ormally this column is dedicated slinging dirt at celebrities who are infinitely more successful and much better people than this humble insult merchant. But today I'm going to start off by clearing up a little misconception. All of my fellow gossip leaches have been going on and on about this Christian Bale arrest. The official story yesterday was that he was locked up in a jail cell for physically abusing his wife and sister. It sounded like Bale had become more American Psycho than Batman and was a shocking smudge on an otherwise clean reputation. Well, it turns out that the charge was actually for verbal assault, there were no punches thrown (apparently in England people can be charged for verbal abuse with "intent to cause alarm"...no seriously, that's real). Not only that, but Bale's mother reported the incident on Sunday but the police elected to ignore the problem until Tuesday so that Monday's Dark Knight premiere in London wouldn't be affected. On Tuesday, Bale appeared at the police station by appointment and no charges were formally made. It sounds like the whole situation was just a lot of nonsense and the result of some of the Bale clan overreacting. It's ok to still like Batman kids. He's a good guy. Go see the Dark Knight for the 8th time.

Estelle Getty—the pint-sized package of hilarity who played Sophia “Ma” Petrillo on The Golden Girls—passed away early this morning. The actress was three days away from her 85th birthday. Getty didn't breakthrough as an actress until the age of 61 on the classic 80s sitcom and was actually younger than most of her co-stars even though she played the elderly matriarch. Getty never really did much beyond reprising the Sophia role in spin-offs or playing a variation of the character in projects like the 1992 Sylvester Stallone embarrassment Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot. Still, she made an entire generation realize that old people can be funny as well as useless. Thank you for being a friend.