Under the bus goes international

Barack Obama's under the bus tour claimed its latest victim yesterday as he coolly dismissed rumors he is good friends with actress turned dreadful singer Scarlett Johansson.

Johansson, one Obama's most outspoken supporters, has listed Obama among her "five dads." (Joining Woody Allen, Tom Waits, Bill Murray and Bob Dylan.) She made this distinction even creepier by later joking she was engaged to Obama.

While Scarlett has conceded that after their glorious first meeting at a private fundraiser she hasn't been able to spend that much time with her political daddy, she has insisted they have a very healthy back and forth email relationship and breathlessly gushed “someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly ‘on’ — how can he return these personal e-mails?"

Not true, according to Obama, telling reporters he only emailed Johansson once, after an aid had forwarded him her message, and the extent of his response was "Thank you, Scarlett, for doing what you do."

Obviously somebody is mistaken. And while I don't think very highly of Barack's general truthiness, I trust a 23-year old entertainment type even less. On the off-chance Scarlett isn't exaggerating and the incriminating emails get out . . . we are going to have ourselves a bizarre and not insignificant scandal.

But yesterday Barack wasn't the only political figure to ditch a hot celebrity female with whom there has been talk of a non-biological family relation. Nelson Mandela also got in the act by dumping "adopted granddaughter" Naomi Campbell from his official 90th birthday party.

Now Mandela is far from the under the bus tossing sort -- just ask current world enemy number one but still Friend of Nelson Robert Mugabe. Meaning Naomi's transgression must have been a lot worse than claiming she had the Noble Price winner's personal email address.

In fact the supermodel was convicted of assaulting two police officers at London's Heathrow airport and calling them "crackers." But the kicker was she did so while wearing a cap which read 46664 -- Mandela's ID number during the 27 years he spent in prison for seeking racial justice.

Adopted adult granddaughters never learn, do they?

Crazy model + crazy president = broken BlackBerry

Are Naomi Campbell and Hugo Chavez a couple? If the latest gossip is to be believed (and why not?) the answer is yes. Campbell met the Venezuelan President while interviewing him for GQ magazine and, allegedly, interviewer and interviewee have fallen madly in love.

This isn't the first time Campbell has courted an international revolutionary type. The former super-model is always sniffing around Nelson Mandala, but so far the 89-year old former South African President has resisted -- despite a well-documented affinity for violent younger women.

While Campbell may have been a catch back her in her cat walking days, these days she is known more for the stunning rate she in which she is able whack assistants over the head with cellphones and PalmPilots. As for her looks . . . you know how owners start to resemble their pets? Well, along the same lines, women who go around cracking skulls with PDAs start to look like women who go around cracking skulls with PDAs.

Seeing as the outspoken and abrasive Chavez is going to have his hands full with his new 5-foot-9.5 inch whirl of rage and Bluetooth technology, he will probably have less time to make ridiculous and paranoid statements about the United States' government. Meaning the United States' government will have fewer opportunities to overreact to said statements. Really, everybody wins -- besides that BlackBerry Pearl soon to be embedded in the President of Venezuela's forehead.

Campbell's celebrity assault record now in doubt

Sometimes numbers sneak up on you. I remember being quite surprised when I heard Rafael Palmeiro was on the verge of compiling 600 home runs and 3000 hits -- a feat only accomplished twice before in baseball history.

I follow baseball closely so I should have seen it coming. My only explanation is it must have been difficult for my brain to subconsciously reconcile the enormity of that accomplishment with the quality of player Palmeiro really was.

It didn't surprise me when I read British model Naomi Campbell is being questioned about her involvement in an assault. Campbell has a history of violent behavior. What shocked me was this was her ninth assault rap in the past eight years.

I would have guessed it was her third. And three assaults would be plenty to cement her reputation as a woman completely out of control.

As far as I know there are no official statistics kept on celebrity assault. But I assume the standard bearer is Sean Penn, who ran rickshaw through the eighties. Yet his bio only reveals two assaults. Russell Crowe is known to have an explosive temper, but I can only count three instances of him using his hands in real life.

Naomi Campbell has nine. And they aren't of the slap and tickle variety you'd expect from a super-model. They usually involve blood. Twice she administered the beat-down with a blunt object.

While her victims have generally been of the personal assistant/maid variety, her latest target was her drug counsellor.

Which suggests, like Palmeiro, Campbell has used performance enhancing substances to dart to statistical heights no one in their right mind could have imagined for her.