Oh, why be a campaign killer?
Oprah Winfrey says her attorneys went overboard trying to block to a Missouri man’s efforts to promote her as a candidate for president.
“My lawyers overreacted, I think, by sending him a cease-and-desist order because it really is a flattering thing,” Winfrey said of Patrick Crowe.
The Kansas City man has been urging Winfrey to run for president for years, setting up a Web site that has its own campaign song.
A month ago, Winfrey’s lawyers sent Crowe a letter demanding that he remove her picture from the site, but it remained there as of Monday.
The matter should have been handled in a phone call, said Winfrey, who added that she’s thinking of calling Crowe herself.
Meanwhile, he’s standing by his candidate.
“It has become increasingly serious to me,” says Crowe, who opposes the Bush administration and its foreign policy. “I know Oprah can do better than that.”
XM’s and O’s
Winfrey, by the way, launched her new radio channel, Oprah and Friends, on the XM satellite service Monday.
The 24-hour station will feature shows hosted by Winfrey herself and a variety of friends including poet Maya Angelou.
On the opening broadcast by another pal, Gayle King, Winfrey beau Stedman Graham waxed poetic about her pastrami and cheese sandwiches: “That’s the other side of Oprah that people don’t know about. She can cook.”
Now he’s really sore
A judge Monday threw out a $10 million lawsuit against Liza Minnelli by estranged husband David Gest, who says her beatings during alcoholic rages put him in the hospital.
The New York Supreme Court justice said Gest’s doctor failed to rebut her medical expert, who said his headaches instead resulted from a strain of herpes that causes shingles.
Gest’s lawyer said she planned to appeal, claiming her client tested negative for herpes.
Back-out boy
Aaron Carter has broken off his engagement to his older brother’s ex-girlfriend, just a week after proposing onstage in Las Vegas.
Actress Kari Ann Peniche, 22, is an ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter, not to mention a former Miss Teen USA and former Playboy Playmate.
“I got caught up in the moment and proposed,” says Aaron Carter, 18. “I then realized it was a hasty thing to do and I am not ready for marriage quite yet.”
A big boxing-office hit
Tired of his movies being bashed, German director Uwe Boll took on four of his critics in a Vancouver, B.C., boxing ring Saturday and ended each bout with a knockout.
But before going down, Toronto journalist Chris Alexander said he got in a punch for each of Boll’s bad films: “I think I got him once in the face for ‘Alone in the Dark,’ and I got maybe one or two for ‘BloodRayne.’ ”
The birthday bunch
Fitness expert Jack LaLanne is 92. Singer Olivia Newton-John is 58. Actress Linda Hamilton is 50. Actress Melissa Sue Anderson (“Little House on the Prairie”) is 44. Actor Jim Caviezel (“The Passion of the Christ”) is 38. Singer Christina Milian is 25.