On Friday, the Supreme Court released their ruling on 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case involving the completely hypothetical situation of a straight homophobic bigot/web designer who didn’t want to design a website for a gay couple’s wedding. SCOTUS decided, in a 6-3 decision, that it’s every business’s right and every person’s right to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people under the banner of “religion.” As in, if a business owner is a “Christian,” they have the right to not do work for gay folks. I would assume the next case will be: Christians shouldn’t have to work alongside Muslims, Hindus, Jewish people or atheists either. That it’s perfectly acceptable for Christians (and only Christians) to discriminate against anyone, at any time. This isn’t just about religion and gay rights though – I can already see where this will go effectively immediately – “Christian” doctors and pharmacists refusing treatment to women seeking birth control, Plan B and abortions.
As I said, the case was hypothetical – or to put it another way, it was an outright lie. The Colorado web designer who took her case to the Supreme Court claimed that a gay man wanted her to design a site for his gay wedding. Except the “gay man” who allegedly approached this woman isn’t gay and he never tried to hire her for anything. This homophobic bigot, Lorie Smith, completely fabricated the whole case and got the whackjob Supreme Court to side in her favor. It wasn’t even like they waited for a perfect “test case” – the hyper-conservative movement just blatantly lied to get SCOTUS to dramatically alter the anti-discrimination laws and equal protection.
Michael Imperioli responded to the news of the case by writing this on Instagram:
i’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching The Sopranos, The White Lotus, Goodfellas or any movie or tv show I’ve been in. Thank you Supreme Court for allowing me to discriminate and exclude those who I don’t agree with and am opposed to. USA ! USA!
Good for him.
Okay, so I just… have no idea about cricket. I can’t explain what’s happening in the sport, but I do know that a “century” is a good thing (?) and that the Ashes is a very big deal. Or is it called the Ashes Test? See, I’m not even sure. I just know that the Ashes is 140 years old, and it’s always Britain versus Australia. For cricket fans, the Ashes is a BFD. The Ashes has been happening for the past week, and on Saturday, the fourth day, Prince William brought his oldest son along to watch cricket.
Prince William and Prince George did some father-son bonding while attending a cricket match on Saturday. The two royals — who love to take in sporting events together — were photographed in a private box as they watched England take on Australia on the fourth day of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s in London.
Prince William, 41, wore a light blue button-down shirt with a blue blazer and black shades as he watched the on-field action alongside his eldest son. The little prince, 9, took after his father, wearing a similar outfit consisting of a checked shirt and a dark blue sports coat.
The two were caught often making similar faces during the game as Prince William appeared to point out and explain plays to his son. They were even captured sipping on their drinks in unison in one photo.
At the match, an ecstatic Prince George was also presented with a mini-replica of the Ashes urn by Richard Thompson, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board. Photographers captured the moment on camera, including a proud Prince William smiling over at his son’s excited reaction.
During a break in the play, the pair stood up to get some refreshments. A seemingly hungry Prince George was captured on camera digging into a slice of pizza while he looked out over the venue as his father chatted with other guests including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
I have no idea what George is really like, but I do feel like this “sports-mad” persona is kind of being forced on him. It’s clear that he likes football a lot, but I’m not sure he’s actually all that keen on tennis and cricket. Still, he was being a good kid and paying attention. He seemed more into the pizza than the cricket, but I’m sure he liked having a day out with his dad. If Kate had been there, she would have been in his face, pointing at random things and freeze-posing. Speaking of, William has been spending so much time away from Kate recently. He ran away from Ascot to go clubbing with his bros. He launched Homewards in multiple cities without Kate. He ran off to Norfolk (cough) solo to attend some county fair. And now he’s acting like a divorced dad who planned out a “fun outing” with one of his kids for the weekend.
This coming week is Holyrood Week in Scotland, also known as “Royal Week.” Every year, the British monarch travels up to Edinburgh for Holyrood Week and there’s a ceremony at Holyrood Palace where the monarch is given “the keys to the city.” The monarch – and usually some other assorted royals – spend the week traveling around Scotland, doing various events. It’s a big deal this year because it will be King Charles’s first Holyrood Week as monarch, and because he’s going to have a special coronation ceremony in Scotland on July 5th. Guess how the Daily Mail framed that simple fact, that Charles is going to have a lite Scottish Chubbly? If you guessed “they’re going to talk about Prince Harry,” you would be correct.
