People: Hey, he’s a real schmuck
As if alienating African Americans wasn’t enough, now Michael Richards is ruffling feathers in the Jewish community.
In discussing Richards’ recent racist tirade during a stand-up comedy routine, his publicist, Howard Rubenstein, last week admitted the former “Seinfeld” star shouted anti-Semitic remarks onstage in April.
But he brushed that off, saying Richards “is Jewish. He’s not anti-Semitic at all. He was role-playing.”
Now, confronted with the fact that neither of Richards’ parents are Jewish and he hasn’t formally converted to the religion, Rubenstein says: “He said there were two mentors who raised him and who had a big influence on his life, and they were Jewish. … He really thinks of himself as Jewish.”
Replies Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles: “You can’t feel Jewish. It’s not a matter of feeling. … You can’t not convert to Judaism and then be Jewish.”
Collared again
Snoop Dogg was arrested for illegally possessing a handgun and drugs as he was leaving the “Tonight Show” studio Tuesday following a performance.
Police searched his home earlier in the day as part of an investigation following his Oct. 26 arrest at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., for having a gun and marijuana in his car.
The 35-year-old rapper also has an arraignment next week from his September arrest for carrying a deadly weapon – a collapsible baton – at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Calif.
Measuring Madonna
Human rights organizations will help decide whether Madonna is fit to adopt a Malawian toddler, a judge ruled Wednesday.
The groups claim government officials cut corners in allowing the pop star and her husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, to adopt a 14-month-old boy in October.
Malawi regulations stipulate that prospective parents undergo an 18- to 24-month assessment period in the country, but Madonna and Ritchie were allowed to take the child to London.
Coppola’s latest release
Filmmaker Sofia Coppola has given birth to her first child, a daughter named Romy.
The father is her boyfriend, Thomas Mars, singer for the French rock band Phoenix.
Coppola, 35, the daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, won a best screenplay Oscar for 2003’s “Lost in Translation,” which she also directed.
Oh, grow up, Kid
Finally, the New York Post says Pamela Anderson wants out of her four-month marriage to Kid Rock because of what an unidentified friend calls his “male insecurity” and “major anger issues.”
When he saw her in “Borat” – at a screening in the home of Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer – Rock “started screaming,” the friend says, saying Anderson “had humiliated herself.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. is 89. Producer Dick Clark is 77. Director Ridley Scott is 69. Singer Billy Idol is 51. Actor-director Ben Stiller is 41. Actress Sandra Oh is 36. Country singer Mindy McCready is 31. Singer Clay Aiken is 28. Actress Elisha Cuthbert (“24”) is 24.