Brutal irony of Hollywood cheating scam

When Aunt Becky and that Desperate Housewife became ensnared in the wild Hollywood cheating scam this week, countless questions arose. 

What does Teri Hatcher think? If Aunt Becky ends up in the slammer, will it be enough to make the Olsen twins resurface? And most importantly: where did Aunt Becky get $500,000 from?

That’s the figure prosecutors allege former Full House star Lori Loughlin — who played Aunt Becky — and her husband Mossimo Giannulli paid in bribes to have their two daughters accepted into the University of Southern California as recruits on the row team even though they’re not even rowers.

It’s very convoluted and probably made even more confusing because we refuse to call Aunt Becky by her real life name, but just hang in there.

Almost immediately after Aunt Becky … I mean, Lori Laughlin … was arrested for her involvement in the elite scheme, her words about her daughters’ education came back to haunt her.

“ … We were never like, ‘At school you got to get straight A’s.’ We were never those parents,” she proudly declared.

Hindsight’s cruel and we have no doubt she now absolutely wishes she pushed those two brats to get a half-decent grade every now and then.

Making it all the more bitter for Aunt Becky, and more hilarious for us, is the girls didn’t even want to go to university anyway. Particularly the younger one — Olivia Jade. She’s 19 and a vlogger and already you can probably get a sense of what her thoughts about school are.

“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend but I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all,” she says in one of her resurfaced vlogs in which she stresses about how she’ll juggle studying along with the demands of her YouTube channel. “But I do want the experience of like game days, partying … I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”

Many of the students involved in the scheme actually had no idea their parents paid to get them into these schools. It’s almost endearing they didn’t know dumb they actually are.

The scheme was essentially two-fold and included paying brides to inflate standardised test scores and fake athletic records to get students recruited for sports they didn’t play. The fake sport option is the one Aunt Becky allegedly paid for — and it required her to get pretty crafty.

This is how dumb Aunt Becky’s kids are: Aunt Becky allegedly made her daughters pose for a photo while seated on rowing machines as fake proof they’re rowers, and not once did they question why their mum was making them sit on rowing machines for a photo.

It’s my favourite part of the whole mess.

The only upside? That Desperate Housewife and Aunt Becky can play themselves in the telemovie.

#GLOBALEMERGENCY

As Australia held its breath to see if The Voice hostages would walk free from Fox Studios wrapped in foil blankets, another emergency was declared on Thursday: Facebook and Instagram were down.

Alerts were raised worldwide. Influencers everywhere struggled to make ends meet. The Bondi to Bronte walk was deserted. With nowhere to post photos, there was no reason to do it.

Sunrise newsreader Natalie Barr was most affected by the outage. After years of having to put up with Kochie, she’s constantly at the end of her tether. So when it came time to report that influencers were alerting the police about the social media outage, she almost flipped the newsdesk.

“Queensland police are saying,” she paused, “ … Please … don't call triple-0.”

Her eyes deadened as she stared at the teleprompter to confirm she just read correctly. As she looked down the lens at viewers, she struggled to hide her disappointment and irritation. “I know,” she sighed.

And then, I swear, she rolled her eyes and said: “Ugh”.

This is why we adore Natalie Barr.

If Nine’s Today show is looking to borrow one thing from its competitor to save its dwindling ratings, it should definitely be the “ugh”.

Screw the cash cow and don’t waste our time with an intrepid weather man. All we need is some throwaway “ughs”.

Deb Knight can read the hour’s top news headlines and then cameras can do a sharp cut to Georgie so she can “ugh” the stories she disapproves of.

Australians love their news with ughs.

WORLD LEADERS UNITE

Never before has a summit gained such global attention and offered up profound ideas for social change.

Of course, we’re not referring to that Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summit in Singapore. I don’t exactly what happened at that one but I’m pretty sure they just sat around a lazy Susan eating deep fried foods while gabbing about haircare tips.

The one we’re talking about is the Goop summit thrown by Gwyneth Paltrow in New York this week.

The In Goop Health Summit was a holistic, $1000-a-day affair where attendees engaged in 10 hours of Goop-approved activities and lectures from Elle Macpherson and Demi Moore.

“Goopers” enjoyed psychic readings and psychedelic therapy and had crystal ear seeds implanted in their lobes while feasting on chewable vitamins.

It goes without saying that the Goop summit was a bigger success than the Trump-Jong-un summit and Gwyneth, Elle and Demi ended up settling that botched nuclear deal over probiotic juices.

Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir