established that couples have to be joined at the hip 24-7 or else we get to scream “separation” at them constantly. So it appears that Zara Tindall went to the Princess of Wales’s Together at Christmas event without her husband. The Duchess of Edinburgh also went to the event solo. Professional separations abound, apparently.

These are yet more photos from the Together at Christmas caroling event at Westminster Abbey. There are fewer and fewer royals and royal-adjacents in attendance in each successive year. King Charles and Queen Camilla skipped, of course. So did Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank. So we ended up with Zara Tindall, Duchess Sophie, Princess Beatrice, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and… Prince Michael of Kent and Princess Michael of Kent. I think the Gloucesters were there as well. Not exactly slim pickings, but previous years have had much higher attendance with the Windsor clan.

I thought Beatrice looked the best out of a motley crew. She wore a lovely coordinated burgundy coat and patterned dress, and she had a cute little bump too (she’s pregnant with her second). Zara tried to look snazzy in a velvet pantsuit. Sophie didn’t even bother to try to look seasonal.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Newly single Sabrina Carpenter stepped out in NYC. [Just Jared]
Emily Blunt wore Tamara Ralph in Saudi Arabia. [RCFA]
Jane Fonda loved Angelina Jolie in Maria. [LaineyGossip]
ASAP Rocky adores Rihanna. [Socialite Life]
Why would anyone invest in the Hawk Tuah lady? [Pajiba]
Blake Lively towers over Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande. [Go Fug Yourself]
Sky Ferriera has a song on the Babygirl soundtrack. [OMG Blog]
The “Alexander Hamilton ghost” has been cast in Ghosts. [Seriously OMG]
Is a Southern Charm star really a lawyer? [Starcasm]
There was a huge earthquake in California yesterday. [Hollywood Life]
Pete Davidson talks about how SNL really doesn’t pay much. [Buzzfeed]

A few weeks ago, Angelina Jolie was spotted at the Met, attending a performance of Puccini’s Tosca with Pablo Larrain. It came during one of several trips she’s made to New York in recent months, almost all of which have been to promote Larrain’s Maria, where Jolie plays Maria Callas. What we didn’t know last month was that a New York Times reporter was along for the ride at the opera, and that it was all for a rather lovely piece about Jolie and about opera. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Jolie identified with Callas’s isolation. “Loneliness is not a bad thing. We’re both seen as strong, but actually we’re very vulnerable and human. I don’t think either one of us is necessarily comfortable being public.”

Jolie was worried about her singing voice: For years, she had carried the trauma of a boyfriend telling her she had a bad voice and that she should be grateful she had other talents. “It was nasty, and it was more than once. Then I stopped singing.” She told Larraín that she had “a lot of emotion and pain that I did not feel like letting go.” She was not very familiar with classical music; she had grown up listening to punk bands like the Clash. And she wasn’t sure she had the technique to sing — until that point, she had avoided even “Happy Birthday.”

She sang “Piangete voi?” at La Scala: The aria was one of the most challenging on the list, but it was also Jolie’s favorite. Dressed in a costume that matched Callas’s, with a white headpiece and navy dress, she sang before a crowd of about 500 people. “It’s like jumping off a cliff. There was just nothing I could do but try to give everything I had.”

Her mother’s death: Her mother’s death from cancer in 2007, at 56, made Jolie feel she no longer had the luxury of time. “I don’t want to be comfortable or too relaxed,” she said. “I want to live fully.”

She’s concerned about revealing too many truths. “When you are stripped of so many things that make you feel safe and whole, you really sit with what matters to you and what you want to give every breath in your body for. In the end, I found a lot of softness.” She said she hoped that despite all that, Callas was able to “feel safe to be soft and hopefully eventually rediscover a level of joy.”

Has Jolie found joy again? “I don’t know about that. But I hope for it. I hope to find a lightness that I may have lost along the way.”

