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A Survivor 49 player missed the birth of his first child during filming

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Season 49 of Survivor starts up on Wednesday, September 24. It’s kind of an odd season for fans because we already know that the all-returnees 50th season filmed right after 49 did, *and* while they haven’t been confirmed by CBS, the two players from 49 have been leaked on fan sites. From what I’ve seen online, a decent faction of the Survivor community have somewhat written off 49, but are going to watch it in order to see how the two returning players end up faring. The overall feeling is that neither are winners, but both are entertaining characters or rootable players a la season 48’s Joe Hunter.

The cast list for season 49 was officially released a few weeks ago, but their CBS profiles and official pre-season press interviews are dropping now. In the preseason, picking what players to root for is all about the vibes and backstory. One of the biggest backstories from a castaway this season comes from a contestant named Jake Latimer. Jake’s big story is that he left to play the game while his wife was heavily pregnant and due to give birth while he was away filming. Jake’s wife did indeed give birth to their first child, a baby boy named Jax, on May 2. And no, Jeff Probst did not give Jake the news that he’d officially become a father.

They tried for almost five years to get pregnant: “Me and my wife were trying to have a baby for about four-and-a-half years,” [Latimer] explained. “We just had no luck. And we went for help, and doctors were helping, and then we finally just gave up. We weren’t getting answers. The doctor said, ‘We don’t think it’s going to work.’ So I applied for Survivor, just kind of like something to do to get my mind off of it. And while I was in the process, she got pregnant and now our firstborn child is going to be born while I’m here on the island.”

“I gave her the option for me to bow out. I said, ‘This is our child. You’re here alone.’ She’s Australian, so she doesn’t have anyone up in Canada. But she says, ‘No, you go out. This is your dream, go do it, and whatever money you make is mine.’”

Producers said they would only give him bad news: “What I’ve gathered from it is no news is good news,” Jake said before the game. “Of course, I would love to hear if my baby’s born healthy and stuff like that, but at the same time, they can’t favor me and then not tell other people what’s happening with their families back in home. So I’m just going into it as no news is good news.”

Host and showrunner Jeff Probst confirms that no special rules were put into place for Jake in terms of updating the player on his child’s birth. “The rules on Survivor are really pretty clear,” Probst tells EW. “Which is no news at all about anything that’s happening in the world, including in your own family. Unless it is an emergency situation. Then, of course we would tell you and present you with the option that if you want leave the game and go home, you can.”

Extenuating circumstances: “My dad has an eye condition called glaucoma. Basically, it’s a tunnel vision that gets smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s just black. And this will be the last season that he’ll be able to actually watch before his eyesight is all gone.” If Jake’s dad was ever going to have a chance to watch his son on the TV show they used to watch together every week as a family, now was the time. “For me to make him proud one last time and be on his favorite show and have him watch his son on there, that will be it for his Survivor story.”

A big choice: “He watched Survivor with his dad, and his dad was losing his eyesight very fast,” Probst says. “They thought this would be the last season of Survivor he would be able to watch. So for Jake, there was this tug on both ends: I have a new child coming into the world, but I have my dad who won’t be able to ever see me play again.” It’s a tug that may play out on the show itself. “It’s a very emotional story,” Probst teases. “And Jake’s a very emotional guy. You know, he is a big dude, and at first glance you think, ‘Oh, he’s going to be a certain way.’ But immediately, what you realize with Jake is he’s this really lovable, goofy, raw physical presence who’s playing this game for his dad and his unborn child. It’s pretty remarkable and really powerful.”

His wife sounds pretty chill: “It’s bittersweet,” he admitted. “I’m out here, I’m on Survivor. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but at the same time, I’m always worried about what’s going on at home and stuff like that. But she wrote me a nice little note before I left and it said, ‘Don’t worry about home, just go do your thing and you’ll have a baby here waiting for you when you come home.’”

[From Entertainment Weekly]

Baby Jax was born on May 2, which was day 13 of the game. Jake, his wife, and baby Jax are lucky that modern Survivor is only 26 days rather than the 39 days that it was pre-season 41. That’s an extra two weeks of being away! I would absolutely freaking love to play Survivor one day, but I don’t know if I’d be okay with missing the birth of my first child that I’d waited so long for. On the flip side, I also don’t know if I’d be okay with telling Mr. Rosie to go play a reality TV game while I was alone giving birth to our first child without any family nearby. Hopefully she had family come out to help her while Jake was still away. I suppose the chance of winning a million dollars would be a big checkmark in the “Pro” column, lol. Still, I would have spent every moment out there wondering what was going on back at home. It would take a very high level of compartmentalizing that I’m not sure I have. I really hope that Jake goes far this season in order to make it worth it. If not, at least he’s got a wild story to tell baby Jax one day.

