10 NEWS People
Koepka’s problem with golf
Brooks Koepka acts like he’d rather be anything
but a golfer, said Daniel Riley in GQ. He’s one
of the PGA Tour’s most dominant players, hav-
ing won an astonishing four major champion-
ships in his first nine attempts. Yet Koepka, 29,
can appear to take little joy in the sport. He has
called golf “kind of boring,” criticized its country
club sensibilities—Koepka has ruffled feathers by
wearing high-fashion Off-White brand golf shoes in tournaments—
and makes little effort to be buddy-buddy with his peers. “This
might come across the wrong way,” he explains, “but I already
have enough friends.” Koepka says he understands that people
mistake his attitude “for me not loving the game. I absolutely love
the game. I don’t love the stuffy atmosphere that comes along with
it.” When he practices near his house in Jupiter, Fla., Koepka wears
tennis shoes and keeps his shirt untucked, usually playing 18 holes
in under two hours. In tournaments, rounds can take five hours,
and he’s gotten in spats with opponents who agonize over every
shot. Koepka sometimes goes to the bathroom midround just to
pass time. “Golf has always had this persona of the triple-pleated
khaki pants,” he says. “It’s supposed to be a gentleman’s sport.
And that’s where they lose a lot of people. They just do.”
Why Azaria stopped voicing Apu
At first, Hank Azaria didn’t see what the big deal was, said Dave
Itzkoff in The New York Times. Azaria, a white Jewish man, has
voiced dozens of absurd characters on The Simpsons since the show
debuted in 1990. They include Apu, the Indian proprietor of the
Kwik-E-Mart who speaks in an exaggerated ethnic accent and has
the catchphrase “Thank you! Come again!” But in recent years, a
growing number of critics—many of them of Indian descent—have
denounced Apu as a bigoted caricature and demanded Azaria stop
voicing him. Azaria, 55, was defensive at first. “We make fun of
everyone,” he recalls thinking. “Don’t tell me how to be funny.” He
had based the character on the South Asian convenience store clerks
he heard growing up in New York City. But Azaria says he also
drew inspiration from the 1968 comedy The Party, in which Peter
Sellers wore brownface to play a bumbling Indian. “That represents
a real blind spot. There I am, joyfully basing a character on what
was already considered quite upsetting.” A year ago Azaria told
the show’s producers that he’d finished voicing Apu. His attitude
flipped when he imagined the viewer’s perspective. “If that character
were the only representation of Jewish people in American culture
for 20 years, which was the case with Apu, I might not love that.”
Halsey might be the world’s most honest pop star, said Eve Barlow
in The Guardian (U.K.). The 25-year-old has sung about her breakups,
talked openly about her bipolar disorder—she says the title of her
new album, Manic, is “not a punch line”—and railed against sexism
in the music industry. She blames her lack of Grammy nominations
this year on her public criticism of the award ceremony’s former
boss, Neil Portnow, who in 2018 said that women artists needed to
“step up” if they wanted more recognition. This outspokenness has
caused other problems for Halsey. “Nobody wants to be my friend.
They’re scared I’m gonna pop off about something. I’m drama by
association.” Yet there’s only one thing that Halsey regrets sharing
with the world. Two years ago, she was bombarded with online
abuse by male trolls after revealing that she’d suffered a miscar-
riage while performing live. “It’s the most inadequate I’ve ever felt.
I can’t do the one thing I’m biologically put on this earth to do.
Then I have to go onstage and be this sex symbol of femininity and
empowerment? It is demoralizing.” Still, Halsey has no plans to stop
speaking out. “It’s so much greater than me—it’s a social perception
of women. So I’m gonna tell them everything that happened.”Sh
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)Halsey’s relentless candor
QBritain’s Prince Andrew has “completely
shut the door” on voluntarily cooperating
with a U.S. investigation into the pedophile
Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors in New York
City said this week, despite
publicly pledging in Novem-
ber to assist with any probe
into the disgraced financier.
The British royal has faced
intense pressure to explain
his relationship with
Epstein—who died last
August while awaiting
trial on sex- trafficking
charges—and allegations
that he had sex with one of
the financier’s young victims.Virginia Roberts Giuffre has alleged that she
was forced to have sex with several influen-
tial men, including Andrew, while she was
underage. Andrew, 60, denies the accusation.
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the South-
ern District of New York, said his office was
now “considering its options” on the royal.
QBen Affleck and his latest co-star, Ana de
Armas, were spotted making out last week
before boarding a private jet to Cuba, People
reported. “They are definitely dating,” a
source said. Affleck, 47, and de Armas, 31,
play husband and wife in the upcoming
thriller Deep Water, which recently wrapped
filming. De Armas, who starred in last
year’s Knives Out, is Cuban, and the two
were overheard chatting flirtatiously as they
explored Havana. Affleck opened up last
month about his struggle to achieve sobrietyafter alcoholism cost him his marriage to
Jennifer Garner in 2018.
QLed Zeppelin did not steal the opening riff
for its 1971 anthem “Stairway to Heaven,”
a federal appeals court ruled this week.
British rockers Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
had been accused of ripping off the 1968
song “Taurus” by the U.S. band Spirit, with
whom Zeppelin appeared on the same bill
for several shows in the late ’60s. A jury
found in 2016 that Led Zep didn’t infringe
on the copyright of “Taurus”; a musicologist
who testified on the band’s behalf said the
elements the two songs had in common had
appeared in music for more than 300 years.
But in 2018, a three-judge panel ordered a
new hearing after deciding the trial judge
had made a series of errors. The 2016 ruling
has now been reinstated.