Hard pass:
CBS funnyman Stephen Colbert, who had candidate Donald Trump on his show in 2015, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that for the sake of the nation, he’d take a pass on the surefire ratings bonanza of having him back as a guest. “It would be hard for me to be properly respectful of the office because I think that he is disrespectful to the office,” he said, adding that Trump lives in a “fantasy world” that he’s trying to draw the public into, and that’s not deserving of reverence.
Funny fashionista: Aidy Bryant has rolled out the start of a plus-size fashion line named for her greataunt Pauline. In a video on the site, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member explains, “I’ve been a fat lady my whole damn life” and was always looking for clothes.
Paule Marshall, whose novels “Daughters” and “Brown Girl, Brownstones” drew upon classic and vernacular literature and her mother’s kitchen conversations to narrate the divides between blacks and whites, men and women and modern and traditional cultures, has died at age 90. First published in the 1950s, Marshall was for years virtually the only major black female fiction writer in the U.S., a bridge between Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and others who emerged in the 1960s and ’70s.
Aug. 17 birthdays: Actor Robert DeNiro is 76. Writerdirector Julian Fellowes is 70. Singer Belinda Carlisle is 61. Actor Sean Penn is 59. Actor Donnie Wahlberg is 50. Actor Bryton James is 33. Actor Brady Corbet is 31. Actress Taissa Farmiga is 25.