Celebrity Mound

A former accountant for Rachael Ray’s TV cooking show has filed a $1 million lawsuit saying he was forced out of his job because he has an eating disorder.

Aaron Ferguson says in papers filed in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court that he has suffered from anorexia for about six years. He says his supervisor repeatedly exhibited “hostile behavior” and made “vile,” discriminatory and hurtful comments.

The comments included, “Anorexics are sick in the head,” and, “Anorexics should not be able to work,” his court papers say.

Ferguson’s lawyer, William H. Kaiser, said Thursday, “The things that were said in front of my client were hurtful, and once they knew he had a problem with it they should have stopped.”

Ferguson says he repeatedly complained about his supervisor’s use, in his presence, of discriminatory language regarding anorexics but their superiors did nothing that improved his situation.

Ferguson said he began working in July 2007 for CBS Television Distributions Inc., a CBS Corp. unit and the producer and owner of the “Rachael Ray” show. After he complained about his treatment, he says, he was forced out in October 2007.

Kaiser said the firing was retaliation: “He was punished for complaining.”

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday, names CBS Corp., CBSTD Inc. and three employees of the show as defendants. Ray is not named as a defendant.

A CBS spokesman referred calls to show spokeswoman Lauren Nowell, who said she could not comment on pending litigation.

Does Dunkin’ Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer?

The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men.

Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott. “The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,” Malkin yowls in her syndicated column. “Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.”

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: “In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.”

(In case you’re wondering, the stylist who selected the offending scarf was not Gretta Enterprises boss Gretchen Monahan, who appears on Ray’s TV show as a style consultant.) For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: “It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.”

(source)

Rachael Ray and chef Mario Batali

Rachael Ray won’t be starting a family anytime soon.

“I’m too tired,” Ray, 39, says in a new interview with Extra. “I feel like I’m a bad mom to my dog… I have five jobs, and I just don’t think I could take on the biggest job of being a parent.”

She also brushed off recent tabloid reports that she’s had plastic surgery.

“I really laughed at the one that said I had a brow lift,” she says. “Do you really think if somebody gave me a week off I would spend it under a knife and if I was going to cut something off, don’t you think it’d be my butt and not my forehead?”

For now, Ray is content with her looks, she says, as well as her marriage to entertainment lawyer John Cusimano.

“The first couple of times I got angry and then I got upset and now I just laugh,” Ray says of rumors they’re having marital trouble. “I mean, what else are you going to do?”

(source)