When Brent Bolthouse decides to party, it usually generates lines of both the velvet and news variety. Still, some wondered if he might have lost some merrymaking mojo when he split from nightlife superpower SBE last year — but his latest insider incarnation, Trousdale, with new partners Guy Starkman and Darren Dzienciol seems set for paparazzo paradise judging by its track record since opening last week.

Read more: Trousdale, Sbe, Lindsay Lohan, Brent Bolthouse, Los Angeles News

Not as well known for his health recommendations as for offending people, Howard Stern actually is a keen student of health behavior. In his own life, he significantly modified his diet, exercise, and substance use patterns. Stern’s recommendations tend to be moderate (he doesn’t abstain from alcohol, for instance), common-sensical, and self-initiated — as the changes (including overcoming OCD) were in his own life.

From this perspective, Stern observed that Gabourey Sidibe is deluding herself if she thinks her Academy Award will lead her to a career as an actress. There are simply not enough roles for a woman her size. But Stern’s advice goes deeper. Sidibe won’t be around that long if she weighs 300 pounds at 26. While she can be active and healthy through her 20s and perhaps her mid-30s, she can’t handle that weight into her 40s — particularly if she gains more.

A discussion of Sidibe’s weight inevitably calls forth all kinds of reactions — including claims of prejudice against heavy people, women, and African Americans — all of which she is. She is also bound to be unhealthy. Sidibe and her mother, Alice Tan Ridley, seem to recognize this, sort of:

The truth is Gabourey would like to lose some weight but the reality is that she would not have gotten the role of Precious if she had not been heavy. As her mum I would like to see my daughter healthy but if she didn’t lose weight that’s not a problem either — it runs in our family. We have relatives that are 80 who are too heavy.

The last part of her statement is the wishful thinking of the addict — “I know a smoker in his 80s.” Yes, but you sure reduce your odds of reaching 80 if you smoke. And you will most likely create subsidiary health issues that will increasingly dog you through life (trouble breathing and sleeping, poor circulation, lingering colds and coughs). There is no free lunch.

I have a rehab treatment center, one where we address both substance abuse and health behavior. We don’t tell people they have a problem — they’re aware of that when they arrive at St. Gregory. Obviously, we don’t belittle them or put them down. Instead, we simply remind them and ask them to reflect on what we both know to be true — that they need to change. We work with them to convert that motivation into reality. And we are there to point out the life benefits they experience as they make such changes.

Hollywood types are notable for their refusal to make judgments of others, and so you won’t find any show business personalities taking on Sidibe’s weight. When Sidibe started salivating over male hunk Gerard Butler at the Oscars, no one — least of all Butler, who politely played along — told Sidibe she isn’t going to get a hit of that, or much else. Only Howard Stern is willing to pass along that news.

And, oh, perhaps Michelle Obama, if she’s serious about confronting youthful obesity no matter what that requires. While people ARE willing to take on Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears for providing bad role models for young women around substance use, and people are always criticizing models for being dangerously thin, what about Sidibe and the rampant obesity among children, especially African American children? Is that worth pricking a few balloons over?

Read more: Childhood Obesity, Howard Stern, Precious, Gabourey Sidibe, Gay Marriage, Michelle Obama, Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears, Anorexia, Emaciated Models, St-Gregory-Addicton-Center, Drug Abuse, Living News

Congressman Eric Massa’s abrupt retirement and his ensuing talk show blitz consumed the media with tawdry details of his career’s implosion. The first-and-only-term, now-former-US Representative from New York went on Glenn Beck’s Fox News program with the promise of naming names and exposing the corruption of those who Beck suspects of nefarious deeds (i.e. social justice). He said that all Americans needed to hear Massa. “This is the moment that will decide the course of this nation possibly.” Beck told his audience as a teaser to the epic hour-long interview with the Democratic Congressman with an axe to grind. He continued, “This is the guy we’ve been looking for!”

The Massa interview on Beck’s show was a mess-a. He admitted to groping a male staffer, happily. He talked about his aggressive birthday-induced tickling and something about how that’s just a thing guys do in the Navy. The sentence “It looks like an orgy in Caligula,” was uttered. Then just to make it weird, he meandered around general Democratic talking points about getting involved and reforming campaign finance. It was yet another sensible claim Beck promised his audience that has yet to come true. Nazi communism, anyone?

