Now, Im not saying that those 1984 stores included Gere, but Im not not saying that either. Photo by Camilo Torres, via Shutterstock. PSFS: It shocked staid Philly in 1932 with its sleek modernism; the first U.S. skyscraper in the International style; named the Building of the Century by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects.Liberty Place: It shocked staid Philly in 1987 with its 61 stories; this Willard Rouse project shattered the gentlemens agreement among city developers not to build higher than the 548 feet of Billy Penns hat.WINNER: LIBERTY PLACE, 59 PERCENT TO 29 PERCENT. MASCOT: THE ST. JOES HAWK VS. Their daughter, Olivia Grace on October 16, 2019, with a weight of 16 lbs and 10 ounces. Later, Jerry moved in New York to co-host the national talk show, Attitudes on Lifetime. Reporting career []. Jerry Penacoli, an American actor and entertainment reporter, is well-known for serving as the anchor of the Extra television magazine program. Frankly, were surprised T.O. Previously, he worked as an anchorman for then-NBC affiliate KYW-TV 3 (Now a CBS affiliate) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We hired the Global Strategy Group polling firm to take the citys most heated arguments to you, the people, so you could declare the winners. Shortly after the movies release, a phony letter addressed from the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was sent over fax across Hollywood accusing Gere of gerbil abuse. (The reason why Seipp was speaking with the supervisor for her Advocate article.) Later, Penacoli announced to viewers that he had been declared cancer-free life. For instance, the Bloomberg Financial Services version of the story ended with a quote from Sheriff Hugo Root: It serves the faggots right. The 1994 post also concludes with a quote from Hugo Root: Its Faggot I feel sorry for. And thats a whole lot closer than Penn prez Amy Gutmann would like it to be. Penacoli was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the Marlton section of Evesham Township, New Jersey. In 1984, a Denver weekly said it had a confirmed report of gerbilectomy in a local emergency room. But once you burrow deep inside a gerbil rumor, is there any going back? Hmm, fattest city in America is it a coincidence that Susann and Weiner both had best-sellers featuring women fretting about their weight? 1,974 Followers, 388 Following, 1,068 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Jerry Penacoli (@extrajerry) Rizzo: Loved-yet-feared ex-police commissioner who swore hed make Attila the Hun look like a faggot; once photographed in black tie with a nightstick tucked into his cummerbund.Rendell: Charisma-soaked glutton and sports freak whose relentless cheerleading dragged the city back from the precipice. Besides, Jerry was dealing with critical health issues. As AIDS grew increasingly visible throughout the 80s, Americans were failing, quite atrociously, to comprehend the reality, mechanics, and science behind AIDS. As one Sean J. Crist stated forebodingly in the 1993 Usenet thread: The gay media was not able to turn up even one case where this had happened.. And screw the critics; we cant wait to see Rocky VI. Kelly: East Falls ice princess and Hitchcockian muse who made the improbable leap to real live royalty.Danner: A four-decade career on stage and screen; last year alone, she was up for three Emmys. As he told me, Both are total myths: the fact that gay men like gerbiling, and the fact that Richard Gere likes gerbiling. He makes Brooks look lightweight which Brooks is. He is from United States. : The Sixers first-round draft pick in 1996, he was Rookie of the Year after scoring 40 or more points in five straight games. Multiple Emmy Award winner Jerry Penacoli is an American actor and entertainment reporter currently with the US syndicated magazine show Extra.He is the Former correspondent for NBC's Miami TV station, WTVJ Channel 4. . Jerry began his career as a general assignment reporter at WJKS in Florida. Online gossip, reinforced by concepts such as the scoop, seems to preclude the possibility that news can emerge independently from disparate sources. There is no doubt that Jerry is living a lavish and luxurious life with his partner and a daughter in America. This comes from someone, as Bersani puts it, with a presumably high level of professional expertise.. Chaney: The Temple Owls coach is the 14th all-time-winningest in the nation; 17 NCAA tournament berths since 1982; honored twice as National Division I coach of the year. Vorpagel identifies this impulse and the legends popularity to its functioning as an expression of public unease about homosexual practices, compounded by anxiety aboutAIDS.. But thats not to say that the gerbil did not leave a significant mark. This must be a gerbil!in 1990, when the Gere gerbiling rumors took off again, the cartoon was sold in the form of a Christmas