The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Melissa McCarthy mocks Sean Spicer with motorized podium
NEWYORK » Melissa McCarthy has gone into the streets of Manhattan to mock White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
The comedian was captured on video Friday morning riding a motorized podium in midtown while dressed as Spicer.
In the video, McCarthy is seen gliding in the middle of traffic in front of the Time Warner Center, not far from Rockefeller Center, the longtime home of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” NBC would not comment on the video.
Spicer has been a frequent target of McCarthy, who has mocked him in the past in skits where she fires a water gun at the press corps and uses a lectern to ram a journalist.
BET’s Lee leaving Washington, but vows to stay involved with her D.C. causes and friends
BET Networks chairman and chief executive Debra Lee, like her company, is leaving Washington, the city in which she has been a mover and shaker and philanthropic force for decades.
She will be splitting her time between Los Angeles and New York, now that the largest cable network for African American audiences is moving its headquarters to Manhattan.
Lee put her modern mansion, known as the backdrop for swank parties that brought together Hollywood types and business execs with the political cognoscenti, on the market late last year. And with the news last week that BET is moving its headquarters from D.C. to New York, the break seemed complete.
Lee insists the timing has nothing to do with the Trump administration — after all, she’s seen presidents come and go in her 37 years in Washington. “I’m not down on Washington,” she says, though she describes the Obama years as “magical” for her and her network’s viewers. “Politics are really only part of what this town has to offer.”
Lee, who took the helm at the network in 1996, is planning to spend time in Los Angeles with her two adult children (they’re in the music biz) and work on deals involving BET’s original programming, an increasingly large part of the business.
Lee leaves behind a designer-stiletto footprint in Washington that includes not just those parties, but charitable endeavors, most notably the annual gala for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater she co-chaired, which raised $1 million this year. Lee says she plans to stay involved with her D.C. causes and friends.
“I’ll continue to fight for causes I believe in — racial equality, the rights of women and girls — and that brings you to Washington.”