‘Nevermind’ Child-Porn Suit, Capone’s Family Vault Opened, Josephine Baker to Be Interred at Panthéon & More

Links to the past, with relevance today:

The most cynical lawsuit ever? (Image via Reddit)

VARIETY: Now you've heard everything — Spencer Elden, the man who as an infant was immortalized on the 1991 album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind — is suing the band and various others for ... child pornography. Because showing him nude and grasping at a dollar bill supposedly paints him as a "sex worker." Absurd.

A piece of history — and dirty money. (Image via Witherell's)

NYP: The estate of Al Capone is unloading a wealth of his personal effects, which his granddaughters have been sitting on for decades. The items going up for auction include original photos, furniture, objects d'art and even his favorite gun. Watch the video at the link — it's such an odd, odd disconnect listening to his granddaughter rave about the integrity of auctioneers Witherell's when we are talking about the belongings of a monster who killed so many people over money!

She's made mistakes, but hopes she also made amends. (Image via ABC)

THR: Why Brett Butler is stone-cold broke.

INSTAGRAM: RIP Micki Grant, trailblazer in the worlds of soap operas and Broadway. She was 92.

An icon the world over (GIF via GIPHY)

THE GUARDIAN: The body of Josephine Baker, a hero in France for being part of the French resistance during WWII, will be moved and reinterred in that country's Panthéon. She will be the first Black woman in the hallowed mausoleum.

VARIETY: Whoopi Goldberg attacks "cancel culture" at an industry panel. Interestingly, she brings up having been on the outs for allegedly joking about George W. Bush (I have zero memory of this), but doesn't bring up the controversy over her then-partner Ted Danson wearing blackface at a roast. (Goldberg collects Black memorabilia that includes offensive representations from the past.)

PEOPLE: How would you react if Tom Cruise 'coptered into your garden?

CNN: Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, replaced outgoing (to say the least!) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Tuesday at midnight, becoming that state's first-ever woman governor. That leaves 19 states that have yet to be governed by a woman —

The first state with a woman governor was Wyoming (1925), when Nellie Tayloe Ross won an election to replace her dead husband, who had been governor. She only beat Miriam "Ma" Ferguson by 15 days; Ferguson was elected as a blatant surrogate for her husband, who due to term limits could not run again. Not until 1975 was a woman elected governor of a U.S. state on her own, with no ties to a damned husband, Ella Grasso of Connecticut, and not until 2011 were the first two women of color elected governors — Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

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