card. wid: "428986", . We took his best, then kicked him west. Next thing you know, somebody else is extolling Coconut Juniors, another sugarhead is promoting Butterscotch Krimpets, the loser at the end of the bar is pulling for Oatmeal Raisin Snak Bars (bleh! Before abandoning this particular line of inquiry, I spoke by phone with Michael Musto, whose landmark gossip column La Dolce Musto has been running in the Village Voice since 1984, the year that interests us so much. To help him see, he lit a match lighting intestinal gas tapped in the tube. The author of the section, John A. "Actually, still together, just separate, but together." . Jerry Penacoli says it hurt, hurt a lot, to be dumped early this month by KYW-TV3, the Philadelphia station that was his working address for the past nine years. The mans a force of nature; his Action News has been at the top of the ratings since dinosaurs roamed. Oh, sure. After 20 straight defenses of his title, Hopkins, at 40, finally lost in a split decision to 26-year-old Jermain Taylor in July. Duh. As with Rod Stewarts alleged stomach pumping, the hospital visit cannot be verified, because the hospital visit never happened. Cancellation of her WPVI show in 1971 produced the most protest mail in station history. In search for an authority on gerbiling, you may wish to consult a learned volume on the subject. WINNER: OBRIEN, 49 PERCENT TO 39 PERCENT. d: "YWxsc3RhcmJpby5jb20=", The above allusions were all made post-1990, but ask any Gen Xer and youll be told that Geres story was permeating the gossipy ether for years before then. This phony letter is the most real document of the entire gerbil saga. If you die and go to food heaven, the Zagat Survey once said, Le Bec-Fin will be the name over the door.. When Extra's Jerry Penacoli asked if there was a chance he and Perlman would get back together, DeVito responded, "We're . Was there an Original Gerbil, an Original Gerbiler? (Well, besides that whole Judy Miller thing. [] Every week a new theory comes out about how youre going to spread it. The law student had visited the St. Marks Clinic in Greenwich Village because he had been told his swollen glands might be a sign ofAIDS. In the days that followed Stallones 2006 Q&A;, sites such as celebitchy, The Hollywood Gossip, and gay-interest spaces such as Towleroad had reported thenews. INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA VS. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY. . WINNER: RENDELL, 63 PERCENT TO 20 PERCENT. [] My professional perception of AIDS was for a short while overpowered by the public perceptionthis was a mark of how the atmosphere of panic was gettingthrough. NESN Reporter Kacie Mcdonnell Net Worth? At last, he won a long battle against cancer with support and hope of his partner and family. The best-selling R&B group of all time.WINNER: BOYZ II MEN, 41 PERCENT TO 16 PERCENT. The shortest player ever to win the NBA MVP.WINNER: DR. J., 71 PERCENT TO 18 PERCENT. d.getElementById("contentad428986").appendChild(s); Furthermore, he has an estimated net worth of $10 million similar to Lisa Ling. Ultimately, it seems neither news outlet ever published a news article about these fictitious events. Im going to take the entry at its word here, as would perhaps The New York Times which tells us that Snopes.com is the only place to go for debunking or confirming the latest bit of rumor that just came into your e-mail. There might never be an official final word on the Gerbiling Beat, but Snopess word seems as good as any. But both lost out in our poll to the option Neither. No wonder Beanies paranoid. Philadelphians know Dick Clark insisted the show be racially integrated at a time when little else in America was. His credits include several daytime soaps as principal characters and guest-starring roles on numerous sitcoms and dramas as well as film roles, including Woman on Top with Penlope Cruz and Galaxy Quest with Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver.[1]. You can probably predict the end of Walkers story. Kids in a schoolyard. Has his willingness to champion gay causesmost recently by being one of the first major stars to to take a role in the HBO movie And the Band Played Onfueled the talk? With the addition of AIDS and its attendant narrative of Gay Desires Being Punishable By Death, there seemed to be concerns in the mainstream that maybe gay people, already alienated, werent being alienated quite enough. We have estimated Jerry Penacoli's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. It ruined his career- everywhere he went, people called him "Gerbil" - unfortunate that his name was so similar. He attended grade school at St.Joan of Arc grade school in Marlton and high school at Holy Cross High School in Delran Township, New Jersey. Just as every rumor about AIDS was also a rumor about gay men; many scientific theories of the time were