Fergie: Adult diapers, please!

Under congressional fire: Miami Dolphins’ celebrity owners!

U.S. Rep. Steve King, a Republican from the boondocks — I mean Iowa — asked NFL Commish Roger Goodell a pertinent question in a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday.

If Palm Beacher Rush Limbaugh is too offensive to be a part-owner of the St. Louis Rams, then why are Fergie and singer/actress Jennifer Lopez?

King, who hijacked a hearing about football injuries, said: “I don’t think anything that Rush Limbaugh said was offensive, but with Fergie and with J-Lo, they have, between the two of them, alleged that the CIA are terrorists and liars. They’ve promoted sexual abuse of women. They’ve used the N-word, verbal pornography, recreational drug use, etc. And they are owners of the Dolphins. And it’s also ironic that Fergie was approved as an owner on the very day that you made your statement on Rush Limbaugh.”

JLo

And King left out a few things.

He didn’t seem to remember the time when Fergie was so drunk she peed on herself during a show. And he left out Dolphins part-owner Serena Williams, the Palm Beach Gardens tennis titan whose obscene tirade at a line judge at this year’s U.S. Open was seen by a worldwide audience.

And he’s got the JLo thing wrong. Her hubby, salsero Marc Anthony, is an owner — JLo isn’t listed on the team’s media guide as one. She does accompany him to games and often ends up in game photos.

As for Fergie, the sale of her shares into the team is pending.

Still, Goodell’s response was little else than a typical D.C. topic-shifting ploy. He talked about Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles QB whom Limbaugh once called “overrated.”

On his Web site Wednesday, Limbaugh called Goodell a “total weasel.”

King ended his questioning by telling Goodell to listen to JLo and Fergie songs and report back.

“I’d ask you to go back and take a look at the owners of the Dolphins, and . . . the songs that they recorded, review those lyrics, and I’ll provide some of those lyric songs to you,” he said, “and I’ll ask you to come back and respond to that question after the hearing as to whether you’ll put the same scrutiny on those owners who have really shined a negative light on the NFL as opposed to somebody that the NFL apparently just doesn’t agree with his politics.”

The Limbaugh controversy erupted earlier this month when star conservative radio talker was dropped from a group of investors who bid on the hapless Rams. Goodell spoke against Limbaugh becoming an investor, as did players and current team owners — mostly for things Limbaugh may or may not have said concerning race.

Meanwhile Dolphins majority owner Stephen M. Ross, whose Palm Beach home is two miles south of Rush’s, has stocked the team’s ownership with celebrities. The roster includes tennis star Venus Williams, Serena’s sister, and Miami singer Gloria Estefan and husband Emilio. The Dolphins signed a commercial deal with Palm Beach troubadour Jimmy Buffett and had hip-hopper T-Pain redo the team’s fight song.

Said Dolphins spokesman Harvey Greene: “We have no comment, except to reaffirm that our limited partners were approved through the appropriate process by the NFL.”

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The war of words between Palm Beach radio star Rush Limbaugh and New York activist Al Sharpton escalated Saturday, with the Rev saying he’s going to sue Limbaugh for defamation.

Limbaugh: Apologize?

Unless Limbaugh apologizes.

“Not only did Rush Limbaugh try to criminalize the NFL,” Sharpton told Page2Live, “but now he is saying I’m a criminal. He can call me a race-baiter and all that stuff like he does. But don’t call me a criminal.”

This feud started after the recent announcement that Limbaugh was a part of a group of investors interested in buying the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. Limbaugh was dropped from the group after an ensuing firestorm in which some players, team owners and NFL honchos said they were against Limbaugh, whom some accused of making racially insensitive statements.

Sharpton, however, was along for the ride. The Harlem agitator took advantage of the news to demand that Limbaugh drop his membership to the all-white Everglades Club in Palm Beach.

Meanwhile Limbaugh went off on Sharpton both during his lunch time radio program and inThe Wall Street Journal.

In his first-person musings about the controversy, Limbaugh wrote about Sharpton’s “blind hatred” for conservatives.

Sharpton: I'm no criminal!

“He (Sharpton),” Limbaugh wrote, “also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and the 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riots.”

The three-day Crown Heights riots occurred in a racially mixed community of Brooklyn after a black child accidentally was run over and killed by a Hasidic driver. The Freddie’s Mart riots took place near Sharpton’s Harlem office, culminating in the deaths of seven people and a lone attacker in a burning store.