Scotland will celebrate King Charles ascension to the throne with a Coronation-style ‘Thanksgiving service’ in Edinburgh next week – but only one of the monarch’s sons will be there to witness the historic event. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who have the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay north of the border, are expected to join the king and queen in a regal procession through the city on Wednesday. The ceremony, at St Giles’ Cathedral, is a key part of Royal Week, with Charles and Camilla undertaking several engagements in Scotland.
Prince Harry is not thought to be attending the symbolic July 5th Honours of Scotland service to officially mark his father becoming Head of State in Scotland. The Duke of Sussex attended the Coronation on May 6th without wife Meghan Markle and flew in for just 24 hours to see his father crowned at Westminster Abbey, before jetting back to his home in Montecito, California.
Prince Harry’s likely absence from the service shows relations between father and son remain less than warm.
Next week’s ceremony involves a people’s procession of about 100 community groups collecting the honours from Edinburgh Castle. The procession will then be escorted to the cathedral by the Royal Regiment of Scotland and its Shetland pony mascot, Corporal Cruachan IV, supported by cadet musicians from the combined cadet force pipes and drums.
Meanwhile, a royal procession will travel from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to the cathedral, with the public lining the Royal Mile to view both processions.
LMAO. I honestly didn’t know, before now, that they were doing this big ceremony in Edinburgh for a separate coronation celebration, but it’s hilarious that THIS is the way the papers are talking about it. Like, does Harry even know? Does Harry even care? The answer is probably “no” on both counts. I would also assume that Harry wasn’t invited to Holyrood Week in general, and that Charles is going to have to make due with Buttons and Bald. Buttons isn’t going to hang around Scotland for the whole week either – given how many Wimbledon dresses she’s been re-wearing lately, I think we can safely say that she’s itching to watch some tennis from the Royal Box. Why oh why must she be pestered with this tedious royal work during Wimbledon???
Last December, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a horrific column in the Sun about Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. Clarkson, much like Piers Morgan, is a disgusting old man with an intense and violent fixation on Meghan. His Sun column was full of lurid, vile imagery about how Meghan needed to be stripped naked and marched through the streets so people could fling excrement at her. Clarkson wrote that column just days after he had a holiday lunch with Queen Camilla. Camilla’s office had nothing to say, and Buckingham Palace was officially and totally silent on the matter – no condemnation for Clarkson, no statement of support for the mother of two of the king’s grandchildren. Later, we learned that Clarkson emailed an apology TO HARRY on Christmas Day.
Surprisingly, there was fallout around the column. The Sun eventually deleted it from its online archives amid widespread condemnation for the tabloid and Clarkson. There were thousands of complaints about the column to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), a sort of vague clearinghouse which “regulates” print media in the UK. IPSO is pretty toothless and non-confrontational when it comes to the bile and hate speech regularly printed in the British media, but this was a special case – Clarkson’s column was simply too incendiary, and too many people were paying attention. So IPSO handed down one of their biggest punishments ever:
The U.K.’s media watchdog, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), has upheld two complaints lodged by women’s rights charities against Jeremy Clarkson’s December column in The Sun about Meghan Markle.
Variety can reveal that after a months-long process, IPSO found that the “Grand Tour” host’s column breached Clause 12 of the regulator’s Editors’ Code of Practice, which relates to discrimination. The case marks the first time in its nine-year history that IPSO has upheld a complaint on the basis of sexism.
As a result, The Sun has been instructed to publish a summary of the regulator’s findings in the spot where Clarkson’s column regularly appears in the print edition, and reference the decision on its front page and website homepage for 24 hours — something the tabloid hasn’t been forced to do since 2016, when its front-page “Queen Backs Brexit” splash was found to have breached press regulations.