attended with the physical and psychological dangers ofgayness. Especially when read against other accounts on the authenticity of Geres gerbiling, Joness anecdote (a story just specific enough, aka not too specific) makes me want to believe. Fame no longer runs on word-of-mouth. The Flyers: With Dave The Hammer Schultz (above, left) as goon-in-chief, the Broad Street Bullies defeated the Boston Bruins to bring a city dying for heroes the first of two consecutive Stanley Cups.The Phillies: Larry Bowa (above, grinning), Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose and the rest of the Boys of Summer finally brought the pennant to the Vet, after 98 years.WINNER: THE PHILS, 55 PERCENT TO 30 PERCENT. He transferred into KYW TV, Philadelphia. Theorist Leo Bersani prefaced his famous AIDS essay Is The Rectum A Grave?, written in 1987, with an epigraph from AIDS researcher Opendra Narayan of John Hopkins Medical School. Or was there only a mirrored hallway, gerbils infinitely repeated in reflection, with the first one not even realjust an image of an image. Busch and Starling tabulated 182 cases by type and number of objects, among which included two whip handles, one plastic rod, one bottle with an attached rope, and one frozen pigs tail. Its Clark DeLeon. I live near Philadelphia, so in our town many people watch the Philadelphia news channels. His hypnotic, homoerotic voice represented the nascent nation; Leaves of Grass was published on the Fourth of July. Its not hard to see the 1994 quote as a knowing modification of the one from 1993, but its even less hard to see either of them as anything but knowing fabrications from thestart. Kevin: Affable movie star who gave us Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River and The Woodsman along with Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.WINNER: KEVIN, 67 PERCENT TO 18 PERCENT. Multiple Emmy Award winner Jerry Penacoli is an American actor and entertainment reporter currently with the US syndicated magazine show Extra. Was it possible that Sylvester Stallonea nemesis of Geres after their fallout on the set of The Lords of Flatbush (1974)was behind all this? [Updated 2023 March ] Skip to navigation . He also co-hosted Richard Simmons' Dream Maker with Richard Simmons and Kat Carney in Fall 1999. Sadly, there is no information available regarding his weight and body measurements. Jerry Penacoli. As a result of his hard work . Moreover, he is currently working with a US-syndicated magazine show Extra for 20 years. Celebrity: this is what really drives a good gerbiling story. )Matthews: MSNBCs spittle-blasting, tough-to-categorize former Demo operative turned Bush supporter turned Iraq major doubter.WINNER: MATTHEWS, 45 PERCENT TO 14 PERCENT. Just, in this case, the gay gerbiler is always definitively on the outside. Chris Berman married to Jackson Pschigoda on 2018. Jokes about Gere and Gerbil (who, at one point, was tagged with the casually racialized name Tibet) became fodder for media cheap shots. In the early 80s, many people understood the disease as an airborne virus, looming in the ether. Dr. Jones reflects: I feltquote bravethen three hours later when my youngest son sat in the same seat, I suddenly realized how easy it was to become uneasy. Gere: So cute in Pretty Woman with Julia. This just isnt an opera town. Spam, kiddie porn, Jennifer Weiner blogs were with the minority on this one. Their gay body is never present in these cases especially since because they were never there to beginwith. In the 1931 film Blonde Crazy, a mobster by the name of Bert Harris (played by James Cagney) points a gun at his victim and says what is now a rather notorious line (that, like our gerbiling story, seems to get tweaked with each retelling): Mmm, that dirty, double-crossin rat. The culprit here is one Joe Reynolds and, in this instance, hes hiding in acloset. A lot of our pollees, it seems, dont hang out at dive bars; 42 percent chose Dont know. Still, we love Franks, which is always haunted by the ghosts of its storied past. In the early 80s, as is recounted here, a Philadelphian KYW newscaster named Jerry Penacoli suffered career damage after a rumor started that he had visited a local emergency room to have a gerbil removed from hiscolon. Here is the Philadelphia area it was a local newscaster named Jerry Penacoli, around 1983. Sam Kinison milked it in his lead joke for the 1990 out-of-London music awards, which was broadcast to the largest audience then yet connected by satellite. DEPARTMENT STORE: GIMBELS VS. WANAMAKERS. Jerry Penacoli Net Worth. By 1997, The Simpsons was treating Gere and Gerbil as old news. Required fields are marked *. Previously, he worked as an anchorman for then-NBC affiliate KYW-TV 3 (Now a CBS affiliate) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The story (and as far as we know, thats all it wasa rumor, a myth) went something like this: