Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess apparently made some embarrassing errors when he brought his opinionated work to Los Angeles in the form of a reheated LA Weekly cover story on the tragedy of LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner, who committed suicide after coming out publicly as a transgender, then changing his mind.
A correction in the LA Weekly print editions and website today reads: "A story published August 20 about the life and death of former L.A. Times sportswriter Mike Penner incorrectly spelled Amy LaCoe's last name as LeCoe. In addition, the story should have said that Penner's father died 12 years ago, not when Penner was 12 years old; that Penner met his future wife, Lisa Dillman, when she worked at the Detroit News, not at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; and that the couple wed in 1986, not 1987."
We'd criticized the article after it was published in August as a riff on past coverage, including details from a comprehensive Los Angeles Times article, and spanked Freiss for his lazy and kneejerk degrading descriptions of Los Angeles architecture.
Friess came to our attention in May 2009 when he attacked us publicly for asking questions about the mysterious death of Las Vegas superstar Danny Gans. He later helped in an active campaign to mislead reporters on the case-- and made a move to have this site closed down.
Danny Gans' former manager Chip Lightman has made it very clear that Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer (who, interestingly did not pen the recent high-profile Times stories on the Vegas economic slump or Liberace Museum), Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess wasn't far off the mark when he wrote: "In Las Vegas, when left to our own devices, we do things a little differently.”
Lightman has filed a blistering lawsuit against Donny Osmond for firing him as producer of the Donny & Marie stage show at the Flamingo Hilton, accusing the squeaky-clean, caffeine-free, toothy, Mormon entertainer of being "underhanded, devious, fraudulent and greedy," being out to "line his own pockets with ill-gotten gains to fund his lavish lifestyle of exotic cars, luxury hotel suites and private jets," and acting in a manner that's "contrary to the wholesome, all-American, good-natured image that he presents to the public."
Yet, Lightman now says he hopes the suit's resolution will be "amicable."
Amicable.
Amicable!
Lightman's publicist spread the 23-page complaint yesterday as an attachment to an email that read:
"At this time the claim will speak for itself. I am hopeful and optimistic that an amicable resolution will come quickly to this unfortunate situation I never wanted to find myself in."
Lightman, who announced the lawsuit on his Twitter account, also deleted from his Twitter page a threatening "tweet" aimed Friday at Donny and his sister Marie.
Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess, always hustling for an article idea, has found his latest inspiration here at TabloidBaby.com.
Yes, the media figure who attacked us publicly and attempted to have this site shut down because we asked for answers about the mysterious and untimely death of local superstar Danny Gans (and later joined with local media friends to misdirect the investigation), has ripped off one of our exclusive stories for his latest space-filler in the Las Vegas Weekly.
The (self-proclaimed) Friesster has a story in this week's Weekly about baseball legend Pete Rose earning money by signing autographs in the Forum Shops mall at Caesars Palace. The article, apparently jammed out so he'd have something in the can while he was on a vacation road trip, echoes our exclusive July 18th post, Pete Rose in Hell, which revealed that the disgraced baseball great, banned from the game for his gambling, was earning bucks signing autographs in a Las Vegas casino mall.
Friess, who often accuses us of "stealing" when we run his photo (and who this week filched a TMZ shot of Paris Hilton's arrest for his blogsite), didn't even offer us a tip of the hat!
Guess who wound up with an LA Weekly cover story? Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess, that's who, with an article on the death of Mike Penner, the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who went public in a column as a transsexual and returned to work as Christine Daniels in 2007, changed his mind about the process and resumed his original name in 2008, and allegedly committed suicide in 2009. The article and its cover placement are confusing in that Friess's work is little more than a reheating of and elaboration of a number of previously published pieces on the subject, including a well-publicised article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in March.
On his own blog, Friess describes his LA Weekly work as "one of the finer pieces of journalism, with the space and time truly needed, I've had a chance to do." Yet, his contribution to the Penner/Daniels saga appears to be a GLBT activist slant which points blame at Penner's co-worker wife, a competing journalist who wrote that Penner as Daniels resembled a man in drag, and even respected journalist Evan Wright (Friess challenges Wright's claim that he'd put the brakes on a Vanity Fair article because of Daniels' fragile mental state). And although he promises revelations from Penner's wife and Penner himself ("Dillman has never spoken on the record about her husband's transition, and Penner never answered the media's questions about their relationship..."), those teases do not pay off.