“This is the most significant sanction that we would impose for an individual complaint,” IPSO CEO Charlotte Dewar told Variety in an exclusive interview. “It’s not about whether or not people are offended by something or whether they dislike it; it’s specifically about whether it has breached the Editors’ Code. We wanted to be really, really clear about what specifically the complainants thought in the article had breached the code, and then — as a fair process requires — get the publication’s position on that.”
IPSO received more than 25,100 complaints from the British public about Clarkson’s column — an astonishing figure that broke the record for the most complaints ever received by the org for an article. The column led Amazon Prime Video to distance itself from Clarkson, despite his hit U.K. original series “Clarkson’s Farm.” As first revealed by Variety, the streamer won’t commission any new programs with the former “Top Gear” presenter in the future. While Clarkson has thrown doubt on this decision via social media, sources indicate that the relationship is over.
In its ruling, IPSO found that Clarkson’s column made a “pejorative and prejudicial” reference to Markle’s sex, which relates to Clause 12, but did not uphold other parts of the complaint that said the article was inaccurate, harassed Markle and included “discriminatory references to her on the grounds of race.” The regulator’s rejection of discrimination on racial grounds will be of particular interest in the U.K., where racism in the media has been a key criticism by Prince Harry and Markle.
You can read more about IPSO’s ruling in Variety’s exclusive. While I’m glad that at least something happened and there was some acknowledgement that Clarkson’s column was vile, this was a mild response more than six months after the offense. IPSO refuses to acknowledge the racial aspect of it either, focusing more of the sexual violence of Clarkson’s imagery and ignoring the fact that Clarkson seemingly believes that Meghan needs to be punished because she’s a woman AND because she’s Black. And the fact that this is the first time IPSO has ever ordered any kind of punitive action on the basis of sexism… lol. I read a lot of British print media and the sexist drivel which appears in mainstream media over there is astonishing.
To promote the new season of And Just Like That, Kristin Davis gave an absolutely charming interview to the Telegraph. I normally wouldn’t consider an interview “charming,” but I was charmed by Davis’s honesty, realness and positive energy. She’s a single mom by choice, she adopted two Black children, and she’s not the prissy, uptight Charlotte in real life. She manages to navigate tricky conversations with grace, conversations about “woke” whatever, race, ageism, cosmetic work and Kim Cattrall. Some highlights:
The original ‘Sex and the City’: ‘People forget how shocking it was. Four women over the age of 30 starring in a show where men are secondary and we’re talking about relationships and sex openly.’
On the criticism that these characters should be left in the past: ‘Why shouldn’t our lives still be interesting? Society expects you to diminish yourself as you age. But why should we? As Mary Steenburgen [the 70-year-old Oscar-winning actress] said the other day, “I’m still alive.”’
On the criticisms of how ‘woke’ AJLT is: ‘I’m so tired of that word. I feel like it has been weaponised. And it’s unfortunate – because it really just means being educated about what other people are going through. Why is that a bad thing?’
She never married: ‘I think it was a reaction to the South [she grew up in South Carolina, the only child of a data analyst and a psychology professor], where they’re very, very focused on getting married soon. There’s pressure. My parents were not like that. [They] were much more hippie and I was more independent. I remember saying very young: “I am never getting married.” I was like, “Down with the patriarchy!” I did not want to stay [in the South] with all the blonde people. I’m sorry. No offence.’
On Kim Cattrall’s absence from AJLT: ‘You have to respect people’s wishes. I’m not gonna waste energy on it. I can’t change anybody. I do understand fans’ feelings – that they’re upset… I wish I could fix it, but I can’t, it’s not in my power.’
Her children Gemma and Wilson are now 11 and five. ‘I’d always thought about adopting. But it took me forever to actually do it. They give you this form and there are a bunch of races listed there and you’re supposed to check the ones you want. I thought that was nuts so I just checked “any”.’ She has become very attuned to any hints of racism. ‘People make crazy comments. They want to know why my tall daughter doesn’t play basketball. And when you have a boy, it’s really frightening to look at the news.’ Home, she says, is ‘hectic’. ‘They’re very sporty right now. My daughter’s running track and my son is obsessed with basketball and soccer…”
She barely dates: ‘I have a lot of mom friends who want to set me up, I can’t deal with it… I’ve tried because life is short, right? Sometimes you think “That might work.” But it’s a challenge… It’s an energy issue. Twice I tried new relationships: one with someone I had known for many years, someone brilliant in our industry… He got upset with me that I hadn’t paid attention to something work-wise that he’d done and I was like, “Dude”.’