sometime in the 80s, Gere was admitted to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai, an LA hospital, because a gerbil had gotten trapped in his rectum. Youre at Dirty Franks, minding your own business, when some moron starts spouting off about how he looooves Tastykakes Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes. Thirty-one percent of you really cant stand Elton John. Now, enter the most notorious (supposed) gerbiler in the history of gerbiling, the one whose very name youve anticipated from the start of this piece: Richard Gere. Shes our princess, and nothing can change that not Carolines successive husbands, Stephanies scandals, or Alberts out-of-wedlock multicultural son. As of now, the couple is living a happy married life with their daughter in America. [1] He was an evening news anchor for the Philadelphia TV station KYW-TV (an NBC affiliate at the time) from the mid-1980s until he moved to New York City in 1990. No fan will ever forget him shouting, The Flyers win the Stanley Cup! in 1974 over and over again.Kalas: He called Phils games beside Richie Ashburn for more than a quarter-century, and is still going strong after 35 seasons; summer wouldnt be summer without his Swing, and a long drive that ball is out of here!WINNER: KALAS, 41 PERCENT TO 32 PERCENT. . NOVELIST: JACQUELINE SUSANN VS. JENNIFER WEINER. Where is She Now? A man comes along and goes from anus to anus and in a single night will act as a mosquito transferring infected cells on his penis. As with gossip, the individual at the center of the gerbiling story is always somebody else. Page, chalked the entry down to ajoke. Tynan: Perky Action News meteorologist, Philly Mag cover girl, marathoner and duathlete, and new mom. As a reporter, he earns a top salary of $185,000 per year. Take the Stallone story, for example; while picked up across various media circuits, its provenance was never questioned. The New York Times can be counted among the newspapers with an early, terrible record on AIDS. Yeah, I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and both heard and repeated the Jerry Penacoli story, too. Jerry Hernandez, Santa Barbara, CBS, 1992. As Joness anecdote suggests, the connection between gerbiling and AIDS seems almost too obvious to note outright. Yes, Jerry, the famous reporter is gay and currently, he is relishing his blissful life with his love. Another version, continues the Snopes entry, had been attributed to the Los Angeles Timesthis time situating Bustone and Rodriguez in Salt Lake City. Cunningham: He was the Eagles offense for much of his stint here, passing for an average of 3,000 yards from 1987 through 90 and leading the team in rushing, including a QB season record of 942 yards that still stands.McNabb: He holds Eagles records in quarterback rating (104.7), completion percentage (64.0) and passing yards (3,875); has led the team to more post-season wins than any other Birds QB. LAWYER: ANDREW HAMILTON VS. RICHARD SPRAGUE, Hamilton: Colonial attorney whose spirited and successful defense of newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger in a libel suit brought by New York governor William Cosby added the term Philadelphia lawyer to our lexicon.Sprague: Fearsome former prosecutor, chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and courtroom pit bull whose successful libel suit against the Inquirer won him a $34 million award in 1990.WINNER: HAMILTON, 52 PERCENT TO 37 PERCENT. In 2011, Jerry Penacoli shared his skin cancer story with Mario Lopez on Extra. You may like: NESN Reporter Kacie Mcdonnell Net Worth? Jerry Penacoli and spouse Jackson maintain their freshly born newborn girl, Olivia in Florida Hospital Tampa on 16 oct 2018 (image: Jerry Penacoli's Insta-gram ) Truly, Jerry along with his associate have put a analogy to get authentic romance. But then, we took our poll before he tossed that interception to the Cowboys Roy Williams on Monday Night Football. Likewise, he earned his bachelor degree with a Summa cum laude from the University of Bridgeport with majors in Journalism and Theatre. This was the Narayan quote Bersani used infull: These people have sex twenty to thirty times a night. Arrested near the wars end, he was charged with treason and committed to an insane asylum.Whitman: The primary force in 19th-century American poetry, Camdens Whitman celebrated democracy and the common man. His jersey was retired by both the Nets and the Sixers, whom he led to the NBA championship in 1983.A.I. While the Richard Gere story itself is too tired to bear restatement, Barts repeated inscription of the fact of the story stands as its own ironic echo of a tale tired, relentless, and finally unsubstantiated. During 1983, the San Francisco Police Department had equipped patrol officers with special masks and gloves for the purposes of dealing with what they considered a suspected AIDS patient. Theories