But then Massa went on CNN’s Larry King Live revealing even more of his escapades. Stories have surfaced about the Catholic former Republican former Naval Officer and the term “snorkeling” was forced into the public discourse. It all seems pretty salacious. Very tabloid-esque. Very Hollywood drunken diva-like. Something you’d see right before a publicist announces their client has been checked into secluded non-specific rehab for “exhaustion. “

Has Hollywood corrupted the way we see our politicians?

Worshiping actors as idols is a relatively new practice. During the Dark Ages, before anyone figured out it was rats spreading the plague it was blamed on traveling actors, which were held in similar esteem. People who made their living acting onstage during the Victorian era were akin to how we view strippers today. Yes, people went to go see them…but ya know. Acting was a subculture of a lowly form for nearly all of its history. It wasn’t until Hollywood made stars out of celluloid and media made them alluring did we care about actors in a broad sense. Now we’re mindful about their opinions on everything from energy policy to which lip gloss is the glossiest. When they say stupid things it’s a scandal. When they do stupid things it’s a story. When they are stupid things it’s an obsession.

When actors were seen as vermin, the object of our affections and repugnance were people with actual power: politicians. They were the Lindsay Lohans of the early part of this country. Think of the Burr-Hamilton Duel between then former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr as the E! True Hollywood Story of the 19^th century. There were no sports figures at the time. No recording artists. No mothers of multiples. The only icons were politicians, tycoons and criminals. Or Wyatt Earp who was really a bit of all three. And of those it was politicians were the most subjected to outrage for immoral behavior. They were the tabloid stars of the 19^th century. Between the published rumors of President Thomas Jefferson fathering children with his slave Sally Hemmings to bachelor President Grover Cleveland paying child support, if you could read in the first-half part of this country’s history, politicians were going wild.

Then by the turn of the 20^th century, starlets came along and usurped political figures from the lone wrath of public spectacle. Now because of reality shows and 24-hour news they have to share the limelight with a zillion other kids of notables. But Congressman Massa, impugning the conduct of the military and the House of Representatives in one non-denial denial brush stroke is a throwback to a better time. The good old days. The pre-cotton gin days.

Politicians in garish sex scandals like Eric Massa, former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign are just taking back their country from Hollywood.

Read more: Mark Sanford, Eric Massa, Lindsay Lohan, John Ensign, Caligula, John Edwards, Larry King, Victorians, Fox News, Navy, Wyatt Earp, Glenn Beck, Grover Cleveland, Actors, Thomas Jefferson, Entertainment News

As I was strolling through the European Paintings collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day, Paulus Bor’s “The Disillusioned Medea” (“The Enchantress”) caught my eye. The painting is beautiful, but in the particular room in which it hangs, it does not differ much in subject or in size from its companions. What stands out is not Medea’s lonely gaze but the nipple slyly protruding from her off-the-shoulder gown. In essence, it is Bor’s rendition of the first nip slip.

When VH1 runs “I Love the 00’s,” the nip slip will require its own segment. From 2000 to 2009, shocking children and parents alike, the nip slip became a cultural phenomenon. Lindsay and Paris were the early faces of this movement, but since the 2004 Super Bowl, Janet Jackson’s star-studded, rounded flesh, made the nip slip a must for any attention-seeking female celebrity. Jackson gave new meaning to the term “waldrobe malfunction,” and CBS is still fighting the FCC over the fine. The ongoing case may set television legal precedence unseen since F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, which famously centered on George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” routine.

The nip slip is perhaps most fascinating because its evolution is an indicator of how jaded we have become to the celebrity body. While the nip slip was hitting its stride in the early to mid 00’s, we were eagerly following the homerun prowess of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, and Barry Bonds. They were our American idols. They single-handedly led the resurgence of our National Pastime and they did so by awing us with their superhuman strength. The grace of Jordan, the finesse of Gretzky, and the hands of Rice defined the 80’s and 90’s, but now we were witnessing the emergence of power and we couldn’t get enough of it.

