In case you were too busy monitoring the worldwide economic crisis this past week to keep up on the really important news, let me be the first to apprise you that retailers across America started whipping a talking doll off their shelves these past few days after customers complained it was "spouting hate" -- at least that's how it was couched in a report by Fox News Kansas City yesterday.

The doll in question, Fisher-Price's "Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle & Coo Doll," allegedly repeats the phrases "Satan is king" and "Islam is the light" in addition to all of the standard babbling and cooing you would expect to hear from a talking baby doll.

"There's no markings on the box to indicate there's anything Islamic about this doll," Oklahoman Gary Rofkahr told Fox News in a story headlined "Parents Outraged Over Baby Doll They Say Mumbles Pro-Islam Message."

All of which begs so many questions, I hardly know where to begin. Read more...

Rare is the occasion when Richard Gere acknowledges the existence of the infamous gerbil-in-the-butt legend that has tailed him since the early nineties, but he did just that in an interview published in the U.K.'s Metro this week. Asked if he had ever read any "crazy stories" about himself, Mr Gere replied:

I stopped reading the press a long time ago. Lots of crazy things came up about me at first, especially from the tabloids. There is an infamous ‘Gere stuck a hamster up his bum’ urban myth. I expect that sort of thing but when reputable magazines started making up stories claiming I was in a country I had never been to with someone I didn’t even know, I just decided not to pay attention to any of it. It’s a waste of energy.

A hamster??? Either the actor is unforgivably fuzzy on the details of his own personal urban legend, or he knows something the rest of us don't.

He and Sylvester Stallone need to talk.

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