CLOSE Album of the Week: Cher's 'Dancing Queen' USA TODAY 
 
 Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West attend the opening night of 'The Cher Show' on Broadway. (Photo: Dominik Bindl, Getty Images) 
 
 Kim Kardashian West is a huge fan of Cher, but that didn't stop her husband, Kanye West, from being on his phone during the pop legend's Broadway show. 
 
 The Wests were on hand Monday for the opening night of "The Cher Show," a biopic musical that documents different chapters of the 72-year-old's life, including her iconic relationship with Sonny Bono. 
 
 But, apparently the rapper found his cellphone more interesting. Kanye's lack of attention caught the attention of Tony-nominated actor Jarrod Spector, who stars in the musical as Bono. 
 
 "Hey @kanyewest so cool that you’re here at @TheCherShow! If you look up from your cell phone you’ll see we’re doing a show up here," Spector tweeted. "It's opening night. Kind of a big deal for us. Thanks so much." 
 
 Related: Cher reveals Sonny Bono told her she wasn't 'particularly attractive' when they first met 
 
 Hey @kanyewest so cool that you’re here at @TheCherShow! If you look up from your cell phone you’ll see we’re doing a show up here. It’s opening night. Kind of a big deal for us. Thanks so much. — Jarrod Spector (@jarrodspector) December 4, 2018 
 
 West quickly issued an apology for his impoliteness. 
 
 "The dynamics of Cher and Sonny’s relationship made Kim and I grab each other’s hand and sing 'I got you babe,'" West tweeted Monday. 
 
 "Please pardon my lack of etiquette. We have so much appreciation for the energy you guys put into making this master piece," he continued. 
 
 the dynamics of Cher and Sonny’s relationship made Kim and I grab each other’s hand and sing “I got you babe” 
 
 please pardon my lack of etiquette. We have so much appreciation for the energy you guys put into making this master piece. — ye (@kanyewest) December 4, 2018 
 
 Hopefully there are no hard feelings between the Wests and Cher, because Kardashian West thinks the "Believe" singer "is seriously the most amazing beautiful person ever!!!" 
 
 Related: Kim K looks just like Cher, Aaliyah, Madonna in her stunning Halloween costumes 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/12/03/kanye-west-apologizes-after-cher-actor-calls-him-out-over-phone/2199361002/ ||||| Love can conquer all — unless “all” is Beyonce. 
 
 Despite Kim Kardashian’s repeated attempts to befriend Bey, a source tells Confidenti@l that the 16-time Grammy winner gave Kardashian a serious reality check on Saturday night. 
 
 A source at the Made in America Festival in Philadelphia, where both Beyonce and Kardashian were supporting their musical men, tells us, “Kim and Beyonce barely spoke to each other.” Adding, “They were on opposite sides of the stage. Beyonce didn’t even acknowledge [Kardashian] was there until the concert was almost over.” 
 
 The situation was made extra awkward since Kanye West, Kardashian’s fling of nearly five months, and Jay-Z are best pals. West was even a surprise performer during Hova’s set that night. 
 
 But we hear it wasn’t just Beyonce giving the cold shoulder this time around. “(Kardashian) didn’t make any efforts to go speak to Beyonce either,” the source says. Instead, she spent her time hanging out with best friend Jonathan Cheban and West, when he wasn’t performing. 
 
 Eventually, the women “made small talk in the dressing room, but you could tell Kim was uncomfortable. She clung onto Kanye the entire time and didn’t say much,” according to a second source. 
 
 “(Kardashian) was talking to Jonathan, and Kanye was talking to Jay-Z and Beyonce,” the insider says, adding that Kardashian did tell Jay-Z how much she loved his show. 
 
 Despite the quiet cattiness, Kardashian and Beyonce could have bonded over the fact that both ladies are watching their waistlines. 
 
 As Confidenti@l recently reported, Kardashian is trying to downsize her famous derriere to fit into West’s fashion line. The insider says Beyonce had chef Anthony DiRienzo from STARR Restaurants, whose eateries Buddakkan and Morimoto had a VIP tent for celebrities at the show, prepare a dairy-free meal for her, including a chicken quesadilla with no cheese and watermelon tomato salad. Jay-Z and Beyonce were such fans of the grub, they asked for a doggy bag to take aboard their private jet Sunday. 
 