[From The NY Times]

There’s a lot in the Times piece about how Jolie has a rare, genuine elusiveness and not even Pablo Larrain really knows her and they worked together for months. When Jolie walked into the Met, apparently people gasped and began murmuring and trying to take her photo too. The Met let Jolie linger after Tosca – she and Pablo met several people working on the opera, and they let Jolie go on stage and examine the set. It’s actually a really lovely portrait, and Jolie’s unwillingness to talk about her personal life just made it even more interesting. I mean, she’s been doing this for a while, she knows how to talk around her eight-year-plus divorce. “When you are stripped of so many things that make you feel safe and whole” – f–k Brad Pitt. She’s spent eight years just trying to feel safe and whole again.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

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Kathy Griffin is a divisive figure. Her 2017 photo with a decapitated Trump was not particularly funny and it was definitely ill-conceived. At the same time, I think the backlash was of the variety and vehemence that gets applied to women exponentially more than to men. Kathy has definitely felt the consequences from that photoshoot seven years ago and was banned from many major talk shows. Jimmy Kimmel has always welcomed Kathy on his show though. Kathy was on Kimmel last week and spoke about attending a party hosted by Paris Hilton — that she was legitimately invited to by Paris herself — and Kathy painting the (pink) picture of the scene had me in stitches. She also randomly shared that every time Sharon Stone cancels on her, she adds Sharon to a large group text. Jimmy ate it up:

Here’s hoping Sharon Stone is familiar with the concept of muting.

On Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kathy Griffin shared her petty tactic for getting even with friends who have wronged her in relatively small ways — and the stunt is so deliciously petty that even Kimmel said he wanted to steal it.

“My new favorite hobby is that every time Sharon Stone blows me off for a dinner date, I add her to a random text chain,” the comedian revealed, causing Kimmel to crack up. “And Jimmy, she, like, wants to kill me.”

“How many times has this happened?” Kimmel asked.

“Around four,” Griffin responded. “And they’re like 17-person text chains.”

“And it’ll say, ‘Sharon Stone has been added to the conversation?’” Kimmel asked.

“And it’s her real number,” Griffin added. “It’s not her office number.”

“I like that,” Kimmel said giggling. “I’m going to use that, I like that idea.”

[From HuffPost]

I’m Team Kathy on this one! I mean, Sharon Stone had to have had an inkling of the risks she was taking on by giving her direct number to Kathy Griffin. To assume Kathy wouldn’t do something like this, well, I think that would be Sharon’s error in judgment and not Kathy’s. Also, that really is a top notch way to irk someone. Or at the very least, I can attest that it bugged the crap out of me over Thanksgiving when a family member sent a “Happy Holiday” text to everyone in their family, not realizing (or just not caring) that not everyone in that chain was family to each other. Days later I was still getting pinged with responses from unknown numbers. Ok, I know I sound very Grinchy with this story, but I still stand by my stance!

Kathy was officially on Jimmy’s show to show Princess Kate how to cosplay a Christmas present promote her latest stand up tour, including an upcoming stop in her hometown Chicago on New Year’s Eve — her first NYE gig since CNN fired her:

“I’m calling it ‘My Life on the PTSD-List’ because I really do have freakin’ PTSD,” Griffin explained to Kimmel Tuesday night. “I mean, the Trump thing, and then I got lung cancer, and I have a vocal cord implant, and I’m going through a divorce, and I was addicted to prescription pills and now I’m 4 ½ years sober,” Griffin said.

Griffin said she’s thrilled her life is finally turning around thanks to her new tour.

“And I want to tell you something — this is really corny,” Griffin said to Kimmel. “Every single live show, and I’ve done about 50 shows so far, I always make a point to say, ‘And the one late night host who never ditched me was Jimmy Kimmel.’”

“And not only would I not ditch you, I look forward to us spending time in prison together in January,” Kimmel joked, referencing his own long-running feud with Trump.

I miss the days when Jimmy was joking about Trump’s potential jail time, sigh…

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King Charles has sat for many portraits over the years, but my favorite is still “the bloody king” portrait by Jonathan Yeo. Yeo started the portrait when Charles was Prince of Wales, but it was unveiled this year to widespread raves. It’s just unique and even republicans thought it slapped. Unfortunately, Yeo’s portrait cannot be Charles’s official portrait, the portrait on display in government buildings and churches. So Charles offered Church of England churches a different, less bloody portrait to put on display. Hilarious news: most of the churches declined the offer of a free portrait.

