A lot of people lie a little bit here and there, but celebrities seem to lie a whole bunch all the time. Having clawed their way into the competitive arena of entertainment and news, they often tweak the truth to get bigger ratings, better magazine covers and higher doses of mass love. But when they get caught, it backfires like a big lie pie right in their face.
In honor of runners-up like Lindsay Lohan (“My assistant was driving, not me”) and Paris Hilton (“That bag filled with coke wasn’t mine”), here are the worst examples of celebrity lies. I’m not including stars who lie about their age, because this isn’t a book.
BRIAN WILLIAMS
The NBC “Nightly News” anchor misspoke on the telecast when he claimed that he’d been in a military copter that had to land after being hit with a rocket-propelled grenade. It was actually the helicopter in front of his that was hit. So much for news reporting. When this extreme exaggeration came to light, people started questioning some of Williams’ other statements regarding Katrina, the Berlin Wall and Navy SEALs. Well, one thing is true: He was let go from the show for six months, and with ratings doing fine without him, it looks like his career might have been hit with a grenade. For real this time.
BILL O’REILLY?
I put a question mark there because I don’t want O’Reilly to track me down and beat me up. Not that he’s a bully or anything, LOL, but he already threatened serious repercussions to a New York Times writer investigating whether or not O’Reilly embellished his involvement in the Falklands War ages ago. Mother Jones magazine says O’Reilly is full of it, but Fox News stands by their man. And you trust them, right? But wait! Now, O’Reilly is swearing that when he said he saw nuns getting shot in El Salvador, he meant pictures of nuns getting shot. WHATEVER.
JUSTIN BIEBER
In one of many horrid behavioral episodes, Justin Bieber once tweeted that his laptop was stolen and his pictures and a wicked-fresh video had been hacked. But it was a PR stunt, designed to sell his new video. I knew it had to be a lie. Only a complete lunatic would want to hack into shit that boring.
LEANN RIMES & EDDIE CIBRIAN
Costars on “Northern Lights,” LeAnn and Eddie became infatuated with each other when they were both married — to other people, that is. They were caught kissing over dinner, so the lovebirds immediately started spinning, Eddie claiming that people were putting incorrect puzzle pieces together into an erroneous story. Yeah, right. As if platonic costars make out in public all the time. They eventually had to come clean, and in 2011, they got married — to each other. But when a waitress/singer claimed Eddie had cheated on Rimes with her, while he was still married to his first wife, things got especially twisted.
VICTORIA BECKHAM
Vicki’s breasts seemed to get extra posh in the aughts. In fact, they suddenly looked so swollen that one wondered if she’d been bitten by a mosquito or a rival girl group member. And she was completely mum on the subject, not giving any credence to the fact that her orbs had obviously undergone some surgical magic. Regarding the truth, she had bent it like Beckham. But in a 2011 interview, Victoria slipped and admitted that she’d had her implants removed. Aha! So those were implants, not the zany result of my 3-D glasses!
STAR JONES
In 2003, the then-costar of “The View” dropped an astounding 160 pounds, claiming this was accomplished via a wonderful regimen of exercise and diet. When it inevitably turned out that the only exercise she’d gotten was driving to the hospital for gastric bypass surgery, all hell broke loose. Barbara Walters said she’d been forced to lie for Star, while Star said it was Barbara who told her to lie about the surgery. Whatever. I just hope those missing 160 pounds get their own show someday.
BRITNEY SPEARS
“I’m waiting to get married to pop my cherry,” the pop tart had basically crowed early in her career, trumpeting her daisy-fresh virginity as the world winced. Puhleeze! By this point, Britney was already giving out frequent rider miles. Her legs were like the library — they were always open to the public. She didn’t need the Internet, she was already worldwide. KIDDING! These are jokes, folks! But Brit wasn’t a virgin any more than I’m a hetero playboy.
LANCE ARMSTRONG
The Tour de France champion — who won a record-breaking seven times in a row — was long accused of “doping,” i.e., using illegal performance-enhancing drugs to cop fame and prizes. He vehemently denied it. And denied it. And denied it again. He swore he was cleaner than a nun’s privates (my analogy, not his). Other players pointed accusatory fingers at him, and Lance just bit them off, insisting that this was a witch hunt and a hate campaign and bad journalism and blah blah blah. And then in 2013, he said it was all true. Gee, thanks for all the time and energy that you wasted by circumventing the truth, Lance! I’m so pissed, I‘m not going to help you return all those medals! No, really.
BILL CLINTON
The relentlessly inquisitive Kenneth Starr — and the whole world — knew that our nation’s leader was assigning White House intern Monica Lewinsky some extraordinary chores, like getting under the table for a light snack every day. But he didn’t seem to know about it! Bill famously told the world, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” (words which he later tried to obfuscate by riffing on what “sex” actually means). He brazenly declared, “There is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship, or any other kind of improper relationship.” So a married President getting head from a 22-year-old intern is totally proper? Anyway, Linda Tripp’s tapes and Monica’s stained dress helped blow, as it were, this case to gigantic proportions. There were penalties, though Bill ended up being acquitted of all charges and kept his job — but not his blow job.
O.J. SIMPSON
Everything the accused ex-football hero said on the witness stand was a complete lie! You know, that he didn’t kill those two people, that he would never do any such thing, that he loved his wife and would never even think of harming her. No, wait. O.J. never did take the stand, did he? OK, never mind.
Michael Musto is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.
One Comment
Leave a Reply