She talks openly about the cosmetic work she’s done: ‘It’s hard to be confronted with your younger self at all times. And it’s a challenge to remember that you don’t have to look like that. The internet wants you to – but they also don’t want you to. They’re very conflicted…’ At first she just tried Botox. ‘I was super-excited I didn’t have to have my lateral lines. But I didn’t do anything else for a long time.’ Then came the fillers: ‘I have done fillers and it’s been good and I’ve done fillers and it’s been bad. I’ve had to get them dissolved and I’ve been ridiculed relentlessly. And I have shed tears about it. It’s very stressful.’
Now, she says, she has a more laissez-faire attitude to the whole thing. ‘It’s whatever. I can’t keep it up. I don’t have time. You’re trusting doctors [but] people personally blame us when it goes wrong – [as if] I jabbed a needle in my face…’ She is referring to some work on her lips. ‘No one told me it didn’t look good for the longest time. But luckily I do have good friends who did say eventually. The thing is you don’t smile at yourself in the mirror. Who smiles at themselves in the mirror? Crazy people.’
She also tosses off the fact that she “gave up drinking in her early 20s” because she was an alcoholic back then. Which I didn’t know, but she makes it sound like it’s something that everyone knows? She also says that she has it in her AJLT contract that she gets to keep all of Charlotte’s clothes. Which is amazing. Basically, she just sounds like a normal, stressed-out single mom and working mom. She barely has time to date, she’s experimented with cosmetic stuff, she’s just trying to get through the day, basically. Anyway, she seems cool.
On the 54th anniversary of Stonewall, we stand together with the LGBTQI+ community in the fight for freedom and equality. pic.twitter.com/7wazUvHWVb
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 28, 2023
VP Kamala Harris listened to Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” before she visited the Stonewall Inn for Pride Month! [OMG Blog]
The last “Birthday Sluts” of Dlisted. We’ll miss you so much!! [Dlisted]
Margot Robbie’s Barbie promotion fashion is amazing. [LaineyGossip]
Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson ripped into Clarence Thomas. [Jezebel]
Review of Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny. [Pajiba]
This is one of the Fug Girls’ best headlines ever. [Go Fug Yourself]
Jennifer Lawrence filmed a Dior commercial in NYC this week. [Just Jared]
Someone spent $650K on the clown doll from The Poltergeist. [Seriously OMG]
Lily Rose Depp looks terrible on the cover of Vogue Australia. [Egotastic]
Therapists share instant “red flags” in relationships. [Buzzfeed]
Hayley Atwell’s glam squad actually did good work in Seoul. [RCFA]
Russia is ramping up attacks on LGBTQ people. [Towleroad]
Here are more photos from the Princess of Wales’s visit to the newly reopened Young V&A Museum on Wednesday. I covered the photos of Kate’s arrival, but I didn’t see these pics until late Thursday – Kate was inside the interactive museum for kids for a while, getting a lot of photo-ops with the children there. The photos… um… I guess Kate’s favorite Photoshop-happy photographer Chris Jackson wasn’t available? Yikes, maybe it’s just the lighting.
In any case, the pics remind me so much of Kate’s Chelsea Flower Show stunt, where she had “diverse” children bused in for a picnic and a photo-op and the kids were not into it at all. To be fair, there were some kids at the museum who seemed to like her and they even hugged her (ten bucks says those kids were palace plants). The other kids seemed unimpressed though. I truly have no idea why Kate doesn’t try to do more photo-ops with seniors – seniors enjoy Kate’s whole deal and they think she’s cute. Children are not into it.