Most Church of England churches declined to apply for a free portrait of the King, figures show. Public institutions across the UK were offered a photograph of the King wearing the Royal Navy uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet to celebrate the start of his reign. While the offer was taken up by all 23 HM Coastguard centres, 25 per cent of Church of England (CofE) churches obliged.

Only 4,031 of the 15,815 churches – of which the King is the Supreme Governor – ordered the portrait, which was taken by the photographer Hugo Burnand at Windsor Castle last year. His Majesty the King’s Portrait Scheme was a voluntary programme offering a free framed portrait of the King to any eligible public institution that requested one. It was started by the previous government following his Coronation in May 2023 and ended up costing £2.7 million.

The scheme ran from November to August this year and more than 20,500 portraits were provided, with varying degrees of acceptance from different public bodies. Lord lieutenancies followed the Coastguard with the highest rate of acceptance, as 75 of the 99 agreed to home one. Then came government departments, arm’s-length bodies and local authorities, cadet forces and coroners’ courts. A third, or 8,384 of almost 30,000 schools took up the offer. However, there was less enthusiasm from hospitals with 3 per cent ordering the photo. Of 275 universities and higher education institutions, 35 said yes.

After varying take-up of the scheme, its deadline was extended repeatedly. Final figures from the Cabinet Office show a total of 20,565 orders were received. This equated to a “total take-up across the UK from all eligible public authorities, including Government departments, arm’s-length bodies and local authorities and all other institutions” of 31 per cent. This was notably low from public authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which had acceptance rates of 13.7, 13.8 and 10.5 per cent, respectively. The total cost, which included delivery, was £2,710,705. The portraits cost a price of £131.81 on average.

[From The Telegraph]

“Ended up costing £2.7 million” – but who paid? Here in America, government offices switch out presidential portraits, and I would assume it’s a minor line item in the budget, paid by taxpayers. Charles is the head of state, so obviously churches and military installations and schools shouldn’t pay out of pocket to display a portrait of the head of state. But is it paid for the government or by Buckingham Palace? Hm. Anyway, it’s funny that so many churches refused the offer. Why would hospitals display the king’s portrait? Why would coroners’ offices display the portrait? It’s like the coronation all over again – Charles thought everyone would fall all over themselves to celebrate him, and no one went to those stupid watch parties and the whole thing could have been an email (or at least a much more subdued ceremony).

Photos courtesy of Buckingham Palace, Cover Images, Avalon Red.

I’ll defend Mindy Kaling on just about anything. Anything except for her boundary-defying mess with BJ Novak, her ex-boyfriend and “best friend” who is also godfather to her three children. From the way Mindy talks about him and their relationship, he’s always around her and the kids and he’s likely the only man who has ever been around the kids for any length of time. I’ll always defend Mindy’s choice to be a single mom on her terms and to quietly give birth to Kit, Spencer and Anne (Anne is only 9 months old!). Mindy has alluded to the idea that she wanted to do motherhood this way and she has the means to do so, so that’s great. But lord, I do hope that when the kids are all grown up, we finally get some kind of clarity on what BJ Novak’s role in all of this really was. Speaking of, apparently Novak dresses up like Santa every year for the kids.

Mindy Kaling is striving to keep the Christmas magic alive for her kids, even if one of them might be getting a little suspicious about B.J. Novak’s annual jolly disguise. While promoting season 3 of her show The Sex Lives of College Girls on Good Morning America Wednesday, Dec. 4, Kaling reflected on how her longtime friend and former The Office costar “dresses up as Santa” every year for her three children: daughter Katherine “Kit” Swati, who turns 7 this month, son Spencer Avu, 4, and daughter Anne, 9 months.

“We create this whole thing where we’re making hot chocolate in the house, the doorbell rings and it’s him dressed as Santa,” Kaling, 45, said of Novak, 45. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, the sleigh broke down, I need to come in and take a rest while we refuel!’ Then the kids get to meet Santa and he asks them if they’ve been good or bad,” she continued. “Then he leaves, and they’re so excited. But the 7-year-old, it’s going to be interesting this year because I feel like she might not buy it. The 4-year-old, we’re not sure.”

