Chris Pauls
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When they're not involved in bizarre crimes, believing hateful things, or hawking super-sketchy products, celebrities are just like us. And by that, I mean that they're making promises that they could never hope to keep. But while our promises are usually mundane declarations of vague kindness, celebrities' unkeepable promises tend to be way more absurd and strangely specific. Like how ...
In trying to make every Trump stumble sound like a victory lap for America, Fox News Commentator and living canned ham Sean Hannity has learned remarkably few things, with promises not being one of them. Take the time he promised to be waterboarded for the troops' families by the star of Beethoven 1 & 2. That sure didn't happen, but in the spirit of Hannity's show, imagine FOX NEWS ALERT: FOR THE TROOPS' FAMILIES scrolling in bold letters across the bottom of your screen.
Then there was the eve of the 2018 midterm elections. President Trump held one of his little bake sales where he promises to build the wall and lock her up and runs through all of his greatest hits. Sean Hannity was there, but he made a big deal out of the fact that he was only in attendance to do his show live, cover the rally and interview the President. He was there to be a journalist, but not like, ya know, one of the fake ones who actually work on behalf of Trump.
So when President Trump asked Sean Hannity to join him onstage, did he stick to his guns? Not exactly or at all. He jumped to the podium, proceeded to diss the media, listed Trump's accomplishments, and probably because he thought he was headed to commercial break, took a subtle swipe at former President Obama. All from the stage, alongside a candidate. In other words, he just openly joined the campaign for a day.
When asked to explain his sudden flip-flop, Hannity responded like a freshman getting caught at a keg party for upperclassmen: it wasn't planned, he was invited up there, and it just sorta happened. Hannity's checked-out parents, Fox News, called the whole business an "unfortunate distraction," which likely means he only got one halfheated high five when he came to work the next day.
When Donald Trump won the Electoral College in 2016, much of the nation either 1) jumped their riding mowers over picnic tables in celebration, or 2) said they were leaving the country. Celebs mostly fell into the latter category, as they hate Trump and wouldn't even know how to start a lawnmower.
Samuel L. Jackson was headed to South Africa. Toronto was going to be Snoop Dogg's new home. Now, a lot of this was probably said in frustration, and it's not like any of them said they'd actually do it. Except Lena Dunham. Prior to the election, Dunham, a prolific apologizer who also happened to make the show Girls, was pretty unambiguous about her intentions to split if Hillary Clinton lost, stating, "I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will. I know a lovely place in Vancouver."
Naturally, those with riding mowers in need of serious work following their post-election celebrations were quick to point out that Dunham used the words "I really will." She stayed quiet in the immediate aftermath of the election, but eventually, she became Lena Dunham again and responded on Instagram, saying, "I will go many places during my lifetime, surrounded by kindreds on a mission to spread justice and light." To translate: "Canada? Nah."
Dunham hasn't left the U.S., but she is leaving Brooklyn to go live among "old people."
Prior to even being arraigned for the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, O.J. Simpson vowed to find the "real killer" not named O.J. Simpson. On July 20, 1994, Simpson set up a toll-free number (that may be the most 1994-sounding thing of all time) and offered a $500,000 reward for any information leading to a conviction.
A year later in 1995, following a trial somebody should make a TV series about, O.J. was acquitted on all charges. In the aftermath of the verdict, as the nation came to grips with losing Judge Lance Ito as a daily punchline, O.J. mouthed "Thank you" to the jury and then high-tailed it home. But O.J.'s oldest son, Jason, read a statement from his father at the courthouse which doubled down on his pledge to find the killers not named O.J. Simpson.
1996 found Simpson back in court, this time at a civil trial, one in which he lost virtually all his fortune. Following that, there was no mention of finding the killers not named O.J. Simpson, or any updates on what progress had been made in the last couple of years. Well, until 2006, when Simpson helped write a book titled If I Did It, in which he speculated on how the crimes would have been committed if the guilty party was exactly named O.J. Simpson.
On April 19, 2017, Fox News' parent company, 21st Century Fox, released a statement that ended Bill O'Reilly's run on the highest-rated show in the network's history and left a substantial portion of retirees with a hole in their lives between Wheel Of Fortune and bedtime.
By June of 2017, O'Reilly joined conservative joke thing Dennis Miller as part of "The Spin Stops Here Tour." During a segment Westbury, New York that couldn't possibly be interpreted as spin, Bill O'Reilly addressed the real reasons for his departure from Fox. These reasons, as you'd expect, were "pretty nasty," and "has to do with far-left progressive organizations that are bent on destroying anybody with whom they disagree, including the president." You know, the usual.
O'Reilly soon did his first TV interview since "leaving" Fox, with fellow great representative of the male gender Matt Lauer. During that interview, O'Reilly described his situation as "a hit job -- a political and financial hit job," and then said, "There are more things to come, alright?" Obviously, the man whose most entertaining contribution to society is the "Fuck it! We'll do it live!" outburst would make good on his now-multiple promises.
By October 2017, O'Reilly faced a New York Times revelation that he'd paid $32 million to a Fox News analyst to settle harassment allegations. By that time, O'Reilly had retreated to the confines of his website for public statements, posting thank-you notes from two female coworkers. Then, presumably sitting high atop a huge toadstool for his webcast, he explained that he "can't explain it to you" and that he was pissed at God.
So did God knock O'Reilly from his pedestal? If so, thanks, dude.
In the summer of 2018, most people who even knew who comedian Tom Arnold was figured he had bought a metal detector and moved to Florida. But the former husband of Roseanne Barr and co-star of Madea's Witness Protection wasn't combing beaches for change and earrings. He was promoting a show on Viceland called The Hunt For The Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold.
The show teased a search for the elusive, supposedly damaging tapes of Trump that have been rumored to exist, but according to Arnold, the hunt was already over. In an even-more-jangly-than-usual interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow, Arnold was asked if he possessed "any tapes of the president that the public is not already aware of." He said, "Yes." So why were they devoting a TV show to hunting these secret tapes if they were already in Arnold's cabinet between The Dark Knight and Twister?
Arnold continued to oscillate in his chair and declared he was going to be in New York over the weekend, working with Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, whom Arnold said had tapes of the president. And in a bit of pro-wrestling-esque theatricality, he turned toward the camera and said, "You've disrespected him and his family, and there's a lot going on."
Then, because it was 2018, Arnold tweeted out a picture of himself and Cohen with the caption "I love New York." So, according to Tom Arnold, he and Michael Cohen were going to bring down the president together as a sort of a 21st-century Woodward and Bernstein, if Woodward and Bernstein had voiced the Arby's oven mitt and owed back taxes on New York City taxicab medallions.
One small problem: Cohen wasn't having any of it. He sent out a tweet explaining the circumstances of the photo with Arnold, and flat-out denied he'd even talked to him about being on his show. Cohen said that Arnold had just asked him for a selfie, which is the hardest that Arnold had been rejected since being kicked out of the jungle first on the Australian edition of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
But when you're Tom Arnold, the show must go ... somewhere. And in this case, that somewhere was directly into the ground, as The Hunt For The Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold garnered reviews that called it "an infuriating, unwatchable disaster," and "an unpleasant wade through widely-known and speculated-about Trump ephemera." The series found nothing, leaving those of us who thought Tom Arnold was hunting for lost wedding rings in Sarasota feeling perfectly justified in thinking that.
Chris said he'd co-write the novels Deck Z: The Titanic and The Giant Smugglers and play guitar on this album. He did all three, but has yet to live up to doing a backflip off that big rock at Lake Redstone.
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