When the bubble burst and what we thought was superhuman strength was actually inhuman strength created by Human Growth Hormones, we became outraged, skeptical, and finally, defeated. And this brings us to the present. Now, we are accustomed to being always-questioning and ever-dubious of an athlete’s physical achievement, and rightfully so. Even during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, we fed on stories heralding the athlete’s celebrity rather than on the physical preparedness that brought them fame.

In the past month, Greg Oden and George Hill have stood nude in front of a mirror and captured the sight on their cell phones, and Chuck Liddell and Heidi Northcott thought it would be a good idea to exercise naked together while a camera was rolling. Although Liddell says that he “thought it would be funny” to exercise naked, he also claims that he did not know a camera was running but that “it’s not a big deal.” Most recently, video has surfaced of Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco running nude through the park one morning. When asked by Sports Illustrated if he always jogs naked, Ochocinco responded, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? What’s wrong with that? I take a shower naked.”

The truth is, he has no reason not to anymore. Leaving the museum and passing by the Greek and Roman Art Collection, I was reminded of how much importance used to be placed on the human form and how the athlete’s body was revered through art. No longer, though, do we see musculature and exclaim “wow!” Instead, we question “how?” Since Sosa, McGuire, Bonds, and A-Rod, since Landis and possibly Armstrong, since Marion Jones, we are sick of hearing about, reading about, and seeing the athlete’s body. We just aren’t amazed anymore. So the next time you confusedly see in a 6’1”, 180 lbs. wide receiver running nude through the park, Ochocinco’s question remains:

Why wouldn’t he?

Read more: Paris Hilton, CBS Sports, Heidi Northcott Naked, Lindsay Lohan, Barry Bonds, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Janet Jackson, Vancouver Olympics, Chuck Liddell Nude, Chad Ochocinco, Sammy Sosa, Floyd Landis, Mark McGwire, Lance Armstrong, George Hill, Greg Oden, Marion Jones, Sports News

I’m with everyone else who couldn’t figure out Lindsay Lohan’s $100 million lawsuit against E-Trade because one of the babies in a TV spot had her name…. You know, whatever she said.

But, once again, Advertising Age came to my rescue. I opened my mailbox on March 9 to find the headline:

“Was Lohan’s $100M Suit Against E-Trade Crowdsourced”?

I hadn’t read or heard the word “crowdsourced” before, but I did hope to find an explanation for the latest silly celebrity lawsuit.

It turns out that Lindsay and her Twitter followers were apparently upset or bothered or something when they saw the spot during the “Super Bowl.” AD AGE did thorough research and reported they think the lawsuit was a “crowdsourced effort by friends and random friends of Ms. Lohan on Twitter.”

The reporter did his research:

“A quick look back at her Twitter page shows that Ms. Lohan was watching the Feb. 7 Super Bowl broadcast, and its commercials, closely. She tweeted with some shock during the game: “Did that just happen? On that commercial? Or am I wrong? 5:44 PM Feb 7th via UberTwitter.”

(I didn’t know there was an UberTwitter either, BTW.)

“…that commercial” is apparently the talking babies trading stocks who know another baby, the “milkaholic Lindsay.”

(I can figure out what a milkaholic is. I just can’t equate what it has to do with the actress.)

I was not Tweeting during the Super Bowl (and I don’t think Lindsay Lohan is on my friends list), so I missed what AD AGE reported: “a lot of people were talking about it on Twitter in the aftermath of the spot’s airing – with many egging Ms. Lohan on to file a lawsuit against E-Trade.” The story actually quotes some of these instigators and shows Ms. Lohan’s responses.

I think my favorite part of the reporter’s observations is, “But it’s pretty surprising that before filing the suit she didn’t delete her Twitter comments.” Ah, the Tiger Woods effect strikes again.

All right. Now I know what crowdsourcing is: It’s a bunch of people giving celebrities bad advice about subjects they know nothing about it.

If anyone thinks I should sue a “candy” company, or complain about anything to do with “spelling,” please comment here. I’ve never been crowdsourced.

Read more: Twitter, Lindsay Lohan, Crowdsource, Lawsuit, Super Bowl, Advertising Age, Entertainment News