Meanwhile, I wanted to drop this little Ephraim Hardcastle blurb in somewhere – while it’s likely that Kate and William will eventually send Prince George to Eton, what are they thinking about for Charlotte’s education?
With Prince George apparently soon to be measured for his Eton top hat and every likelihood brother Louis will follow suit, whither Princess Charlotte? My source whispers that Windsor-based Kate and William would like to keep Charlotte close to home and are considering St George’s School, opposite Ascot racecourse. She could board or be a day girl. It is the alma mater of Princess Beatrice, the Duke of Gloucester’s daughters and, curiously, Winston Churchill. It was a boys’ school until 1904.
Wait… didn’t Kate go to Marlborough College and isn’t that school in Berkshire? Didn’t Kate have a great time there? Why wouldn’t Kate want Charlotte to go to her alma mater? St. George’s School is all-girls, while Marlborough is co-ed. The school conversations have gotten very weird, haven’t they? I think Kate really did have a dream of sending her kids to the same school for as long as possible, but she’s no longer getting her way. Why does Charlotte have to be kept “close to home”?
Buckingham Palace confirmed this week that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had formally vacated Frogmore Cottage, six months after King Charles “evicted” them out of spite when Prince Harry’s memoir was published. The palace did not confirm whether or not Meghan and Harry were reimbursed for the $3 million-plus they put into the property, but the palace seemingly indicated that the Sovereign Grant got a good deal out of the eviction. Well, now that Harry no longer has an official residence in the UK, wouldn’t you know that he’s no longer eligible to be a counsellor of state. While I think Charles evicted the Sussexes out of short-sighted spite, this was obviously a huge bonus as well.
Prince Harry is set to lose a major royal role after being evicted from Frogmore cottage, an expert has revealed. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex today returned their keys to King Charles — six months after getting their eviction notice. Their remaining possessions at the pile were shipped to their California mansion just ahead of tomorrow’s deadline. They will no longer have a UK home and may have to rely on hotels or friends if they visit.
However, the fact that the couple have no British residence also means Harry will miss out on an important royal role. Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told The Sun: “Losing their UK home without a replacement is a huge deal. The most important aspect as far as Harry is concerned is that it means he can no longer act as a counsellor of state. That’s hugely important because in theory he had the right, in the event of the king being incapacitated, to do this.
“Although he is no longer a working royal he still had this right – and by not having a UK residence he has now thrown this opportunity away. But of course it does seem that Harry, and Meghan, don’t care at all about the UK. They have no interest in their popularity or taking on roles here – they just care about their US audience. But it means if they don’t have a UK residence when William ascends to the throne then he will be unable to support his brother – not that he does that now.”
“…And by not having a UK residence he has now thrown this opportunity away…” He literally paid an exorbitant amount of money to renovate a dilapidated shack and he was fully up to date on the lease when his father evicted him, his wife and their children from a perfectly secure home, a home which had been gifted to him by QEII. But sure, it’s Harry’s fault! While I’m sure Harry is probably hurt by this, it’s all part and parcel of Charles’s cruelty and the family’s need to eradicate the Sussexes from the royal narrative. Except they can’t – the Montecito royals are still THE story in the UK.
Originally, Omid Scobie’s new book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, was supposed to come out this summer. This week, Scobie announced that it will come out in November. Some of us were concerned that Endgame was being rewritten or buried, but it turns out that Scobie wanted to write new chapters about King Charles’s coronation, which happened in May. I get that – the coronation ended up being such a non-event, which in itself is newsworthy. Anyway, you can tell that Endgame is going to be an important book in the royal narrative because the royal establishment has already launched a completely unhinged smear campaign on Scobie. Richard Fitzwilliams huffed and puffed to the Daily Mail:
Commenting on MrScobie’s announcement, royal biographer Richard Fitzwilliams said: ‘He’s writing about the royal family and he’s also Harry and Meghan’s unofficial spokesperson, some sensational details are bound to follow. However, how well sourced are they? No reputable royal source would talk to Omid Scobie. His book, co-written with Carolyn Durand, Finding Freedom, which the Sussexes were discovered to have cooperated with despite their denials, was badly written and pathetically inadequate. His new book is entitled Endgame. Some might think the title refers to the current state of the Sussexes’ affairs…Much of Endgame is not likely to be taken seriously. It is likely to be a sensational attempt to cash in on the Sussexes’ rift with the royal family. I suspect it will be trusted as much as anything from the Sussexes’ corner should be.’
