Word: gere
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...nationwide furor began when Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty appeared together at an AIDS-awareness function in New Delhi last Sunday. The event was supposed to highlight the risky sexual behavior of truck drivers, who have some of the highest rates of HIV infection in India. At one point in the proceedings, Gere embraced Shetty, bent her back in an exaggerated kind of dance hold and kissed her on the cheek. If it looked slightly awkward, Shetty said later, that's because it was unexpected. "Richard does not understand Hindi," she told a press conference...
...more than than the Hindi language that Gere did not understand: His dance move and smooch on the cheek went way beyond what is acceptable, at least according to India's Hindu nationalists who claim that Shetty has dishonored her culture. Protestors burned Gere and Shetty in effigy, and now plan to lodge a complaint against Shetty with the police. "How much can you degrade yourself because you are being paid money to make an appearance?" asked Sumit Mishra, of the youth wing of the Hindu nationalist BJP party in the state of Bhopal. As a foreigner, said Mishra, Gere...
...Shetty believes those protesting the incident are missing the point. "It is such a small issue," she told reporters after the Gere brouhaha exploded. "Actually, I think it is not even an issue. There are bigger issues like AIDS in our country, which no one seems to be interested in talking about." As politicians around the world know, though, it's always easier to exploit controversy than tackle the difficult stuff...
...also, curiously, the record of a pair of very hard-working crooks. Gere, as Irving, and Alfred Molina, as Dick Susskind, his timorous but devoted research assistant, probably put as much effort into researching their fake book as they would have for an authentic one. Since all biographies and autobiographies are in some sense fictional constructs, it could be (cynically) argued that their product was probably no less authentic than more respectable entries in the field. Indeed, in the aftermath of their effort, Irving has often insisted that theirs was a terrific book. Whether or not that's true, both...
...know Kevin Costner had a band? Probably not. That's why Costner is suing his music promoter for, well, nonpromotion. "The lawsuit should have profound implications ... leaving promoters leery of ever taking on another [celebrity band]," notes blogsite DEFAMER, "lest Richard Gere and the Dolly Llamas sue them." SCORE...