“I’ve never led any riots,” Sharpton said. “As a matter of fact, I never got to Crown Heights until after the violence ended.”

Sharpton has asked Limbaugh for an apology, or he’s filing.

“I’ve sued the GOP before and Rush knows that,” Sharpton said. “(Former Republican National Committee Jim) Nicholson accused me of something similar, and I sued (for $30 million). We settled when he issued an apology.

“This is going to cost Rush. He’s making himself look worse.”

Limbaugh didn’t comment.

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Limbaugh, in his West Palm studio

New York agitator Al Sharpton has called for Palm Beacher Rush Limbaugh to resign his membership at the Everglades Club – a private club on The Island with no black members.

And Sharpton threatens to take the fight straight to Palm Beach if Limbaugh digs in.

The Rev this week pounced on the racial overtones of Limbaugh’s interest in buying the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League.

The firebrand conservative radio talker made comments over the years that have been perceived by some as racially divisive. Limbaugh, for example, resigned from his analyst gig on ESPN in 2002 for saying that the black Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb wasn’t as good as a racially conscious media perceived him to be.

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Limbaugh

It’s as if a convention of Conservatives descended on the West Palm Beach French restaurant Pistache.

Right on time for early bird Tuesday, superstar radio talker Rush Limbaugh walked in the snails-and-mussels-Clematis hangout with his BFF Stanley Gaines, a GOP moneyman and Palm Beach neighbor.

By coincidence, they arrived smack dab in the middle of a fundraiser for Gov. Charlie Crist’s nemesis, candidate for U.S. Senate Marco Rubio.

Welcomed like a rock star, Limbaugh took some time to pose for pictures with organizers, from the Republican Club of the Palm Beaches.

It’s strange these days to run into Limbaugh in a restaurant. He’s been on a strict diet, and melting like a snowman in April.

“I’m at 208 lbs,” he said proudly.“I’m shooting for 195. I’m 5-11.”

Limbaugh said he’s been healthy throughout the program in which he was enrolled by his squeeze, local hottie Kathryn Rogers.

“But hey,” Limbaugh said, “I was healthy even when I was 290.”

Limbaugh had organic chicken and an onion soup.

The total bill came to $87, and Limbaugh left $1,000 tip.

You read right. A grand.

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Without naming former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, talk radio superstar Rush Limbaugh tells Page2Live Foley has an uphill battle if he wants to become a broadcast powerhouse.

Limbaugh

And Foley’s sudden departure from his old job as a U.S. Congressman has nothing to do with it.

It’s all about the lettuce!

“The reasons so many people want to do a radio talk show are simple,” the conservative lightning-rod Limbaugh writes in an e-mail. “It has tremendous impact and influence. People also think a pot of gold is attainable.

“And they think it is easy because the greats make it appear easy.”

But, Limbaugh added, few are shown the money. And that’s already the case for Foley, who taped this week the premiere of Inside The Mind of Mark Foley for airing Sept. 22 on West Palm Beach’s WSVU-Seaview 960 AM. He’ll be working for free, at least at the beginning.

“We’re not paying him right now,” said station General Manager Chet Tart. “But Mark said he’d bring his own advertisers.”

He’d better.

“Sadly, few understand the BUSINESS of talk radio,” Limbaugh e-mailed me. “Content, which is obviously important, is only a piece of the puzzle. But without a foundation of understanding the business of radio, success can be elusive.”

Foley resigned his congressional seat in 2006 when his sex-soaked text-messages to young pages were made public.

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Foley (By Brandon Kruse/The Palm Beach Post)

In his boldest, most public move since he resigned from the U.S. Congress in shame, Mark Foley is launching a new career in talk radio.

Treading on the territories of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Foley’s new gig on WSVU-Seaview 960 AM is political talk.

“Mark called me out of the blue a few months ago,” said station manager Chet Tart. “I hadn’t heard from him in two years. He said he was considering a career in radio and he asked me if I’d help him out.

“I was shocked at first. But then, the more we talked, the more I starting thinking we could syndicate him nationally.”

Seaview, after all, was one of the first stations to put Don Imus back on last year, after his firing from CBS for calling the women on Rutgers University basketball teams “nappy-headed hos.” The station can be heard across Foley’s old district, between Delray and Vero Beach.

Republican Foley’s first show is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. Sept. 22, with repeats a few days later. The one-hour show, Inside the Mind of Mark Foley, will then be aired once a month. Once the Palm Beacher feels more comfortable, he’ll go on weekly.

