PREACH IT! Naomi Campbell strikes again -- literally
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Another day, another smackdown for some mortal who dares to speak unto Naomi Campbell. The glamazon is already infamous for her fashionable fists of fury, having faced accusations of assaulting more than a half-dozen people, including, but not limited to, a maid and a driver. Now comes word that Campbell has turned her wrath on the press. The whole scrum started at an interview. ABC News sat down with Campbell this week to discuss, among other things, the current war-crimes tribunal against former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Taylor is accused of using blood diamonds to fuel a campaign of terror against the neighboring country of Sierra Leone, and there’s a story going around that Taylor once gave Campbell just such a blood diamond.
The war-crimes prosecutors would love to talk to Campbell to confirm that story; it sure would help send Taylor to jail, after all. But so far, she’s declined to cooperate. When ABC asked her about the blood diamond, Campbell got antsy.
‘I didn’t receive a diamond and I’m not going to speak about that,’ Campbell told ABC News. She then ended the interview. And punched the camera in a producer’s hand.
Actually, there’s some indication that Campbell isn’t merely a bully but also, maybe, a liar. Take it away, ABC:
Campbell’s alleged receipt of a ‘blood diamond’ first surfaced after actress Mia Farrow told prosecutors she heard Campbell describe a ‘huge diamond’ she had received from Taylor. ‘You don’t forget when a girlfriend tells you she was given a huge diamond in the middle of the night,’ Farrow told ABC News. ... ‘She said during the night, some men had knocked at her door and she, half asleep, had opened the door and it was representatives of President Charles Taylor and that they had given her a huge diamond,’ Farrow told ABC News. ‘We were like, ‘oh my gosh.’’
Does all this add up to evidence that Campbell is being dishonest with the law? Possibly. But it definitely proves something else: She hasn’t changed. Like so many other celebrities who have been given second and third chances, Campbell has been at this bullying-and-denial business for -- no joke -- a decade now, catwalking in and out of anger-management classes and courtrooms.
In a February interview with CNN, she called herself a “work in progress” who has nonetheless faced her ‘demons.’ Maybe she and her demons need to pencil in a few more meetings.
-- Leslie Gornstein
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