For all his alleged research (phoning people who had already appeared in other articles), Friess insinuates that he never even read, nor ventured to find the LA Times blog Penner wrote during his transition and which the Times has removed from its site and archives ("...Daniels also never wrote of it in her blog on transgenderism, according to those who read it when it was available online.").
The Las Vegas public figure who came to our attention after he attacked Tabloid Baby online and in print for asking questions about the Las Vegas media's lax coverage of the death of local superstar Danny Gans, is most egregiously ungrateful in his use of the forum to toss off lazy, disputable and easily fact-checked insulting of various Los Angeles locations, all of which seem to have been cooked up at the kitchenette table of his Las Vegas apartment:
"a dreary apartment building on Sepulveda just north of National..."
"...a small shop of roughly 1,000 square feet nestled in a dumpy Studio City strip mall..."
"...a circuitous and dank hallway in L.A.'s fortress-like, nondescript Westwood Villa Apartments..."
Marotta, recently wracked with crippling migraines, married Little in Hawaii in October 2003. Her humanitarian work earned her a place on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars®, in front of the Flamingo Hilton.
In a stunningly unfortunate case of bad timing, it turns out that Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess published a pair of vicious, politically-motivated attacks on the legendary comic impersonator Rich Little, just days before Little's wife committed suicide.
"The Friesster," who has exerted an influence on Vegas entertainment scene through his many media connections and outlets (not to mention his relationships with Vegas moguls like Steve Wynn), slammed the 71-year-old Little on his Vegas blogsite on Saturday, July 10th, for allegedly referring to gay Congressman Barney Frank as a "queen" in a punchline during a comedy routine the previous evening at the Nevada Republican Party's annual convention.
"It seems like Little wants to make himself
relevant again by stealing material,
resorting to incredibly simplistic homophobic humor
and polarizing audiences."--Steve Friess
The next day, Friess hit again, publishing an accusation from a "reader" who supposedly "attended Rich Little's stand-up performance at The Cannery in North Las Vegas on Saturday night," that Little had "introduced a woman in the audience who he said was the best female impersonator besides for Barney Frank."
Friess also repeated the accusation from the "reader" that "Little's best impression was of Andy Rooney but that the jokes themselves were lifted verbatim from Steven Wright." Despite his reputation for cadging free show tickets, Friess did not attend either performance.
In the Sunday attack, the activist Friesster revealed that his problems with Little may have less to do with the use of a "slur" than with Little's conservative political leanings and contributions to Sean Hannity events.
"Rich Little is an interesting figure because he was called upon in 2007 to perform at the White House Correspondents Dinner the year after Steven Colbert's scorcher embarrassed President Bush. The reviews were brutal but he didn't do much current-event political humor then."I'm not one to write off someone just because they're old or they've been out of the public eye for a while... But it seems like Little wants to make himself relevant again by stealing material, resorting to incredibly simplistic homophobic humor and polarizing audiences who aren't expecting to be polarized."
Four days after the broadsides, Little's wife Marie Marotta was found dead in an apparent suicide.
Norm Clarke of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sunday quoted "a friend" saying that Marie's health issues were compounded by "a tough year" for the couple, including "a dropoff in his headliner bookings in the last decade."
While there is no evidence that Friess' screed contributed to the tragedy on Thursday, the postings, which are widely read among Las Vegas' business class, would certainly add to Rich Little's difficulties obtaining future headlining bookings in the city.
As of this posting, Friess has not commented on Rich Little's tragedy.
(Leaving aside a comedian's license to offend-- what of the word "Queen"? In a rare case in which a negative comment on Friess's site has not been censored and removed, a commenter to Friess's posts challenged the activist for holding the "old" Little to the political-correctness expected of young performers. He also questioned Friess' hypocrisy: "In 'Gay Vegas', you say 'there is nothing queer about the Four Queens, except its name'. This makes me see 'Queen' as not being insulting, yet your post about the Barney Frank joke makes me think it may be an insult. So, now I am wondering when it is OK to use 'Queen' and when it is an insult? I am especially afraid that it is never OK to use 'Queen' if the user is not gay."
(Friess responded: "The use of terms/slurs by people who are part of the community or friendly to it is different.")
The Las Vegas Weekly and its editor Scott Dickensheets have rolled out another cover story on a major figure in the Danny Gans case. Following up on last week's confessions from Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess, comes a laudatory profile of controversial beauty queen-turned-television entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs.