about AIDS abound among scientists, as another 1983 Times article putsit. In fact, Penacoli started the interview with a comment about how Hathaway had to be in "perfect shape" for this role. Furness: Eccentric 19th-century medieval revivalist whose works include the Merion Cricket Club clubhouse, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts building, and the highly funkified Penn Library.Venturi: Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, lover of complexity and contradiction, proponent of Main Street Americas (and Vegass, and Wildwoods) messy vitality. WINNER: FURNESS, 28 PERCENT TO 19 PERCENT. CULINARY CONTRIBUTION: SCRAPPLE VS. CHEESESTEAK. Another thing that actually happened: in a 1991 interview, Barbara Walters asked Gere about certain salacious rumors. Gere responded with his own euphemism: If I am a cow and someone says Im a zebra, it doesnt make me a zebra. (A couple years later, a People story on Gere and Crawfords relationship, including this mention of the rumors: Nor has Gere appeared to take the talk at all seriously. WINNER: WHITMAN, 71 PERCENT TO 11 PERCENT. (Can he sue the messenger? At the start of the 80s, gay men were already perceived as socially and sexually deviant. In other categories Best Rapper, for example there were lots of Other, Neither and Dont Know votes, which means you didnt like the options, or you think rap sucks. And if we just had some goddamned pitching, maybe we could bring that baby home again. Holy Cross High School, University of Bridgeport. In most instances, it involves a tube up the ass, followed by a gerbil up that tube. Yet, theres something about the implicit uncertainty of gossip that makes the nebulous tale all the more threatening. URBAN MYTH: JERRY PENACOLI AND THE GERBIL VS. TEDDY PENDERGRASS AND THE TRANSVESTITE. QUARTERBACK: RANDALL CUNNINGHAM VS. DONOVAN MCNABB. There is no doubt that he lives a lavish lifestyle with his hefty net worth. Here is a section from thatentry: In Fall 1984 I heard five versions of this story from places as scattered as Pennsylvania, through the Midwest, Colorado, Utah, and southern California. With online forms of virality, memes can be traced back to their first typed form. But the 34-year-old newsman/talk-sh When this is practised for a year, with a man having three thousand sexual intercourses, one can readily understand this massive epidemic that is currently uponus. RESTAURATEUR: GEORGES PERRIER VS. STEPHEN STARR, Perrier: Tiny, top-tier Le Bec-Fin kick-started the citys original restaurant renaissance in 1970.Starr: The Continental, his posh 1995 do-over of an Old City diner, was just the beginning of his still-growing eatery empire.WINNER: PERRIER, 30 PERCENT TO 26 PERCENT. Nat Hentoff once described his playing as speaking in tongues.Grover: Platinum-selling saxophonist, father of smooth jazz, two-time Grammy winner, fervent Sixers fan. The act of gerbiling, according to the Internet, is simple. Likewise, Jerry even played in the movies like Days of Our Lives, Galaxy Quest, Woman on Top. CHICK SINGER: MARIAN ANDERSON VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY. Brunvand also wrote a short piece titled The Colo-Rectal Mouse, which appeared in the Medical Horrors section of The Mexican Pet, his book on urban legends published in 1986. He even thinks Im the individual responsible for the gerbil rumor. Whats peculiar about this quote is how the question to which Stallone was responding hadnt included any mention of Gere or gerbils. More about Jerry Penacoli Bio, Wiki, Net Worth, Salary, Height, Age, Relationship, Career. Apart, Penacoli also worked as a correspondent for NBC's Miami TV station, WTVJ Channel 4. It just became one of these incredible urban legends like the Rod Stewartstory.. They welcomed a beautiful baby daughter with a weight of 16 lbs and 10 ounces on October 16, 2019. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Aired 1984 on KYW TV in Philadelphia and starred Jerry Penacoli. Sicha, Michael KIDS SHOW HOST: SALLY STARR VS. GENE LONDON. (See how this could get confusing?) Sounds plausible, right? Take the re-emergence of the Gere and Gerbil rumor in 1990, for instance. WINNER: PAPALE, 46 PERCENT TO 33 PERCENT. Ive never worked harder on a story in my life, Walker told the Palm Beach Post in 1995. (To use Mustos words regarding the Geres rumor: it was just there and everywhere you turned.) One Times piece, published on August 8, 1982, quoted a 28-year-old law student: It is frightening because no one knows whats causing it. The Times archives remains, however, a lens through which we can get a sense of the information the general public was receiving about AIDS. in the roomthat what fueled the gerbiling legend wasnt so much TV anchormen, the homosocial embraces in An Officer and a Gentleman, or Geres ambiguous sexuality, but the AIDS narrative (however winding and misconstrued it was) during the 80s.