10 NEWS People
Spade’s quiet grief
David Spade knows what it’s like to lose people,
said Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times. The
comedian is still grieving the recent deaths of his
sister-in-law, the fashion designer Kate Spade,
and fellow comedian Steven Brody, who often
served as his opening act. Both of them died by
suicide within the past 14 months. “I feel like
Katy wouldn’t have done it, five minutes later,”
Spade says. “But these things happen and there’s no going back.”
He is all too familiar with suicide. When he was 15, his stepfather
took his own life. He also lost friends in high school and col-
lege. “People just started going right and left, and I would sit and
stare at a wall,” says Spade, now 55. “I just said, ‘OK, I guess I’ll
cross my fingers that it doesn’t happen to everyone.’” In 1997,
his Saturday Night Live co-star and frequent film partner Chris
Farley died of an overdose. Online trolls still use the tragedy to
taunt Spade, with comments such as “I wish you died instead of
Chris Farley.” The first few times he heard this, he admits, “it was
rough. But now it’s the standard burn.” His private pain over the
people he’s lost stands in sharp contrast to his cynical, above-it-
all onstage persona, which serves as an escape. “You just have to
learn to shut off the tear valve. It’s just too brutal.”
Apollo 11’s unsung hero
Michael Collins is the forgotten man of the moon landing, said
Kenneth Chang in The New York Times. On July 20, 1969,
Collins remained in orbit 60 miles above the moon in the com-
mand module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the
surface below. Unlike millions of people on Earth, Collins missed
Armstrong’s famous “one small step” speech. At that moment,
he was above the far side of the moon and cut off from all com-
munications. But he didn’t mind being alone in the module. “I
had this beautiful little domain,” Collins, now 88, says. “It was all
mine. I was the emperor, the captain of it, and it was quite com-
modious. I had warm coffee, even.” He doesn’t remember what
Armstrong and Aldrin said to him when they returned. But he
does recall that they were extremely dirty. “Their nice white suits
had all this grimy goo on them from the rocks and dust on the
moon,” he says. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to bring that into
the command module; I have to clean everything up.’” Three days
later, they returned to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
“I was just amazed that all those mechanical little bits and pieces
worked exactly as advertised,” he said, “and we were able to carry
off what John F. Kennedy had told us to do without a hitch.”
Caster Semenya runs for a reason, said Michelle Garcia in Out.
The dominant track star, whose body naturally produces higher
levels of testosterone, has been dogged throughout her career by
accusations that she’s not a real woman. Growing up in a remote
village in South Africa, she would run to escape the taunts about
her tomboyish looks. “When I do sports is when I feel happy. I
feel free,” the 28-year-old Semenya says. “As long as I remember,
it was all about being free.” Her record-setting 800-meter dash
at the 2009 World Championships, in which she shaved seven
seconds off her personal best, immediately led to suspicions
of doping. But when the tests proved negative, Semenya was
subjected to repeated rounds of invasive gender testing, includ-
ing being put in stirrups to have her genitals photographed. The
International Association of Athletic Federations now wants to
force female competitors with high testosterone levels to take
drugs suppressing them. Semenya lost her court battle against
that rule, but is determined to compete in the 2020 Olympics. “It’s
not about performing; it’s about inspiring the world, changing the
world,” she says. “I’m not just doing it for myself.”Getty, AP, GettyWhy Semenya runs
QCéline Dion is getting manipulated by her
new “boy toy,” members of the singer’s
inner circle told the New
York Post this week. Dion,
51, goes everywhere with
her backup dancer and
creative director, Pepe
Muñoz, 34, whom Dion
calls her “best friend.”
Yet sources say Muñoz
forced out Dion’s top
assistants and has
“fully taken over” her
career since the 2016
death of her husband
and manager, René
Angélil. Discoveredat age 12 by Angélil, then 38, Dion later had
three children with him, claiming he was the
only man she’d ever kissed. She has denied
being romantically involved with Muñoz,
saying, “Pepe is gay,” although a source told
the Post, “She’s in love with this guy and
listens to everything he’s saying.”
QAuthor and megachurch pastor Joshua
Harris publicly repented this week for his
best-selling abstinence manifesto I Kissed
Dating Goodbye, apologizing for the 1997
book’s “fear-based” teachings on sexuality.
Harris also announced the end of his 19-year
marriage. He was 21 when he wrote the
book, which helped persuade a generation
of conservative Christian teens to forgo pre-
marital sex and instead pursue a traditional
courtship supervised by parents. He also
denounced homosexuality as “so wrong, sofilthy.” In 2015, Harris resigned as a pastor
of a Maryland megachurch and now says he
has experienced “a massive shift in regard to
my faith in Jesus.” Harris, 44, apologized for
“my self-righteousness” and to the LGBTQ
community “for any ways that my writing
and speaking contributed to a culture of
exclusion and bigotry.”
QNeil deGrasse Tyson will keep his pres-
tigious museum post after three women
accused the celebrity astrophysicist of
unwanted sexual advances and other sexual
misconduct. The American Museum of
Natural History in New York City said last
week that it had completed an investiga-
tion into the allegations and will continue to
employ Tyson, 60, as director of the Hayden
Planetarium, a position he’s held since 1996.
The museum did not explain its decision.