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People: Ben Affleck ‘still doesn’t want the divorce & he might get his way’

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Forgive me for missing this story when it came out yesterday but in my defense these Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner stories start to run together after a while. It’s like the same story every few days with some minor tweaks. I guess we have to give them credit for sticking to message, which they’re hammering home.

On the Fourth of July Ben Affleck and his maybe not-so-estranged wife, Jennifer Garner, were seen out together at a Fourth of July Parade with three of their children. You can see those photos here at the Daily Mail. The kids are dressed in red, white and blue but Ben is wearing a black t-shirt like he can’t be bothered and Jen is in a white sleeveless shirt with a black jacket over it. How hard is it to find something blue or red to wear on the Fourth of July? Maybe nothing is fitting Ben right.

Just like last week, this week there’s another story in People about how these two are “making it work”. Instead of Jen being “adamant” about divorcing though, it now sounds like she’s given in and that she’s not going to push it.

It’s been just over one year since Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner announced their plans to split and during that time the two have maintained a close relationship – and still haven’t filed divorce papers.

So what’s really going on?

They’re still figuring things out,” a Garner friend tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Ben still doesn’t want the divorce and he might actually get his way.”

While the former couple have downplayed reconciliation rumors over the past year, they have continued living together, going on weekend outings with their kids and even vacationing as a family. This spring, Garner and their three children, Violet, 10, Seraphina, 7, and Samuel, 4, moved to London for several weeks with Affleck, sharing a rented house and sightseeing in Europe while the actor filmed Justice League.

“She had the best time in Europe with Ben and the kids,” says her friend. “She seemed much happier when she returned to L.A. Jen went from being very adamant that a divorce would happen to instead avoiding any divorce talk.”

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Anderson Cooper takes down Florida’s Attorney General a second time

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After an emotional statement on Monday’s Anderson Copper 360 about the tragedy in Orlando, on Tuesday Cooper grilled Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi over her anti-gay record. Mainly, he questioned her championing herself as a voice for the LGBTQ community by establishing a hotline for spouses when Bondi had actively worked to limit gay rights. Bondi’s administration had used anti-gay rhetoric to fight same sex marriage in court, and Anderson brought it up to her. Bondi grew flustered and the interview, which you can watch here, ended professionally but tersely.

After the segment aired, Bondi called in to WOR 710 radio and blamed Cooper for misleading her about the interview’s objective and editing her in a bad light. One problem, Cooper had his receipts and showed them on air that night.

Fighting words. Anderson Cooper responded on Wednesday, June 15, to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s claims that their interview in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting, which aired live on CNN the previous day, was edited to portray her in a bad light.

“She’s either mistaken or she’s not telling the truth,” the CNN host said on his show, Anderson Cooper 360. “Let’s be real here. Ms. Bondi’s big complaint seems to be that I asked in the wake of a massacre of gay and lesbian citizens about her new statements about the gay community and about her old ones.”

Bondi claimed during a radio interview with WOR 710 in New York on Wednesday that she was led to believe that the interview with Cooper would focus on donation scams affecting the victims and their families.

Instead, “when he posted the clip [online], he cut out the entire first portion that discussed people donating to legitimate funds,” she said, and insisted that all the interview did was “encourage anger and hate.” (CNN.com later posted the interview online in its entirety.)

“There’s a time and place for everything, but yesterday wasn’t the time nor the place in front of a hospital when we could have been helping victims,” Bondi added.

“For the record, my interview was not filled with any anger,” Cooper responded on air on Wednesday. “My job is to hold people accountable, and if on Sunday a politician is talking about love and about embracing ‘our LGBT community,’ I don’t think it’s unfair to look at their record and see if they have ever actually spoken that way publicly before, which I’ve never heard her say.”

“The fact is Attorney General Bondi signed off on a 2014 federal court brief that claimed married gay people would ‘impose significant public harm.’ Harm. She spent hundreds of thousands in taxpayer money, gay and straight taxpayers’ money, trying to keep gays and lesbians from getting the right to marry,” he continued.

“Good people can and do disagree on that issue — everyone has the right to their own opinion, thank goodness — but Miss Bondi is championing right now her efforts to help survivors. With the very right which allows gay spouses to bury their dead loved ones — that’s a right that would not exist if Miss Bondi had her way. I think it’s fair to ask her about that. There is an irony in that.”

