Watercooler Stories

P. DIDDY FOR PRESIDENT?

Just think of it -- if J. Lo had just hung in there, she might have been first lady some day.

Friends of rap mogul Sean (Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy) Combs told U.S. News & World Report he has political ambitions -- high ones.

"He wouldn't go for the Senate," said business partner Jameel Spencer. "He'd go for the presidency."

Spencer runs Combs' Blue Flame Marketing and Advertising enterprise. He said Combs has gotten "more concerned about the whole" as he has gotten older -- and wants to expand from mentoring kids to speaking for what he calls "urban Americans," city and suburban kids who have embraced the rap culture.

According to Spencer, Blue Flame surveys show those kids are ignored by the political powers that be, and Combs wants to change that.

"Imagine," said Spencer, "if you have Entertainment Tonight follow you going to the polls and you impact everybody else to go out and vote. There's so much more that we can do with his power."

DO U.S.FASHION MAGS NEED MORE 'COLOR' ON THE COVERS?

When Cosmopolitan magazine put Halle Berry on the cover of its December issue, the New York Times reports, it was just the fifth time the magazine featured a black on its cover -- and just the first since Naomi Campbell was on the cover of Cosmo in 1994.

The magazine has been using cover models since 1964 -- two years after Ursula Andress became an international star as the first "Bond girl" in "Dr. No." Berry gets the cover this time as the reigning Oscar-winning best actress and the newest "Bond girl" in the upcoming "Die Another Day."

According to the Times, Berry seems to be one of a "tiny cadre of nonwhite celebrities who are deemed to have enough crossover appeal to appear on the cover of mass consumer magazines." The paper reported there are signs that the freeze-out may be dissipating, largely owing to the growing acceptance of hip-hop culture and decreasing anxiety about race in the editorial offices of teen magazines.

Still, after a survey of 471 covers from 31 magazines published in 2002, the paper concluded that many broad-circulation magazines still observe "the unspoken ... practice of not using nonwhite cover subjects -- for fear they will depress newsstand sales."

The survey included men's and women's magazines, entertainment publications and teen magazines. The Times found that one in five depicted minority faces on the cover. That's more than the one in eight recorded five years ago, but still substantially below the 30 percent nonwhite population within the United States.

SO, DOES HE HAVE TO REMOVE THEM HIMSELF?

Now that a federal judge has given Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore 30 days to remove a Ten Commandments monument that Moore sneaked into the rotunda of Alabama's judicial building in the dead of night more than two years ago, an intriguing question remains: How will Moore go about complying with the court order, or will he comply at all?

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that the display violates the constitution's ban on government promotion of religion. Moore testified during the trial, repeating his often-stated opinion that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of U.S. law, and that the 5,300-pound granite monument he had installed in the state building doesn't force anyone to go along with his Christian beliefs.

The monument dominates the view of anyone who enters the courthouse.

In his ruling, Judge Thompson took note of Moore's practice -- before he was elected chief justice in 2000 -- of displaying a plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and inviting clergy to lead prayer before sessions of his court.

Monday's ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"It is not the job of government to single out one religious code and hold it up as the state's favorite," said Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "Promoting the Ten Commandments is a task for our houses of worship, not government officials."

PAULA POUNDSTONE TO GET HER KIDS BACK

A judge in Santa Monica, Calif., has ruled that three adopted children taken from comic Paula Poundstone in 2001 be returned to her custody, but Poundstone's lawyer said Monday it might take weeks to arrange that -- and Poundstone is very unhappy about that.

Superior Court Judge Bernard Kamins ruled on Friday that Poundstone had maintained an exemplary record during her probation in the child endangerment case against her. The judge said Poundstone merits reuniting with the children -- two girls and a boy, ranging in age from 4 to 11 -- who have been living in foster homes and limited to supervised visits with Poundstone.

Poundstone's lawyer, Richard Pfeiffer, said social workers within the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services had yet to turn the children over to Poundstone, apparently because of jurisdictional issues involving conflicting orders from other courts. She told the syndicated TV show "Celebrity Justice" the delay makes her angry.

"I'm sick of this," she said. "I'm angry on behalf of my children. I'm angry because it's unfair. I am not a public menace. I didn't molest anyone. That is not what I was charged with."

Poundstone said the way authorities handled her case allowed the public to "sort of let their imagination go wild."

Poundstone lost custody of two foster children and three adopted children after she was charged last year with three felony counts of lewd conduct with a child. As part of a plea bargain in which prosecutors agreed to drop sex-related charges, she pleaded no contest to felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor count of injuring a child.