Kelly Ripa was Scanner's first-ever Crush of the Week, and she remains the most enthusiastically slutty, unabashedly flirtatious creature on morning TV. Plenty has been made about Katie Couric's legs, but what about Kelly Ripa's ever-under-discussion breasts, or her lascivious leer, or her shameless bragging about her hot husband and her lusty marriage. She likes her kids, but she also likes grabbing the knees of hunks she interviews, making her a great role model for women who want to have a stable home life and still be whorish good-time girls in public. With a hot home life, a gazillion-dollar-a-year salary and a spring in her step, she's raised the bar for having it all. — AC
The ladies of the WNBA are amazingly talented and surprisingly closeted. We can understand NFL players hesitating to come out — they face the threat of violence from their own teammates. All the more reason for professional women's basketball — a sport by all accounts teeming with lesbians and the potential to be a gay-friendly pro sport — to take the lead in legitimizing homo-friendly athletics.
Perhaps it simply takes the sport's best player to make that first leap of faith. Sheryl Swoopes is the WNBA's top athlete. She's one of the league's original players, and has been showered with virtually every accolade in women's basketball, including three MVPs. Last October, she came out as a lesbian in ESPN magazine despite fearing it could damage her image among fans. "My biggest concern is that people are going to look at my homosexuality and say to little girls — whether they're white, black, Hispanic — that I can't be their role model anymore." But she added that she needed to take that chance anyway, because despite its reticence to be more out and proud, "the WNBA is well aware of the support they get from the gay and lesbian community."
We think Ms. Swoopes is fantastic. For one thing, she's a basket player whose name is Swoopes. For another, we know that once the league's other lesbians see that being out hasn't changed her fan base, we're sure they'll follow her lead. We believe she's what Jackie Robinson was talking about when he said, "How you played in yesterday's game is all that counts." — WD
We've never understood what's wrong with the British press when it comes to Camilla Parker Bowles. Dowdy and ascetic, she couldn't be better cast to represent the crusty English monarchy. And yet after Diana — a lovely woman but one whose marriage to Prince Charles always felt distinctly arranged — Camilla seems endearingly out of place on the throne under the disapproving glare of the Queen. She has terrible hair and a squinty gawk. She bears an unsettling resemblance to Dame Edna. Whenever they place a tiara on her head, you half-expect someone to appear with a bucket of pig's blood.
And yet with only her self-confidence to coast on, the lackluster Camilla managed to capture the fancy of the prince way back in the early '70s. For a period, they would tryst at Buckingham Palace. But Charles, notoriously shy, hesitated to propose, and so she married a Cavalry officer and watched quietly from the sidelines as he and Diana built a camera-ready dynasty.
Now, we don't approve of homewrecking, and what happened to Diana makes Camilla's romance with Charles at best bittersweet, but there's something inspiring about the drab, assertive woman finally winning her equally drab prince. Even as the tabloids relentlessly excoriated her, Camilla kept a dignified silence, and dismissed the allegations that she wasn't pretty enough to be a princess. In retrospect, she and Charles were always perfect for each other, and when they visited the U.S. last November, she seemed at least to have won America's royal-watchers. A People magazine editor who met her during the trip found her to be "incredibly charming and funny and able to poke fun at herself." When she and Charles finally married last February, the brief civil ceremony was as plain and unassuming as the bride herself. We hope all of England's ugly little girls were watching. — WD
The creators of Lost made a bold move when they paired the hot California chick with the Iraqi soldier instead of the blond, blue-eyed guy. But it works, because Naveen Andrews is the most effortlessly sexy actor on the show. And his off-camera life is even better: at sixteen, he caused a scandal in England by publicly romancing his math teacher. As an adult, he moved to America to join A.A. and was sponsored by a Sex Pistol. Now thirty-five, he lives with Barbara Hershey, who's fifty-seven. Hey, if he's good enough for Mary Magdalene, he's good enough for us. — GW
As the host of New Scandinavian Cooking on PBS, adorable Tina Nordstrom hops around Sweden, having wild adventures that end in even wilder meals. Her episode summaries read like the most amazing dates ever: "Tina goes wild boar hunting! She also visits the traditional glassworks which are dotted throughout the woods! Tina makes different pickles and sausage in a new way!" "In this show, Tina goes downhill skiing, competes in exotic reindeer racing, catches reindeer and visits a hotel which is made completely out of ice." To recap: she's Swedish, she's gorgeous, she cooks, she hunts wild boar. What more could you possibly ask for? — GW
When I fell for Ross McElwee, he was lying on a guest bed in his parents' house, whisper-drawling into the camera. It was a scene from the brilliant Sherman's March: A Mediation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (1986), which begins as a documentary about General Sherman's march to the sea and winds up being an epic about the way fate flings us into each other's arms, the universal longing for real connection and the profound sexiness of crazy Southern women. All of McElwee's deeply personal documentaries, narrated in that handsome accent, are funny and brave, pursuing subjects as huge as death (Time Indefinite), birth (Six o' Clock News) and smoking in North Carolina (Bright Leaves). His films, recently collected into an essential box set, all deal in one way or another with intimacy . . . click here to read the interview
Ang Lee introduced Chow Yun-Fat to Hollywood in 2000 with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. From then on, the trilingual star has been on an upward trajectory, starring in hit film after . . . wait, no he hasn't. But why the hell not? There are few leading men more charismatic than Chow, who¹s equally likeable as a toothpick-gnawing gangster and a playful romantic foil. Could the problem be he's too likeable? Are other actors threatened by the competition from Hong Kong? Whatever the reason, we hope his upcoming role in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 brings him back into the public eye. — GW
In November of 2005, Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave a speech urging the Anglican Church to accept gay bishops. Here's what he said: "Jesus did not say, 'If I be lifted up I will draw some.' Jesus said, 'If I be lifted up I will draw all, all, all, all, all.' Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful. It's one of the most radical things. All, all, all, all, all, all, all, all. All belong. Gay, lesbian, so-called straight. All, all are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All. Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems — poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict — that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation?" Amen to that. — GW