[From Us Magazine]

I am so tired of the “time and place” argument to waylay discussions about gun and LGBTQ rights. I think when you can point to the result of these antiquated views and say, “that, right there,” it is the perfect time to hold a dialogue. Bondi did much more damage with her radio response than she did in the initial interview. Even without Cooper countering her every claim, she acted against her own argument that it wasn’t the time or place. She asserted Cooper stirred up anger and hate but she missed the point, Cooper’s questions were borne of the anger from the LGBTQ community. She could have admitted that her stance has changed and discussed what her office would do going forward but instead decided to call in for a proper pout to a radio station.

Cooper said he does not like to make himself the story but he felt strongly about addressing her claims. I’m very glad he did. Just like Connecticut’s Rep Chris Murphy’s filibuster to get gun legislation on the floor, we need to keep up the pressure to have a real discourse that brings about a solution to mass shootings.

Here’s is Copper’s full response to Bondi’s claims:

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Photo credit: fame/Flynet Photos and Getty Images

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Roman Polanski wants his rape case dismissed so he can film a movie

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This must be the month in which rich, entitled celebrity dudes seek to delete their criminal pasts with a quick swipe of an eraser. We’ve only just spoken of how Mark Wahlberg seeks a pardon for his racially motivated assaults of yesteryear. Now Roman Polanski’s getting in on the act, which is convenient in a year that’s seen the Bill Cosby and Woody Allen scandals take on new life.

Polanski feels he deserves special treatment for a crime that happened decades ago. To recap, Polanski was charged in 1978 for raping Samantha Geimer. He knew she was underage. He drugged her. He did terrible things to her. Then he was surprised to be convicted. He struck a plea deal to accept guilt (for one of five charges). Before sentencing, Polanski hopped on a plane to France. In 2010, the US almost pulled him back to the States, but the Swiss refused to extradite him.

Polanski’s been living the high life, but he’s very downtrodden. Poor thing. His life won’t be complete until he films a movie in Poland, and he wants the US to close his case so he can do so without fear of extradition:

Alan M. Dershowitz is seeking to lead what could be the final effort to end the legal case against the film director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States before final sentencing on a statutory rape charge in 1978. In connection with a Los Angeles County Superior Court filing on Monday, Mr. Dershowitz is asking permission to represent Mr. Polanski in California.

The filing charged prosecutors with providing false information to support a recent attempt to have Mr. Polanski extradited from Poland. It also demanded a hearing aimed at closing his case, based partly on fresh testimony that a Superior Court judge, in 2009, had unethically prejudged issues related to Mr. Polanski’s prosecution, and had a secret plan to jail him at least briefly, even while limiting his actual sentence to time served.

In October, the authorities in Poland questioned Mr. Polanski, who had been living in France, but declined to detain him following a request from the United States for his extradition when he was photographed at the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. In 2010, Swiss officials ultimately ruled against extradition after detaining Mr. Polanski for more than nine months on a similar request.

The request by Mr. Dershowitz to represent Mr. Polanski opened what promises to be a broad legal and public-relations effort to lift the threat of extradition and jail time from Mr. Polanski, now 81. He was first charged with raping a 13-year-old girl, who has since identified herself as Samantha Geimer, in 1977.

Mr. Polanski was imprisoned for psychiatric evaluation under a plea agreement, but he fled before sentencing when he learned that Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, now dead, intended to impose additional jail time. He and his lawyers have since argued that Los Angeles prosecutors and judges repeatedly violated his rights, and that his sentence has been fully served. But officials have insisted that he must return before those claims can be heard.

Mr. Polanski, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland, has said he would return there to shoot a film about an Alsatian Jew, Alfred Dreyfus, who in the late 19th century was accused of passing military secrets to Germany. The Dreyfus case, which ended in his exoneration, raised debate about anti-Semitism and prosecutorial misconduct.

But to shoot in Poland, Mr. Polanski and his backers have said, would require assurance by the Polish authorities that he would not be subject to extradition.

[From Hollywood Reporter]

There’s a bunch of blah-blah legal talk in the filing, which implies how the original judge was considering reducing Polanski’s sentence to “time served,” but that didn’t happen. Why? Because Polanski skipped out on his punishment. So the original penalty and sentence still applies.