Jacobs was a close personal friend of Gans, and on May 1, 2009, the the first member of the media to learn of Gans' death, getting a 4 a.m. phone call from Gans' manager Chip Lightman. The article touches upon the incident without exploring the details of the morning or her relationship with the musical impressionist:
"Jacobs defends her reporting of Gans’ death last year. The two were genuinely close. They dined together and, sharing an interest in physical fitness, worked out together. Jacobs was the first journalist contacted by Gans’ manager, Chip Lightman, after he learned of Gans’ death.
"Danny Gans and Alicia Jacobs became close friends during her career in Vegas. Jacobs sobbed through her segment announcing Gans had died and spoke emotionally of their friendship. It was a unique moment in broadcast news for the emotion displayed on-air by the reporter. Local media critics pounced.
“'I have thought about that and re-lived it many, many times in my head. Honest to God, I would not have done anything differently,' says Jacobs. 'I thought I could get through the story. But I remember seeing b-roll of Danny on one of the monitors, singing and dancing, and losing it. To this day I don’t believe he is gone … So, yes, I got a little emotional on the air. You know what? It was real. We are real. Sometimes it’s okay to be real on the air. People cry, hurt and feel pain. I wouldn’t change it.'”
"But what about--?" No, there is no follow-up.
The profile, From Beauty Queen to Extra: The Journey of LV's Top Celebrity Broadcaster, is written by Las Vegas Sun columnist John Katsilometes, a journalist who touched on Gans' rumoured drug use in his initial story about Gans' sudden passing at 52 (the powerful opiate Dilaudid would be named as a cause), but who backed off immediately along with the rest of the Las Vegas media pack. Perhaps that's why it celebrates Jacobs' role as a correspondent on the syndicated television infotainment show, Extra, and is full of sympathetic, humanizing notes about her adoption, disfiguring car crash and career-threatening love of animals, while not pressing her on the issue for which she's gained the most notoriety.
An accompanying photo of Jacobs as "Mrs. United States," however, does reveal that she is not a natural blonde.
This Mother's Day Twitter post shows that Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen Steve "Friesster" Friess is having a fine old time continuing to milk the publicity and notoriety he received from his self-aggrandizing Las Vegas Weekly cover story about turning in a family member (albeit a black sheep) who was a fugitive on a kiddie porn rap.
Oh, that silly goose Steve Friess. Tabloid Baby's 2009 Journalist of The Year is having a hissy fit and throwing around words like "slander" once again because we reported on his very controversial Las Vegas Weekly cover story, A Snitch in the Family, in which he explains why he crossed journalistic and familial lines to help US Marshals snare his uncle, who'd fled from a plea bargain and sentencing on Internet kiddie porn charges.
In response, Steve Friess, stringer reporter for The New York Times and other national periodicals (as well as Las Vegas blogger, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen), calls us:
"Pro-child porn"... "Sad"... "Treacherous"... "Sick"... and "Desperate for attention"... while even more disturbingly, refers to himself as "The Friesster."
As we reported earlier this afternoon, this arrest escapade was only Friess's latest ethical quandary of the past year, and only the latest that he made public by using the Las Vegas Weekly to explain himself. We did not pass judgment on Steve's pickle. In fact, we posted a link to the story and suggested to our readers: "You be the judge."
Within minutes, however, the hysterical "Friesster" posted an anonymous comment on our site, in which he congratulated himself for his action.
Then he wrote a second comment, which he deleted.
And then he sent an email to our office:
"So you're pro-child porn now! How thrilling for you!
"Also, I own the copyright on the image you've used. Please remove immediately. Then you can lie about being threatened to be shut down again when, of course, I'm simply suggesting that you not steal. If anything you said was of consequence, I'd rebut your lies, but in a full year of attacks, not a single person in any serious manner has ever noticed or cared what you say. God, you're so sad.
"-sf
"P.S. Yes I deleted my own comment from your blog. I did it because I have had a long-standing policy of not reading or commenting on your treacherous site of slander. I just couldn't believe anyone would attack for something like this, so I had to click. Then I realized: I don't need to react to show how sick and desperate for attention this "person" is. Everyone already knows. Frown face!"
This is The Friesster's deleted comment (which he'd posted inadvertently under the name of his blog):
"So you're pro-child porn? Kinda undermines ur bitching at tmz but oh well! Bravo to the friesster! Cross what line? Journalists aren't above the law. Are you saying you would harbor a porn pusher?"
