87. Karrine “Superhead” Steffans Publishes Tell-All

Karrine “Superhead” Steffans doesn’t just shake her booty in your favorite rap videos. She’s also slept with most of your favorite rap stars. The list includes Lil’ Wayne, Method Man and even a few ringers like Shaquille O’Neal and Bill Maher. And her acrobatic tongue eventually earned her the nickname “Superhead.”

Steffans blew the lid off her love life in the memoir Confessions of a Video Vixen, which landed on bestseller lists in 2005. The pneumatic 25-year-old told of breathless encounters with DMX, P. Diddy, Jay-Z, Xzibit, Dr. Dre, Ice T, Usher, Bobby Brown and Vin Diesel during her years in Hollywood. Breathless, that is, until the morning after, when Steffans would discover that she was left with more crabs than self-respect.

In the sequel, The Vixen Diaries, Steffans was at it again, alleging that ex Darius Morgan cheated on her with Tyson Beckford. In his own tell-all published in 2008, Bobby Brown downplayed Steffans’ contributions to literature. “I’ve spent several nights at her house,” he wrote. “But she was only good for what her nickname stood for.” [Charles Bottomley]

Salman Rushdie won the hearts of critics with his controversial 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, but many Muslims worldwide were enraged at what they saw as its blasphemous anti-Islamic message. 21 protesters were killed and 223 were wounded while rioting against the book in India, Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kashmir. On February 14, 1989, the Iranian Ayatollah issued a fatwa against Rushdie, urging all good Muslims to kill him.

With an alleged $6 million price tag on his head, the author lived for nine years in hiding under the protection of British police. Musician and Muslim convert Cat Stevens (a.k.a. Yusuf Islam) said that if Rushdie showed up on his doorstep, he “might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like.” In 1998 Iran’s government formally distanced itself from the death warrant. Salman came out of hiding, married smoking-hot Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi (it lasted 8.5 years), and in June 2007 was knighted by the Queen of England.

Others involved with the controversial book did not escape the wrath of angry Muslims: two of its translators were stabbed, one fatally, and his Norwegian publisher narrowly survived an attempted assassination. Hard-line groups in Iran continue to insist the fatwa is irrevocable. Salman reports that every year on February 14 he gets a special “Valentine’s card” from Iran, reminding him that the vow to kill him has not been forgotten.

Junkie-turned-Oprah-approved faith healer James Frey’s story was too good to be true. His 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces uncovered a layer of hell somewhere beneath rock-bottom, with our Hemingway-on-heroin hero relating his life of drug peddling, crack-whore sex, and oral surgery gone wrong. Truth was truly stranger than fiction–and Oprah hailed the Frey’s courageous attempt to tell it like it was.

Except it wasn’t. Mug-shot website The Smoking Gun smelled a rat. A rat with Frey’s trademark odor of snot, urine, vomit, and blood. Investigation revealed that Frey’s criminal record amounted to a few speeding tickets. His story was about as reliable as the Hitler diaries.

Hell hath no fury like Oprah scorned. In January 2007, she gave Frey an on-air dressing-down like we haven’t seen since Jon Stewart’s Crossfire shit-fit. Frey’s work now occupies the fiction section of your local bookstore.

Watch Oprah turn on James Frey:

[Charles Bottomley]