Dershowitz argues that Polanski was “falsely characterized” as a “continuing flight risk,” which … I don’t see what’s so false about that characterization. Polanski got on a plane and left the country. It’s really that simple. He didn’t feel like serving whatever sentence the judge handed out. He thought he did nothing wrong. He thought he was above the law. But he wants to make a little movie, so we should stop bringing the man down? Bitch, please.

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Photos courtesy of WENN

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Billy Corgan throws major shade at Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain & his fans

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Any excuse to reuse Billy Corgan’s Paws Chicago cover! I love his cats. And I’m sort of loving Billy too, which is weird for me. When I was a kid in the ‘90s, I was always more of a Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Jane’s Addiction person. I actually can’t remember the last time someone important name-checked Perry Farrell, right? So, I was never into Smashing Pumpkins and I never really had an opinion about their music or Corgan as a person. As it turns out, he’s a deliciously smug, arrogant and gossipy bitch. Does that make you love him more? Billy sat down for an interview with The Independent last week, which you can read here. The highlights are amazing though:

Billy on his comeback album Monuments to an Elegy: “I needed to find my way back to the centre. And whether it’s David Bowie, John Lennon or Bob Dylan, if the public can only deal with certain personalities when they cross the line of pop and artifice, so be it.”

Reuniting Smashing Pumpkins in 2007: “We were shocked when we came back at how shallow that culture had become. Even Smashing Pumpkins fans were demanding Top 10 songs. We had always played long, rambling things, jokes and weird pranks. But now you’ve got to go along to get along. Trying to put across high-minded art concepts to 70,000 kids in a field when it’s raining isn’t the right space. When the Pumpkins worked at that level in the mid-90s, I was younger, I had my ear to the street, I knew what I was doing. You get a little bit older, you lose that touch. People started to write about me like I was never going to come back. It’s like reading your own obituary.”

Upon hearing that Eddie Vedder felt survivor’s guilt after Kurt Cobain’s death: “That would be Eddie Vedder,” Corgan snorts. “Somehow he makes it about him even when it’s about somebody else! I had a much more personal perspective, because I’d been in contact with Courtney [Love] through a lot of the setting up of that period, and afterwards. I found it devastating because, whether we wanted to admit it or not, he was quarterback of the football team, leading the aesthetic and integrity charge. He knew how to navigate those things.”

How he felt about Kurt Cobain: “Now, he and I didn’t necessarily get along. But I like to sing his praises, because he really was that talented. I like to think the world with him would have been a better place, and I like to think a lot of the crap music that followed wouldn’t have existed if he had been around to criticise it. Because he had the moral standing to slay generations with a strike of the pen.”

Whether he looked up to Cobain: “No. In the purest sense of the word, we were competitors. He and I were the top two scribes, and everybody else was a distant third.”

Moving back to Chicago in 2000: “I found this thing happening. An uncle, or somebody on the street, would walk up and [sneer]: ‘Welcome back.’ Meaning: ‘Yeah, you went out to California, now you’ve come back to dig ditches with us again.’ The sucking sound of the working class, to justify that you can’t escape it. Like the saying, water finds a level. Even in the Chicago press I was treated like a curiosity, still wandering around like a male version of Miss Havisham. I had this interview in Paste magazine in 2005, when the journalist said: ‘I don’t understand what it is about people like you that had your success, and why you keep hanging on.’ And I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m 37!’”

His daddy? “I’m a person who does a lot better with praise. My father thinks that all the bad childhood and the adversity toughened up his Piscean son. He’s fantastic now, and that’s been great. But as I like to tell my daddy, if I’d been loved right, with the gifts that I had, I might have been a classical composer, having a very quiet life and a glass of wine, and not have been in this dirty pop business.”

[From The Independent]

Daddy? LOL. My goodness, that was a lot of smug to unpack in one interview! I kind of love how unapologetic he is too – this is not a guy begging for a compliment. He’s not humble-bragging either. He thinks he’s amazing and he’ll tell you how amazing he is. He thinks he and Kurt Cobain were at the same level, and that he (Corgan) will be regarded as a John Lennon/David Bowie/Bob Dylan kind of musical icon. Um… really? I mean, I’m sure there are lots of old-school Pumpkins fans who consider Corgan to be one of the best musical talents to come out of the ‘90s. But to put himself in the same category as Bowie, Dylan and Lennon? NOPE.

And why does he hate Eddie Vedder, for the love of God?

