Actress, singer, and former Miss America Vanessa Williams has a new memoir out, and damn. Williams is sharing tons of personal information from over the last few decades – the kind of stuff that the Kardashians could have turned into a dozen magazine covers and sobby Barbara Walters interviews by now. One of the revelations is that Williams had a secret abortion (so secret that her parents didn’t even know) after an unplanned teenage pregnancy. On Nightline, reporter Juju Chang... Read more
Actress Melissa Joan Hart (she’ll always be Clarissa Darling to me) has announced that she and husband Mark Wilkerson are expecting their third child. They already have two sons, and Melissa admits that she would kind of like to have a girl. “I adore my boys to pieces! And if that’s all God grants me, I’m fine. But I know myself well enough to know that I’m going to want another baby,” she said in an interview two years ago.... Read more
Jack Gleeson wears two hats: by night, he plays Prince Joffrey on HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones, and by day he’s an undergraduate at Dublin’s Trinity College. Gleeson is majoring in theology and philosophy. Yesterday, Trinity announced that Gleeson was among the roughly 100 students chosen as “scholars.” Among his future plans? Not acting. Gleeson has said that he might do some amateur local theater, but his heart is in scholarship. “I’d like to be an academic, a philosophy... Read more
Amy Ray is one half of folk-music legends The Indigo Girls. Although she occasionally sings Hanukkah songs, she says that growing up in the South made her pretty familiar with Christianity. “I grew up in the South and once you get raised on Jesus, it is kind of always a part of you even if you are a pagan, really,” she told radio station WNYC. That cultural background inspired her new song, “The Rock Is My Foundation.” Fun fact: Amy... Read more
You’re not supposed to talk about religion, sex, or politics in polite company, but reality TV is not polite company. MTV’s Teen Mom franchise obviously talks a lot about sex, and politics comes up occasionally in the form of abortion/adoption conversations. Religion, though, doesn’t come up much on the show. However, many of the girls keep up with fans via their Twitter accounts, and they often share more personal or in-depth stuff than we see on TV. One of those... Read more
In this brief clip from MAKERS, author Judy Blume talks about her Jewish upbringing and how she connected with God. Related: all her books are the freaking best. Read more
Recently, we reported that singer David Archuleta was taking a break from his music career to go on his LDS mission. Now, he has a video showing him with his Mormon-church-approved new haircut. Elder Archuleta, anyone? Read more
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. But to the possible surprise of like five people, it turns out that the guy is also a Holocaust denier and believer in blood libel. Screenwriter Joe Ezterhas, who is responsible for the brilliance that is Showgirls, wrote an open letter to Gibson about their experience working together on the now-blessedly-not-happening movie The Maccabees. Here goes: I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason you won’t make ‘The... Read more
Thomas Kinkade, who dubbed himself “The Painter of Light,” has passed away at the age of 54. Kinkade’s work, which was often criticized as being empty and devoid of critical thought, was hugely popular and made Kinkade a multimillionaire. A devout Christian, Kinkade often painted spiritual scenes and sold items like a “Christian table topper” (a “3D tabletop sculpture celebrates the story of Easter in 13 scenes and 45 sculpted figures”) and even produced a movie called Christmas Lodge, based... Read more
I love Mad Men, and I like the way that the first two episodes of the new season have the characters reacting to the massive changes taking place in the world around them. This week’s episode, “Tea Leaves,” featured two new characters: a black female secretary and a male Jewish copywriter. The copywriter, Michael Ginsberg (played by Ben Feldman), comes from a working class family and asks Peggy to please be proud of him because no one else in his... Read more
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