To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People March 1, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/2000/03/01/npwed This Walls can talk Walls vs. Drudge, dish diggers duke it out. Also, the pants off her back: There's nothing Jessica Simpson's mom wouldn't do for her daughter. Plus: Who's gonna talk about Cody? Kathie Lee to leave "Live." - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Call Don King! A whopping fight's broken out in the gossip world -- and it looks like things might get ear-bitingly ugly before the final bell rings. In her new book "Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip," MSNBC "faithful scooper" Jeannette Walls takes swipes at some bold-type biggies. Michael Jackson, she says, plants gossip items about himself in order keep his name in the news. Tina Brown, Walls contends, "stalked" her hubby, Harry Evans, with love letters and left him to spend their wedding night by his lonesome. And Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, she suggests, are media manipulators par excellence. Several of Walls' dishees are hollering to the press about false accusations, and Evans has even had his lawyers fire off a letter to the book's publisher about Walls' "wrong and malicious" characterization of his marriage. But no one's trying harder to get Walls on the ropes than rival gossipmonger Matt Drudge. True, Walls threw the first punch. In her book, she alleges what others have whispered about for years -- that Drudge is gay -- and further contends that, while living in DC in his 20s, he "hung out with a crowd of promiscuous, openly gay men and dated several of them" and got tossed out of a gay bar for tossing a beer. Tuesday, on his Web site, Drudge pushed Walls back by pointing out that he "moved to Los Angeles when I was 19." He jabbed that "the peacock pretty made no attempt to confirm the story" with him (a hilarious gripe, considering its source). Then Drudge went into a clinch: "Walls, according to associates, is a victim of the brutal pressures of filing a daily column for MSNBC. That pressure, along with the excitement and energy needed to complete her book 'Dish,' has left her cutting corners and going for the quick headline." And he aimed for the kidneys: "Jeannette dear, slow down and come up for some air. You are becoming a laughing stock. Even by MSNBC standards." Slam! - - - - - - - - - - - - I still got chutzpah, babe ... "I'm older now, so I dress accordingly." -- Cher, clad in a skin-tight metal-and-lace bodysuit and poofy hot-pink wig, to a Washington, DC, audience. - - - - - - - - - - - - Thanks, mom Let's hear it for stage mothers -- particularly the kind that'll give you the pants off their own backside. If not for her mom, teen singing sensation Jessica Simpson would have revealed more than she'd bargained for the night she opened for Ricky Martin at Madison Square Garden. "When I sing a big note, I gotta get down," she tells Jump magazine. "But when I did, my pants split and the whole butt fell out." So trotted backstage in a flash and found her ma, who "took off her jeans so I could put them on." "There she was, practically naked, while I went out to sing 'I Wanna Love You Forever," recalls Simpson. "I got a standing ovation." And her mom got cold. - - - - - - - - - - - - Arf! "Working with Woody is like holding a puppy. It's warm and nice, but you know if you hold on too long he's going to piss all over you." -- An unnamed source in Marion Meade's dishy new biography of Woody Allen. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits "Live! With Regis and Someone Else"? Kathie Lee Gifford announced on the air Tuesday that she's planning to ditch the show she co-hosts with Regis Philbin when her contract expires in July. Gifford jokingly told a disbelieving Reege, "It's the day you've been praying for for 15 years." He ain't the only one. Looks like Darva Conger's getting the Rick Rockwell treatment. "Inside Edition" has apparently done a little digging and determined that the reluctant "Multi-millionaire" bride never served in the Persian Gulf -- she was stationed in Illinois during the war against Iraq -- and therefore has no right to call herself a Gulf War veteran. "Anyone on active duty at the time of that war is considered a Gulf War veteran," Conger told the show. Fine, now can we move on, please? Her lawsuit will go on. Celine Dion is suing the National Enquirer for $20 million for falsely reporting that she was pregnant with twins -- and making it sound like the story came from Dion herself. "This thing has really upset me," said the singer, who is widely known to be trying to have a baby. "Since that story came out, everyone has been congratulating me and I have to keep telling them that it's not true." Inquiring minds want to know ... what were the tabloid editors thinking? salon.com | March 1, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Amy Reiter is a staff writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.