Seventeen months after sucker-punching Colorado Avalanche rookie Steve Moore in the side of the head, Todd Bertuzzi issued his first post-suspension public apology for the incident. “It happened,” he told reporters in August following his re-instatement to the NHL, “I can’t go back and change what happened.” What happened, as far as Moore is concerned, was a trip to the hospital and three broken vertebrae. Nearly two years after the fact, Moore suffers from post-concussion syndrome, his future in the NHL seriously in doubt. Final cost to Bertuzzi: $850,000 in salary and endorsement deals – about a fifth of his new annual salary. 

 

---

Asked on Australian radio if she had qualms about using fur in her clothing line, J. Lo gamely responded, “If someone would like to educate me and bring something to light that I don’t know, that’d be great.” Obligingly, the host asked, “Would you like to be educated right now?” – then regaled J. Lo with stories of foxes being skinned alive. But the singer failed to take her education to heart, and her next line was equally fur-soaked. As if to underline the PR disaster, security guards at Lopez’s Manhattan office later managed to pop off Heather Mills McCartney’s prosthetic leg as they ejected her for delivering a video about fur farm horrors. 

 

---

Suspended for a whopping ten days after testing positive for steroids, Rafael Palmeiro may have traded any chance at the Baseball Hall of Fame for the distinction of being the highest-profile Major Leaguer ever to get caught using a banned substance. Not one to let hard science go unchallenged, Bush chimed in with some cronyism-inflected wisdom on the matter: “He’s a friend. He’s testified in public, and I believe him.” Not that this chestnut was needed – in March, Rafael himself had already offered the punchline by wagging his finger at Congress while intoning, “I have never used steroids, period.”

 

---

Convicted in 2004 of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, the Martha juggernaut seemed doomed to a very long, very public fall from domestic grace. Within days, Stewart had lost her syndicated television show and stepped down from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Doubts prevailed that the Martha Stewart brand could ever recover from such an ugly stain. Sure enough, upon being released from prison this past March, Martha was soon cursed with a new book, a dedicated digital radio channel and a paltry two television series.