Frown face? Now really, was there anything we'd written that would warrant such an attack? Remember, this is a reporter for The New York Times, a man who's made himself a public figure by airing his laundry across the Internet while toeing the line that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
Would a trusted, objective reporter suggest someone is "pro-child porn" for reporting a story that he himself promoted on his blog (in a post that begins with the line, "I lied to you people a couple of weeks ago...")? Oh, right. He called us much worse for daring to ask questions about the death of Danny Gans.
He's the Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, concert promoter and comp queen whom we first encountered a little over a year ago when we emailed him to ask why his colleagues were not investigating the recent, mysterious death of local superstar Danny Gans and he responded by going on line and attacking us in a public obscene rant. In the months to follow, he led a campaign to stop our investigation, helped spread disinformation about Gans' death, called us "homophobes" for criticizing him (all the while running a photo on his blogsite showing him lifting former Hefner girl Holly Madison in an over-the-threshold pose while in his second unofficial marriage to a man-- a producer at the local NBC affiliate), attempted to have our site shut down after we posted his photo (we were forced to use approximations), wrote that Michael Jackson's death was the best thing to happen to his music and then, while covering the investigation into Jacko's death for the New York Times, capitalized on the demise by promoting a "tribute" concert to his music-- all the while acting as a mouthpiece for casino mogul and Danny Gans employer Steve Wynn and reviewing musical acts despite a severe hearing impairment-- a morass of conflicts of interest that led him to represent all that was wrong with the lazy, corrupt media of Sin City and led us to name him Tabloid Baby's 2009 Journalist of The Year.
Now, the go-to guy for national media looking for Vegas stories who decides what Vegas events are national news and what are not (see Danny Gans) and uses his column in the Las Vegas Weekly to explain away his transgressions and conflicts, writes this week that he crossed the line again when he helped US Marshals arrest a family member "who could easily pass as my 25-years-older twin brother" and who was on the run to avoid a court plea and sentencing in an Internet kiddie porn case.
4 pm: Steve Friess reads Tabloid Baby! It appears that he posted a comment on our story-- then changed his mind and deleted it. Please, Steve, have your say! We know you're not shy. Your fellow Tabloid Baby fans want to hear from you!
The autopsy and toxicological test results on Corey Haim are not yet in, but already the death of the former child star is being attributed to prescription drugs and mentioned in the same breath as that of the Las Vegas Strip superstar Danny Gans.
California's Attorney General Jerry Brown has linked Haim to an "illegal and massive prescription-drug ring" and says his office is investigating "an unauthorized prescription under the former child star's name that was found during an ongoing investigation of fraudulent prescription-drug pads ordered from a vendor in San Diego."
Brown said: "Corey Haim's death is yet another tragedy linked to the growing problem of prescription-drug abuse. This problem is increasingly linked to criminal organizations, like the illegal and massive prescription-drug ring under investigation."
Haim, of course, is only the latest celebrity prescription drug-related death in the time since last May 1st, when Gans died suddenly at the age of 52 due to an overdose of Dilaudid. Michael Jackson and Brittany Murphy's prescription-related demises contributed to Brown's interest in the prescription racket. Those deaths, however, were scrutinized and investigated by a responsible media as well as law enforcement officials.
It has been reported that Gans did not have a prescription for the drug that led to his death, and that he was an owner of a pharmacy supply house. There has been no investigation into either aspect of his life or death, and one would suspect that an honest investigation and accounting into the details of the pain and struggles of Gans' life and circumstances of his death would set him apart from the show business losers and freaks to whom timing and similarity have linked him so unfortunately.
A civilian who'd been summoned for jury duty captured the sound of the shooting spree at the Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas that left a guard and the gunman dead. Although it's accompanied by the cameraholder's wiseass commentary, the sound is chilling to say the least.
We had our first encounter with Steve Friess a week after the death of Danny Gans. He'd written a column in the Las Vegas Weekly explaining why the sudden, mysterious passing of the Strip superstar was not a story worth covering. We emailed him to ask why he and his fellow Vegas journos were not doing the basic legwork on what, to all appearances, was a major cultural, economic and news story.
Within minutes, he emailed back:
""Uh, because until the toxicology reports come back it would be irresponsible and inappropriate for legitimate reporters to write baseless speculation? Because a man is dead and a family is in mourning and the state of the nation is not dependent upon exacerbating their grief? Because Pulitzer Prize winning newspapers have better uses of their resources than to 'investigate' something that public documents will reveal soon enough anyway?
