Fur flies between PETA and Karl Rove

PETA has Karl Rove in its cross hairs.

The animal-rights group — which usually goes after fur-wearing celebs such as Nicole Richie and Ashley Olsen  — has set its sights on President Bush’s top aide.

Rove provoked the group’s ire with a rap routine he performed at the Washington Radio and TV Correspondents’ dinner.

“Listen up suckas, don’t get the jitters,” Rove rapped, “but MC Rove tears the heads off of critters.” And when asked if he has any hobbies, Rove said he enjoys “ripping the tops off of animals” and demonstrated with his hands.

“We saw your bizarre routine. . .  and our first thought was, ‘Don’t give up your day job,’” PETA president Ingrid Newkirk wrote in a letter to Rove at the White House. “On second thought, we do wish you’d give up your day job. . . . You have a severe compassion deficit and, sadly, you have the president’s ear, and the last thing this country needs is someone whispering something violent into it.”

Wasn’t Rove just joking, asked The Scoop? “He hunts DOVES!” fired back Newkirk. “They’re four-ounce symbols of PEACE.”

He probably thinks this item's about him
Warren Beatty admits it: he was so vain.

The once-notorious Hollywood lothario has acknowledged what many in the business have long suspected: that he’s the self-absorbed ladykiller Carly Simon sang about in her 1973 hit “You’re So Vain.”

“Let’s be honest,” the 70 year-old-star told the Express. “That song is about me.”

The identity of the cad Simon sang about has been such an intense source of speculation that in 2003, NBC sports head Dick Ebersol paid $50,000 at auction to learn of the identity of the man who was so vain that he watched himself in the mirror.

But marrying Annette Bening, 48, and having four children with her seems to have tamed the beast in Beatty.

“After years of running around and having a good time, I began to realize with some embarrassment that in most ways my movies all seem to return to one fairly unoriginal recurring theme: ‘Love conquers all,’ ” he said. “I don’t know if it’s true but it seems to be true for me.”

Notes from all over
Moody singer Avril Lavigne was forced to watch Britney Spears at a young age. “My mom made me go to a Britney Spears concert when I was young,” she confessed to Jane magazine. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ She was like, ‘If you’re going to be a performer, you need to see other people.” . . . Now we know where Dolly Parton gets her look. The country songbird says that her first crush was on a hooker in her native Tennessee. “I thought she was beautiful,” Parton said, reports WENN. “She had more hair, more color, more everything.” . . .  Kathy Griffin looks hot — to inmates. The D-List actress recently performed before 3,400 incarcerated men at Arizona’s Perryville State Prison Complex. “I did feel very sexy and desirable,” Griffin told the Toledo Blade. “Those prisoners looked at me like no other man did. I don’t care how many people they killed.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC.com