HollywoodIdiocy.com

I’m not sure if even Viewers for Quality Television can help out this time; without Heroes as a lead-in, the mildly sci-fi NBC drama Journeyman has been all but canceled; the network had until Tuesday, December 12, to pick the series up for the “back nine” episodes, but failed to do so, which releases the cast and crew.

Call it a back-door cancellation. Star Kevin McKidd may need a Raleigh personal injury lawyer to overcome the stiff-arm the network game the freshman series. All 13 initial episodes will air on NBC, so at least there’s that.

Chuck and Life have been picked up for the full season order, as previously reported here on HollywoodIdiocy.com. As for Bionic Woman, the show has lost Katie Sackoff, who played the pre-Jamie Summers Bionic Woman and proved more popular than the show’s lead actress. Bionic Woman’s future is ticking away faster than it can bleed Nielsens in the direction of Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares.

Although I believe Meet the Press host Tim Russert has become one of the few “fair and balanced” journalists not employed by Fox News Channel, that didn’t save him from Hillary’s wrath after he asked her a couple - GASP - tough questions that assumed she would be, y’know, consistent in her replies, at least in a single night.

No such luck, Hillary’s enraged and now a Hillary supporter has issued a death-wish on the hapless journalist, who has been far tougher on other Dems, on Republicans, heck, he’s been tougher on Nancy Kerrigan!

All it does, really, is reveal a little early March Madness to this election, and the expectationof Camp Hillary that their delicate, terrorist-negotiating flower of a candidate should never even be questioned, let alone be tossed a hard one.

Senator Rodham: what a wimp!

It certainly wasn’t a question about Nike golf clubs that caused French president Nicolas Sarkozy to walk out of tonight’s interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes interview, conducted by Lesley Stahl.

Instead, it was just another case of CBS News stepping over the line of respect for a conservative, a line they would never have crossed had the interview been with a liberal like previous French president Jacques Chirac.

Chirac, subject of many a glowing 60 Minutes interview, was a socialist/communist and more than willing to play along with the US media’s game of, “Let’s embarrass President Bush.” Simply for the crime of being a conservative, 60 Minutes pulled its ambush style of journalism of the French president, with Stahl taking a combative tone and finally asking questions about his marriage to his wife, which was on shaky ground at the time and from whom he ultimately filed for divorce two weeks later.

Of course, 60 Minutes ran the piece Sunday to make the French president look as bad as possible. Anyone thinking his treatment has nothing to do with his conservative viewpoint needs to ask themselves why 60 Minutes never pressed Bill Clinton that hard about Juanita Broaddrick.

A well-intentioned Oprah Winfrey recently found out a school she has helped found and fund in South Africa has been hit with allegations of sexual and physical abuse by school staff. The talk-show queen, who I really do think meant well, did the right thing recently by going to the school to confront the allegations, accepting responsibility in the case for trusting the wrong people.

News24/Rapport is reporting:

The TV talk-show queen has visited her school at Henley-on-Klip near Vereeniging at least twice in the past few weeks, after allegations that one of the matrons fondled a girl and that other pupils had been physically abused.

Oprah gave the girls her personal telephone number, her e-mail address and her postal address so that they could contact her at any time, day or night.

Apart from the matron apparently involved, Oprah sent the principal, a Dr Mzimane, and at least one other matron on leave two weeks ago. Only the principal was on paid leave.

A parent told Rapport on Saturday evening that the abuse had visibly upset Oprah. She had felt guilty because she had trusted the principal and the matron.

“I trusted her (Dr Mzimane). When I appointed her, I thought she was passionate about the children of Africa.

While the public display of tears is of little interest, the important thing to Hollywood Idiocy is that Oprah is not hiding the problem or going on the defense or lawyering up: she’s putting the parties responsible for alleged abuse on leave and dealing with a very difficult issue.

