The Mirror

Hollywood Reporter Doubles As Montel Williams Flack

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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The Hollywood Reporter completely mangled the details of a President’s Day weekend twitter brawl that broke out between The Mirror and washed up talk show host Montel Williams.

When informed that the pub had gotten its facts wrong, THR News Director Joe Bel Bruno, who had voiced his support for Williams, replied, “Actually, I didn’t know we did a story on this. Thanks for pointing it out.”

Let’s get this straight. He’s the “news director” and didn’t bother to know that his staff had written a story on it? And what’s more, that they had blatantly gotten the facts wrong?

In a followup email to Bo Jel Juno (since we’re throwing facts around I figured I’d butcher his name), I explained to him how his publication got the story wrong. I began by showing him a graph in his own pub’s story since he appears to be a little lazy on that front.

THR: “The Twitter feud started Thursday, when Rothstein argued with teenager CJ Pearson over Hillary Clinton, asking him if he had a mental disorder, later mocking him for having Asperger’s syndrome. The fight caught the attention of Williams, who has dealt with Rothstein before. Williams tweeted ‘lol welcome to the club CJ,’ telling Pearson that he thought Rothstein was ‘a candidate to be a crazy cat lady for years.'”

Except here’s what really happened…

The Twitter feud started Thursday night when The Mirror disagreed with The Nation‘s Joan Walsh who felt Hillary Clinton ought to have strongly disputed the words of former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright during a presidential debate. Albright had previously declared that there is a “special place in hell” for women who don’t support other women. Like many in Washington who offer mea culpas, she has since, ridiculously, apologized.

The Mirror wrote on Twitter that Clinton needed to “defend or support” Albright’s words. At which point Walsh ridiculed me for my belief and CJ Pearson, a 13-year-old former conservative pundit and current HuffPost writer, asked if I had a mental disorder and accused me of having “Asbergers.” (Apparently some condition involving hamburger meat.) (RELATED: Dear Conservatives: Stop Trying To Promote Teenage Pundit Superstars)

I began mocking Pearson for not being able to spell. The condition is actually called “Asperger’s.”

Later, Montel Williams, an aspiring media whore, chimed in, not only declaring that I had a mental disorder, but he accused The Mirror of being a “candidate for a crazy cat lady” as well as comparable to a “stalker” he had in the late 90s.

I don’t have Montel’s phone number or his address. I don’t own cats. But lots of U.S. citizens do and happily so, as do hordes of male journalists. See here and here.

I eventually addressed a matter far more important than all of the above. Williams has been pushing payday loans that predominately and detrimentally affect poor communities of color. I wrote, “Congrats to @Montel_Williams for being the Uncle Tom of the 2016 presidential election. He pushes payday loans and has endorsed John Kasich.”

As reported by The Daily Caller‘s Evan Gahr, the Federal Trade Commission recently busted a shady copper clothing company whose celebrity promoter was none other than Montel Williams. Williams was named in a federal class action lawsuit involving copper clothing. The line includes underwear that is supposed to help joint pain and maybe ass pain — who knows? Williams, a paid celebrity spokesman, helped pitch the copper clothing to desperate people looking for a way out of their pain. The clothing promises to relieve lots of conditions such as fybromalgia, lupus and arthritis.

When Gahr dared to question Jonathan Franks, Williams’s “director of communications and government relations” — (seriously, that’s his title) — Franks accused Gahr of being “drunk or high.” (Which is pretty ironic since Williams has famously smoked weed for years because of his MS.)

The Hollywood Reporter has yet to report on the widely reported FTC settlement or the copper class action lawsuit that includes Williams. A Daily Caller reporter offered to send them documents. THR — so far in the tank for Williams — couldn’t be bothered.

I’m sure the brilliant news director Joe Bel Bruno will sort it all out.