 ANIMAL ATTRACTION 
 
 Jason Segel and girlfriend Michelle Williams and her daughter, Matilda, went wild over the holiday weekend. The trio took a trip to the Bronx Zoo, where they checked out giraffes, gorillas and the Madagascar exhibit. 
 
 “They were really cute together,” says an observer. “Jason was very attentive to Matilda and was teaching her about the animals.” 
 
 Segel and Williams reunited on the East Coast after spending time in L.A. together last week. According to our source, the trip to the zoo was Segel’s idea and it went over well with 6-year-old Matilda, whose father, actor Heath Ledger, died when she was 2. “She was so comfortable with [Segel],” says our source, adding, “She was thrilled to be there and see all the animals.” 
 
 CHEER YE, CHEER YE 
 
 Vivica A. Fox is a screamer. Keeping up with all the grunting and groaning on the court, Fox would not be silenced at the U.S. Open. Seated in the Moet & Chandon VIP box, the 48-year-old actress made her support for Venus Williams loud and clear in Williams’ second-round loss to Germany’s Angelique Kerber. 
 
 According to our insider, Fox shouted, “You got this, Venus!” and “Come on, girl!” In the middle of one of Fox’s cheers, the umpire asked the audience to please refrain from yelling, clearly directing his comments toward Fox. 
 
 “Honey, I know I’m loud,” our source says the actress charmingly responded, causing nearby fans to chuckle. 
 
 Lady Gaga tweeted a photo of her new tattoo over the weekend. Lady Gaga tweeted a photo of her new tattoo over the weekend. 
 
 GAGA, INK. 
 
 Tat’s enough, Gaga! Mama Monster tweeted a photo of her new tattoo — an anchor on her rib cage — over the weekend. “New Tat. Stamp of His Mermaid,” she tweeted along with a thank-you to Amsterdam Tattoo Museum, who inked up the eccentric songstress. This is the second overseas tattoo Gaga has acquired in recent weeks. In early August, she had the word “ARTPOP” inked on her bicep in Australia. 
 
 FRIENDS TO THE (EAST) END 
 
 Artist Cindy Sherman hosted an event for the Azuero Earth Project, an environmental nonprofit, at her East Hampton home over the weekend. The photographer and film director treated guests Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein, Bruce Weber, Nicole Miller, Gina Gershon and Isaac Mizrahi to performances by Lou Reed, Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright. Wainright, who got married in Montauk a couple weeks ago, performed his new song “Montauk,” the East End locale where he also owns a home. Sherman didn’t forget about her younger guests: A live owl brought in for the event served as entertainment for the kids, which included Stefano Tonchi’s twin daughters. 
 
 SUPERSIZE MATTERS 
 
 Mayor Bloomberg continued his crusade against supersized sodas with his table of VIP’s during the Hamptons Classic closing day Sunday. Hizzoner’s beef was served with a heaping side of hypocrisy. “I still love a good old-fashioned New York hot dog,” Bloomberg confesses to Confidenti@l, saying he would pick a dirty water dog over the equestrian event’s healthy offerings of lobster, shrimp salad and salmon. The Mayor, who was at the event to watch daughter Georgina compete, was also joined by model-turned-restaurateur B. Smith, who says, “I’m against the supersized drinks because they’re too sweet and they’re really bad for you.” B. Smith’s eponymous named Union Square eatery, known for its fried macaroni and cheese, is currently advertising a Labor Day “Wing Trio” special. 
 
 Contact Confidenti@l: 
 
 Carson Griffith: cgriffith@nydailynews.com 
 
 Brian Niemietz: bniemietz@nydailynews.com 
 
 Lisa Lang: llang@nydailynews.com 
 
 Nate Freeman: nfreeman@nydailynews.com 
 
 Follus us on Twitter: @nycConfidential 
 
 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are officially inseparable, Mark Bellas engages in a hilariously public couple fight, and John Kerry got way to into opening day. 
 
 Kim Kardashian and Kanye West: dating! Oh, come on, don't make that face: he's got a new single out and she's got a divorce that seems to be dragging on forever. