Free Republic

Billionaire Barry Diller has come out as gay - but insists he enjoyed a full sexual relationship with fashion designer wife Diane Von Furstenberg. Diller, a renowned media exec who previously served as CEO for both Fox and Paramount, opened up about his homosexuality in a soul-baring article penned for New York magazine Tuesday. The 83-year-old credited with creating the Fox channel wrote of Von Furstenberg: 'While there have been a good many men in my life, there has only ever been one woman. 'And she didn’t come into my life until I was 33 years old.' Diller and Von...

More than 200 of New York’s Finest packed a Queens courtroom Monday as two career criminals were indicted in the slaying of hero cop Jonathan Diller during a traffic stop — with prosecutors revealing that the driver admitted, “I shoot people.” Lindy Jones — who was behind the wheel of the Kia Soul stopped by cops when his passenger, Guy Rivera, allegedly opened fire on Diller last week — didn’t show any emotion as prosecutors said he faces four counts of felony gun possession. ... Rivera, who wasn’t in court and remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound, was indicted on...

On Thursday night, President Joe Biden joined former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at a glitzy New York City fundraiser. The event raised over $26 million from 5,000 donors, breaking campaign records. The spokesperson for President Donald Trump’s campaign, Steven Cheung, called the attendees “elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors.” At the event, Obama boasted that Biden deserves another term because he has “done an outstanding job.” While Clinton claimed that Biden has “been good for America and he deserves another term.”

“How many more police officers and how many families need to make the ultimate sacrifice before we start protecting them?” Stephanie Diller’s plaintive question at Saturday’s funeral for her husband, Det. Jonathan Diller, somehow turned out to be news not fit to print for The New York Times. Nor the lines that preceded it: “It’s been two years and two months since Detective Rivera and Detective Mora made the ultimate sacrifice — just like my husband Jonathan Diller. SNIP Her words made the front page of The Post and even the hyperleft Daily News; nebbishy Newsday at least put the...

The love between slain New York cop Jonathan Diller and his 29-year-old wife, Stephanie, had listeners in the church and across the nation weeping alongside her as she eulogized her husband as “absolutely my soulmate,” during his funeral on Saturday. But the most gut-wrenching moment of the funeral was the sight of Diller’s one-year-old son reaching out toward the flag-draped casket of his father as it was lowered into the hearse, according to the New York Post. Ryan’s mother tenderly kissed his forehead, comforting the child, who will never remember how much his father loved him.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said she “understands” why slain NYPD Detective Jonathan Diller’s family is “outraged,” but insisted Saturday she was never told to leave the hero cop’s wake — despite being abruptly told “his blood is on your hands.” “I would do it again, and that’s my job,” said Hochul, defending her decision to attend Diller’s wake a day earlier on Long Island. “We were told the family is welcoming. We always check, and they said to come, and I went. And no one told me to leave,” Hochul also told Politico during an Easter event at the governor’s mansion...

Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York State Attorney General Leticia James were denied requests to speak at the funeral for slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, Fox News host and Massapequa resident Brian Kilmeade revealed Saturday, citing sources. Hochul's one-time gubernatorial rival blasted their requests. "How completely out of touch and disrespectful — it's about them when you make that kind of request. It really should be about the family," the former Republican Congressman told the outlet. "They can have speak whoever they want to have speak. And if you aren't invited to provide remarks, then you don't try to push...

A family member of slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller let Gov. Kathy Hochul “have it” when she stopped by the wake Friday afternoon — telling her “his blood is on your hands,” a source told The Post. The family member “was going crazy on her,” the source said. “He said, ‘We don’t want you here. You’re not wanted here. You have blood on your hands. If you want to do something, change the bail laws,'” the source continued.

https://www.odmp.org/officer/26983-police-officer-jonathan-diller More to follow pending the media handling of this incident

Former President Donald Trump’s visit to the family of slain New York City police officer Jonathan Diller was an important moment for the suffering family the officer left behind, one local official said.

The New York City Sergeants Benevolent Association has warned city council members to skip slain Officer Jonathan Diller’s funeral this weekend – and accused them of being complicit in his death through their “twisted ideology” on policing. SBA President Vincent J. Vallelong wrote Wednesday that city council members who show up to the Saturday morning service would “shed a few crocodile tears” and use the event as a “good photo opportunity.” “The Council members who are vehemently and inexplicably against public safety are responsible for the carnage in the streets and the heartbreak brought about by PO Diller’s completely avoidable...

The collapse of Barry Diller’s Pier 55 dream is without parallel in the annals of willful, malicious New York City obstructionism. There’s no glimmer of hope, no encouraging lessons to be drawn, no down-the-road silver lining. Diller’s reasonable decision to walk away from a vision that had already cost him tens of millions of dollars more than he’d planned, and which might well never be built even had he sunk in tens of millions of dollars more , is a civic tragedy of Shakespearean scope. We’re left with the oft-repeated, defining word of “King Lear” — nothing. And, as in...

Barry Diller, the former FOX TV exec and now chairman of Expedia, says Donald Trump is “evil” because of his successful takedowns of his opponents.

Legendary comedienne Phyllis Diller, who blazed a trail for a generation of female comics with her bawdy, self-deprecating stand-up routines, has died at age 95, according to TMZ. (The Associated Press and The Hollywood Reporter have since confirmed.) Diller had been suffering health problems as of late: She recently hurt her hip and wrist in a fall and has been living under hospice care at her home. She passed away there, surrounded by family. The comedienne, known for her wild hair and distinctive laugh, enjoyed a six-decade-long career in comedy: She started out filming a local TV special entitled "Phyllis...

Comedian Phyllis Diller -- who paved the way for today's female comics -- has died, TMZ has learned. Sources close to Diller tell us the comedian died at her L.A. home, surrounded by family. She was 95. We're told Diller had recently fallen, hurting her wrist and hip, and her health had been on the decline ever since. She had been living in hospice care at her home. Diller suffered a heart attack in 1999 and was later fitted with a pacemaker.

Aereo could kill TV business model, broadcasters sayBy Andrew Feinberg - 05/11/12 01:22 PM ET Barry Diller's upstart Aereo service, which lets paying customers record and watch over-the-air television stations online, could destroy the economic model behind television, an NBC-Universal exec said in a court filing. Aereo is being sued by all of the major television broadcasters in federal court in New York, where the service was launched. In a sworn declaration, NBC-Universal executive vice president for content distribution Matt Bond said Aereo could alter how cable and satellite companies handle traditional TV stations. He said Aereo could let the...

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO (Thomson Financial) - Liberty Media filed a court action Monday seeking to remove IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller from IAC's board, according to media report. Liberty, which owns a majority voting stake in IAC that has previously been voted by Diller under a proxy agreement, also sought to remove others from the board of IAC and replace them with Liberty nominees, the Wall Street Journal reported. ~ snip ~

The official small mammal of Texas is becoming a Yankee. Blame global warming. Or maybe just wanderlust Texans feel proprietary about the armored mammal, but we hardly have a monopoly on its range. It's not even a native. The nine-banded armadillo, the most prolific of the 20 species of armadillo and the only one to live in the United States, crossed the Rio Grande about 150 years ago. In recent years, though, it has been spotted as far north as Illinois. "I don't know exactly how they get here," said Joyce Hofmann, a research scientist with the Illinois Natural History...