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Malala Yousafzai, 17, is the co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize

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Exactly a year ago, the Nobel Prize committee was just about to announce the winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. It was widely believed that Malala Yousafzai, then 16, would win. Malala had been – and still is – an outspoken advocate for girls’ education, not to mention the survivor of a horrific attempted murder by the Taliban (the Taliban still want to kill her, just FYI). Long story short, Malala didn’t win last year and people were pissed! So… Malala won the Peace Prize this year. Better late than never? Congrats, Malala!

Reaching across gulfs of age, gender, faith, nationality and even international celebrity, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2014 peace prize to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, joining a teenage Pakistani known around the world with an Indian veteran of campaigns on behalf of children. At age 17, Ms. Yousafzai is the youngest recipient of the $1.1 million prize since it was created in 1901. Mr. Satyarthi is 60.

The awards, announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman, were in acknowledgment of their work in helping to promote universal schooling and in protecting children worldwide from abuse and exploitation, particularly young laborers in India on whose behalf Mr. Satyarthi has campaigned for decades.

Pointedly, Mr. Jagland said, “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”

“Children must go to school and not be financially exploited,” Mr. Jagland said. “It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation. Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.”

Despite his works, Mr. Satyarthi is not nearly so widely known as Ms. Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for her campaigning on behalf of girls’ education in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She was 15 at the time. Since then she has become a global emblem of her struggle, celebrated on television and publishing a memoir.

She “has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations,” Mr. Jagland said. “This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle, she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”

[From The NY Times]

You can read more about Malala’s work and Mr. Satyarthi’s work at the New York Times link. I do think it’s interesting that they made a Hindu and a Muslim co-winners for work in education advocacy. I’m not sure what it means or anything, but I’m just happy that Malala won. She’s definitely worthy. Her eloquence, passion and commitment to nonviolence bring grown men to tears. Even Jon Stewart wanted to adopt her!

Go here to donate to The Malala Fund.

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Photos courtesy of WENN.

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Why did CBS pull Rihanna’s Thursday Night Football performance?

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(Note: I already covered this story over at Pajiba with a slightly different angle. CB asked me to cover it here too as part of the ongoing NFL ruckus.)

This has been a rough week for the NFL. I wonder if they expected this Ray Rice fallout would eventually happen. Or if they simply assumed no one would ever see the horrific video footage, ever. Seriously, I bet all of the execs want to crawl in a hole right now. They’ve handled the situation poorly and could have dealt with Rice appropriately many months ago. Instead, they’re trying to cover their spandexed butts. It’s not working. Even though the Baltimore Ravens still have Janay Rice on their side, this is a PR disaster. I don’t feel bad for the Ravens at all. They fired Rice as a last-ditch measure and only because he became a liability instead of moneymaker.

Here’s the latest update to the Rice story. Rihanna was scheduled as the musical number for last night’s Ravens vs. Steelers game. CBS decided (at the last moment) that this was a bad idea. RiRi was supposed to sing “Run This Town” as Don Cheadle made team introductions. That didn’t happen. Why? TMZ has the lowdown:

CBS has pulled the plug on the musical opening of tonight’s “Thursday Night Football” — and it’s very clear it’s because they don’t want to feature Rihanna in the midst of the Ray Rice scandal.

The opening features Rihanna performing a version of “Run This Town” — while Don Cheadle introduces the teams and dramatically asks who will “run this town” when the game is over.

But with the Ray Rice scandal in full swing, it’s clear CBS didn’t want to feature another celebrity who was involved in a high-profile domestic violence incident.

CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus says, “We thought journalistically and from a tone standpoint, we needed to have the appropriate tone coverage.”

The musical opening will be replaced by a discussion of Roger Goodell’s recent comments about the Ray Rice incident.

[From TMZ]

Neither CBS nor the NFL has actually said, “We didn’t want to have Rihanna sing because she was also involved in a prominent DV case.” Nobody mentioned the words “Chris Brown.” They don’t have to say it. It’s obvious. The NFL wanted to distance themselves from any further controversy. This is sad because Rihanna is not only a DV victim but also a DV survivor. She could have gone onstage and shown the world that she runs the place.

The execs can say what they want about their decision. I want to know how far in advance Rihanna was scheduled for this game. Was she booked last winter before Ray Rice attacked Janay Palmer in that fateful elevator? I doubt it. They still don’t know who’s performing at this season’s Super Bowl. Yeah. Rihanna’s been booked for a few months. The NFL execs just assumed the Rice footage would never surface. Now they’re punishing a woman (again) for having the audacity to be punched by a dude. What a disaster. Doesn’t the NFL have publicists?

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