Listen to the promo for Foley’s show:

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The new Rush

For his fans, there’s a lot less to love about Rush Limbaugh.

The controversial conservative radio talker told his audience he lost 79 pounds since March, tipping the scale at a respectable 210. And he won’t let go until he weighs about 200, and maybe lower.

Oxycontin? Ebola? Mexican flu?

No, no and no.

Girlfriend!

Limbaugh’s galpal of two years, the comely West Palm Beacher Kathryn Rogers, tells Page2Live she thought Limbaugh wasn’t looking particularly healthy last winter.

In his Palm Beach mansion, Limbaugh lived dangerously close to 300 pounds for a 6-foot frame. So, she went looking for a diet, and settled for the South Florida-based Quick Weight Loss.

Rogers and Limbaugh in 2008

“I wanted him to feel good and be around for a long time,” she said. “But most diets out there, once you stop, you get your weight back. This one is more about a change of lifestyle. Rush isn’t starving himself. Actually, he still eats a lot. We were in the Bahamas recently and he had steaks. But he’s also eating better, more vegetable and salads. Now he knows what’s good for him. And he feels great.”

Rogers went to QWL’s store on Okeechobee in West Palm Beach and got Rush’s program without telling who it was for.

“He didn’t want to endorse anything,” she said. “They figured it was for a well-known person.”

QWL officials at their Fort Lauderdale headquarters didn’t return calls. The manager of the Okeechobee store said she needs to keep her job and couldn’t talk.

But Limbaugh did all the talking Friday.

“I have no desire to stop it,” Limbaugh said on his show. “In fact, I might even stay on this long enough that people think I have a deadly disease.  ’What are you, sick or something?’”

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James Wieland! Such a romantic guy!

The WPTV-Channel 5 weatherman just got engaged to advertising rep Jennifer Dalla Riva.

Wieland and his Chosen One

And boy did he dream up one Blue Lagoon-themed scheme to make sure his betrothed wouldn’t say no.

Wieland, 37, first bought a conch shell. He then stuffed it with clay, and set a 3-carat sparkler into the clay.

Then, as he and his blonde sweetie frolicked in waist-deep water in Atlantic near radio talker Rush Limbaugh’s Palm Beach home, he half-buried the conch in sand.

“At one point, I thought I lost the shell,” he said.

But the future bride, 38, was digging nonchalantly nearby, and suddenly yelled out: “I found the motherload of shells!”

Wieland actually snapped a picture as Dalla Riva found the ring, which probably will cost him a couple brownie points.

Bingo!

But he had a dozen red roses hidden in the car, just in case she needed another push.

She didn’t.

The lovebirds are looking for a beachside wedding venue. It’ll be the bride’s second marriage, Wieland’s first.

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The good news for the hyperventilating liberal radio talker Randi Rhodes is that she’s back on the radio after a three-month hiatus.

Randi Rhodes

She now is on the country’s largest radio network, Clear Channel, and Conservative superstar Rush Limbaugh leads into Rhodes’ 3 p.m. show.

The bad news, at least for some locally, is that her three-hour program won’t be live on WJNO-Am 1290 for the first time in almost 15 years.

During Rhodes’ absence, populist Sean “You’re-A-Great-American” Hannity quickly turned into the third highest-rated afternoon show in the West Palm Beach area.

So, he’s staying put. And starting this afternoon, Rhodes will be tape-delayed on WJNO, starting at the not-so-good radio time of 6 p.m., after Hannity’s live rantings.

Rhodes will be live at 3 p.m. here however, but on the less powerful WBZT-AM 1030.

“Since Randi left, three months ago, Sean Hannity’s success in this market has been the quickest I’ve ever seen in this business,” said local Clear Channel boss Dave Denver. “We just can’t put him on tape-delay.”

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West Palm Beach liberal radio screamer Randi Rhodes has found herself a new job.

And you won’t believe where!

In the house that Rush Limbaugh built, that’s where!

The raspy-voiced Rhodes just signed on with the Premiere Radio Networks, home of the Hard Right’s Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Strange bedfellows? You bet. Ratings for Rhodes’ lefty rantings actually will benefit from the huge numbers that Palm Beach’s Limbaugh garners. She signs on for her three-hour show immediately as Limbaugh signs off, at 3 p.m. on work days. She starts May 11.

Is the D.C. chatter about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine and truly balanced programs having Premiere honchos quake in their boots?

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