So that’s the talking point – that Scobie is a “Sussex cheerleader” and that the book’s narrative is completely Sussex-based. Like… if that is true (it’s not) then people will be even more likely to pick up the book! All of the other royal books crash and burn. Finding Freedom was a huge bestseller, and Spare is one of the biggest publishing successes in years. Clearly, people are interested in “the Sussex narrative.” Speaking of, Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast also got “friends of Prince William and King Charles” to throw tantrums about Scobie and Endgame:
Friends of Prince William and King Charles have predicted the royals will “keep calm and carry on” in the face of what is likely to be a highly critical new book about the royals, entitled Endgame, by Omid Scobie, the journalist whose sympathetic biography of the Sussexes Finding Freedom rocked the royal establishment.
While Finding Freedom was told almost entirely from the Sussexes’ point of view, The Daily Beast understands that the new book will not be framed by their perspective. It is also likely that the Sussexes, smarting from a dip in popularity some ascribe to their non-stop bitching about the royals, would not welcome another volume portraying them as still looking back in anger. Scobie described it in his article as “an unfiltered investigation into the current state of the Royal Family.”
One might imagine being the focus of Scobie’s new book would make the royals nervous, but a friend of Prince William told The Daily Beast that the prince had made a point of not reading the first book by Scobie and would not read the second. They added that he had not watched the Netflix series the couple made nor had he read Harry’s book Spare. “The idea that William is going to be distracted from his work by even thinking about Omid Scobie’s new book is fanciful,” the friend said. William’s office declined to comment.
A friend of the king’s took a similar line, saying the king had “seen it all before” in terms of negative books about him being published and added, “He will keep calm and carry on.” The king’s office also did not comment in response to questions from The Daily Beast about Scobie’s new book.
While the royals believe that not responding to criticism is the quickest way to get it to evaporate into the ether, Scobie is a different class of threat to anonymous tittle-tattle in the newspapers, precisely because of his close relationship with Team Sussex. The palace is unlikely, privately, to be particularly happy that he has a fresh book coming out given that Scobie and his publishers clearly expect it to make another season of headlines.
LOL at the comments from William’s “friend” – William hasn’t read Spare or watched the Netflix series or read Finding Freedom, yet William and Kate have constantly reacted to everything within those projects. Anyway, you can tell that Scobie will receive the full Sussex treatment in the British media and royal media. Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace are terrified about what stories Scobie will publish, and they’re even more terrified that Scobie is more believable than their hagiographers.
Kim Cattrall explained how she did a cameo on And Just Like That – the president of HBO called her and she got whatever she wanted. [Buzzfeed]
Kanye West is facing new antisemitism allegations. [Dlisted]
Zendaya & Tom Holland singing Beyonce’s “Love on Top” together. [LaineyGossip]
Aubrey Plaza is doing print ads for Loewe. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Everyone’s raving about The Bear Season 2. [Pajiba]
Ranking celebrities’ most absurd Architectural Digest home tours. I love this! Dakota Johnson doesn’t deserve to be on the list though. [Jezebel]
Ryan Gosling & Simu Liu brought their Kenergy to Canada. [JustJared]
Teyonah Parris & John Boyega look great together. [GFY]
Someone on a reality show was part of a “history-making meth bust”? [Starcasm]
Anheuser-Busch needs an LGBTQIA+ Czar or something? They need definitely need a gay publicist, because the company continues to bungle this. [Towleroad]
Margot Robbie wore Herve Leger to promote Barbie. [RCFA]
.@KimCattrall speaks on her scene in the new season of ‘And Just Like That…’ where she reprises her iconic role as Samantha and tells @TheView: “It’s very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO saying, ‘What can we do?'” https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/Sam3mX9b81
— The View (@TheView) June 28, 2023