While more may come to the surface in the future on this issue, HollywoodIdiocy is not above giving credit where credit is due, and any celebrity who deals as forthrightly with scandal as Oprah seems to be doing here is welcome at our poker tables any time.

British restaurateur and reality show star chef Gordon Ramsey has another season of nightmares ahead of him. Despite being in the only interesting time slot on Wednesdays - between Bionic Woman and Private Practice, as well as an aging Criminal Minds - Fox’s US version of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares has increased its ratings share every week it has aired so far.

The show centers around Ramsey helping restaurant owners transform their once-great business back to their former glory after falling into a state of health-code-violating catastrophes. It’s like a Food Network program on steroids.

With its solid ratings performance, Kitchen Nightmares on Fox earned one of the earliest renewals of the infant new season; 10 more episodes for a second season were ordered this week by Fox. Ramsey is currently busy filming the next season of Hell’s Kitchen, his other Fox ratings-grabber.

As well as things are going for chef Ramsey on television, it’s a wonder he has time to still be a chef and run his restaurants, although he can definitely afford Girard Perregaux wristwatches.

No word on scheduling yet. But not renewing the well-performing show would have been the idiocy on this one. Fortunately, Fox doesn’t ALWAYS cancel EVERY good series.

Just most of them.

It looks like Hugh Laurie will have three new apprentice doctors to torture this season on his hit Fox drama, HOUSE M.D., not two as originally planned. Although series originals Jennifer Morrison, Jesse Spencer and Omar Epps remain on the show in new capacities, online sources indicate the network has settled on Kal Penn, Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobson as Dr. House’s new playmates and sounding boards.

In the episodes aired to date, House has made candidates for the open positions endure reality-show style trials in order to “survive the next rounds of cuts.” About the only humiliation not endured to date is House demanding they all wear baby clothes while performing surgery - but that portion of the storyline isn’t over yet, so you never know!

In reality, producers had a handful of actors they were seriously considering for different roles, but wanted to test their on-screen chemistry with Laurie before committing to any casting decisions.

A New York personal injury lawyer might be required to recover the damages done to Ben Stiller’s career after his latest film, The Heartbreak Kid, a Peter and Bobby Farrelly remake of the 1970s Neil Simon-penned comedy, debuted in second place behind Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s family comedy, The Game Plan.

Typically, family-rated comedies have always done better at the box office than R-rated fare, but the Farrelly Brothers have made careers out of exceeding expectations for R-rated gross-out comedies, as has Stiller. Not this time, though, as the former WWE champion’s family comedy, in its second week of release, outpaced the first-week bow of The Game Plan.

The Game Plan scored $16.3M to take first at the box office this weekend, while The Heartbreak Kid took in only $14M. Touchstone Pictures had hoped for a $17M debut for the Farrelly-Stiller flick, according to published reports on LA Weekly, Variety and various other online sources.

GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, of Law and Order fame, as well as Die Hard 2: Die Harder fame, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, will apparently make his candidacy official today at a rally and announce it to the world on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno next Wednesday, according to the latest wire reports.

Now, I kinda like Thompson, but following in the footsteps of RINO turncoat Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly the way to assure conservatives that they finally have a dog in this presidential fight.

Governor Terminator is all padded panty when it comes to sticking to conservative values; let’s hope his choice of venue to announce his candidacy is the only way he plans on following in the Kindergarten Cop’s footsteps.

Okay, so the announcements were printed up wrong. What I meant to say is, Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell is a real Hero!

As in, the former teen sleuth is about to star in a multiple-chapter arc of Heroes, NBC’s hit drama from last year. ‘Ronnie will play a character who commits a terrible crime, but may or may not be “one of the good guys,” according to Hereos creator Tim Kring.

We at Hollywood Idiocy begrudgingly love HEROES, but would promise to be less begrudging if Kring would find roles for his ex-Crossing Jordan stars like personal favorites Jill Hennessy, Miguel Ferrer and Kathryn Hahn.

We’re just saying…