"I looked over what you've been 'reporting.' It's all beneath contempt. Ginning up Robin Leach's 'rumors' when the rumors he's referring to have nothing to do with Gans' death, implying an inappropriate relationship with Alicia Jacobs, attacking the local press for having a modicum of dignity and restraint on a story that will come out anyway ... I need to go take a shower now. Blech.""
And so began our relationship with the Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, hearing-impaired music reviewer, Gay Vegas author, comp queen and concert producer that culminates in our naming Steve Friess Tabloid Baby's 2009 Journalist of The Year.
In the weeks and months to follow our first correspondence, Steve Friess made an attempt to close down our site because we ran his photo (forcing to use fascimiles), began a disinformation campaign to lead us and other journos off the track, and was revealed to have close ties to many figures in the Gans story, including Gans' boss Steve Wynn and Alicia Jacobs, the beauty queen-turned-local entertainment reporter who was Gans' close friend and the first person informed by Gans' manager of his death.
Then there was the Michael Jackson story. After writing that "Michael Jackson’s untimely death was the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music," and while covering the Vegas angle of the criminal investigation into Jacko's death for The New York Times, Friess inexplicably announced that he was producing and promoting a Jacko birthday "tribute" concert at the Palms Hotel, where he and his local NBC producer husband had honeymooned.
“In Las Vegas, when left to our own devices, we do things a little differently.” --Steve Friess, Las Vegas Weekly
In both the Gans and Jackson cases, Friess attempted to cover his tracks with unintentionally hilarious apologias in the Las Vegas Weekly.
So why does it matter?
Steve Friess, with his tendency to hurl insults, hold grudges and get himself into local gossip columns, is not merely a Vegas combination of Perez Hilton and Louella Parsons.
He is perhaps the most powerful journalist in Las Vegas.
As a freelance correspondent for major news organizations including The New York Times and USA Today, he is the filter through which distant editors can determine whether a story in Las Vegas is worth covering. In the case of Danny Gans, Friess made it clear that the story was not worth covering. And if his relationship with Danny Gans' boss Steve Wynn, or his even closer relationship with staffers on the local NBC affiliate (including his second "husband" and their BFF Alicia Jacobs) created a conflict of interest, so be it.
Steve Friess has no qualms about swinging his conflicts of interest in public, whether it's his political activism, favoritism, foul insults or kneejerk shouts of homophobia against anyone who questions his intentions or positions.
When local Greenspun Media laid off many reporters, editors and columnist earlier this month, Steve Friess, who attends fancy openings of hotels, gets himself and his family members free admission into any show on the Strip whenever he wants, squirrels away opening night mementos and souvenirs that one day will be worth thousands on eBay, kept his job. But then again, Steve Friess, who poses as a brave, independent journalist, is the ultimate courtier to the powerful whose blogsite always displays a link to his interviews with Steve Wynn.
In a shocking interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Danny Gans’ manager has raised disturbing new questions about the circumstances of the musical impressionist’s drug-related death.
Chip Lightman, who was first to receive word from Gans’ wife Julie that the Las Vegas Strip star had died in his bed early on the morning of May 1st, indicates that Gans may have died hours earlier than police reported, and that Julie Gans phoned Lightman a half hour before she called 911.
STEVE MARCUS/LAS VEGAS SUN
According to the incident report from the Henderson Police Department, Gans’ wife Julie (“Julia”) awoke “at approximately 0340 hours… and realized Daniel was no longer snoring. When Julia checked on Daniel she realized he was unresponsive and she could not tell if he was breathing and or if he had a pulse. Julia immediately called 911.”
Lightman, however, tells Sun columnist John Katsilometes that Julie Gans called him at 3:15 a.m., and told him that Gans had died “a couple of hours ago.”
“I get a call at 3:15 in the morning, and it’s Julie, his wife, and she goes, ‘Dan is gone.’ I’m like, 'What!?’ At that moment, it was like I was dreaming. I didn’t think I was awake and on the phone, and then I go, 'What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘Danny died, Chip.’ I’m saying, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Call whoever you have to call and let them know, and I’ll talk to you later.’
“I asked, ‘When did it happen?’ She said, ‘A couple of hours ago.’”
Lightman also responds to a question Tabloid Baby first asked in the days following Gans’ death: why he immediately phoned Alicia Jacobs, the beauty queen turned local entertainment reporter who flaunted her close relationship with Gans, to inform her of Gans' passing.