“They know him very well, especially. And he’s a good actor, but … ” Kaling added. And “so far,” the Mindy Project alum said, she and Novak have “pulled it off” for the siblings — but now, “This is going to be the year where we hope the oldest one will be chill for the younger two.”

Of Novak’s technique, Kaling said, “He wears the pillow under the suit and [says] ‘Ho, ho, ho, hello little children.’ It’s a very funny character.”

Kaling’s tradition of having Novak play Santa for her kids goes back to 2020, when she was unable to take Kit and Spencer to see Santa Claus at their local outdoor mall during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Never Have I Ever co-creator said at the time that she and Novak planned for him to be “asleep on the sofa” with a bag of toys as if he “needed to take a rest.”

“It’s so complicated why Santa was there, why he’s taking a nap,” Kaling continued. “But we’re gonna do that. We’re like, ‘Will she know it’s [B.J.] on some level?’ We don’t know. Just so you know, it’s like, we’re Hindu and B.J. is Jewish, so this is really … like, cultural appropriation on our part.”

[From People]

“It’s so complicated why Santa was there, why he’s taking a nap…” Now imagine how confused the kids are that their godfather sticks around their mom long enough to scare off any potential suitors but not long enough to actually be a partner to mom. I’ve been complaining about this for years, because that’s how long Mindy and BJ have been doing this dysfunctional sh-t!! And now three kids are involved too. I mean, AT BEST, this is yet another “cute story” about how Mindy’s heterosexual male best friend/toxic ex goes out of his way to hang out with her kids and play Santa for them. But red flags abound.

Some photos of Mindy in New York this week:

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

My theory is that MAGAland is actually disappointed with how half of the country responded to the election. They thought Democrats would do their own insurrection, or failing that, they believed they would be drinking lib tears. Our attitude of “fine, whatever, the leopards will eat your ugly faces too” isn’t satisfying to them. I don’t even feel particularly afraid, even though I know it’s going to be a total f–king sh-tshow. Now, I cannot wait for leopards to eat Elon Musk’s face. Everyone knows that Musk and Donald Trump will have a spectacular falling out at some point, and I will laugh my ass off if it happens during the transition. Speaking of, new FEC filings reveal that Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars just to get his orange daddy the presidency.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election to help Donald J. Trump win the presidency, federal filings revealed on Thursday. The sum is a fraction of Mr. Musk’s wealth. But it is nonetheless a staggering amount from a single donor, who poured the cash into allied groups and is now playing a role in helping shape the next administration.

One of Mr. Musk’s most brazen moves — which emerged only on Thursday — was spending $20 million to prop up a super PAC that was named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal Supreme Court justice, but that sought to help Mr. Trump by softening his anti-abortion positions.

Mr. Musk put the lion’s share of the money he donated toward his main super PAC, America PAC, cutting three checks for $25 million each in the final weeks of the race, according to the new filings with the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Musk also spent $40.5 million on legally controversial checks to voters in swing states who signed a petition in support of the Constitution.

Over the course of the race, he gave America PAC a staggering $239 million in both cash and in-kind contributions.

[From The NY Times]

The Times’ framing here is predictably stupid: “to prop up a super PAC that was named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal Supreme Court justice, but that sought to help Mr. Trump by softening his anti-abortion positions.” The RBG PAC was blatantly lying to low-information voters about Trump’s positions on abortion and reproductive rights. As for the money Musk spent… he’s up to his hairplugs in criminality. Musk did the math that if he spent $250 million to get an orange fascist elected, Musk could “run” Trump and mold him into the white nationalist leader he wants.

Also: Musk was on the Hill this week and he told reporters that he thinks the government should abandon the $7500 tax credit for electric vehicles. He said: “I think we should get rid of all credits. Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla. Also, remove subsidies from all industries!” He has a childlike understanding of government AND he spent a quarter-billion to get a fascist reality star into the White House. As it turns out, no sci-fi writer could have come up with this idiotic reality.

When the Musk-Trump alliance goes down, “YMCA” will be playing.

Why does this feel actually like an incredibly fascinating 19 seconds into Trump’s psyche pic.twitter.com/DolgTenQFW

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) November 29, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Instagram.