“I had collected my thoughts, and I thought, ‘OK, how do I get the word out? Do I get Steve Wynn up at about 4 in the morning and tell him? Or do I call (Wynn Las Vegas spokeswoman) Jennifer Dunne? ... I finally just called Alicia. She was the first person I thought of to get the word out, get it on the air, and I knew her number. When something like that happens, you’re in shock. Danny had just done an interview with her, and she was fresh on my mind when I thought ‘media.’ I thought, ‘I’ll just call Alicia.’ They were friends, too.”
Lightman’s latest statements are all the more disturbing in light of the fact that they come more than seven months after Gans’ death, with more than enough time to prepare his answers, and after he and others close to the situation have altered their stories more than once to fit new information and circumstances that arise.
And while it's Lightman's backhanded swipe at Gans' widow in an interview to promote the Gans autobiography that stands out, Lightman's latest version also paints a very different picture of Gans.
While he once claimed that Gans seemed to be in perfect health in the days leading to his death, he now tells Katsilometes that the star was ill.
“A few days before he died, I said, ‘You don’t look like you feel well.’ He said, “I’ve been fighting something. I’m just drained beyond drained. My shoulder has been acting up, the kids are sick, everyone around me is sick.’ The Wednesday night before he died — we always sat and met before onstage, usually at 7:10 — and he didn’t look good. He looked worn out..."
He admits that Gans may have been using steroids-- for his vocal cords:
"People said to me, when the coroner’s (report) hadn’t come out yet, 'We know he’s doing tons of steroids, and he had bulked up like the Hulk,' and all this stuff. And you know, if Dan did that, he didn’t do it around me. If Dan took any steroids, it was for his voice, to lessen the inflammation on his vocal chords... He worked out five days a week, and he had a 2,000-square-foot gym at his house."
He even says Gans' Encore Theatre may have been cursed.
“The biggest concern was the room People said it was a bad-luck room, it’s cursed. Dan was saying, ‘Spamalot didn’t work, Avenue Q before Spamalot didn’t work. Nothing has worked, and they were very good shows.’"
The Henderson Police Department investigation into Gans’ death was open for almost two months, but no criminal charges were filed. We do not know if the police looked into the records of Gans' home or Chip Lightman's phone calls.
Julie Gans and her children moved to Los Angeles during that time. Although the three teenage children have been brought out to speak with the media twice since the tragic death, Julie Gans has not been seen in public.
The Las Vegas news media as a group deliberately avoided any investigation of the circumstance of Gans' death or unexamined private life (Katsilometes wrote the day after Gans’ death about rumours of Gans’ steroid use — but never followed up), and Steve Friess, a local blogger, comp queen, New York Times stringer and close associate with Gans boss Steve Wynn, joined with Jacobs in a campaign to stop any investigation into the death and in fact, have this site shut down.
Public perception of the Born Again Christian, athletic, corporate entertainer has shifted in recent months with the revelations that a pharmacy co-owned by Gans marketed a male erection party pill. Gans’ children, brought out to face the media last month to promote the recently-published autobiography, changed a story they’d told earlier to acknowledge that their father did take prescription medication.
Click the photo for our complete coverage of the death and legacy of the Las Vegas superstar
Watch:
Read:
"Sad, funny, undeniably authentic, Tabloid Baby tells the tale of what befell too much of mainstream television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good."
--Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes
"Burt was there for the birthing of tabloid, he became the heart of the genre, and now he's written the bible."
--Maury Povich
"... the boozy, Vegas-stomping, strip-club-hopping, Sammy Davis Jr.–fawning life he describes, in vomit-in-the-office-trash-can detail, is emulated by mainstream media personalities today!"
--LA Weekly
Watch more:
GREATEST HITS
Click the photo to see how a corporate porn-pushing gossip site fooled the world by reporting Michael Jackson's death before it was confirmed
"...a potpourri blog... a mash-up of retro stars, LA stories, forgotten details, well-worn memories, breaking scoops, all mixed in with a little spritz of analysis. (And damn---excellent grammar and sentence structure from our host!! That you certainly won't find on too many media blogs.)" --Anonymous commenter, 10.24.07
"Dear Burt: While you always had quite a flair for the dramatic, you never had much regard for the truth... Apparently you can't be bothered to read anything carefully. Maybe that is why you, like O'Reilly, make half your crap up.
Glad to hear you finally got sober." -- Barry Nolan, 04.12.08
"Hey! Who said Burt got sober?" -- Tabloid Baby, 04.12.08
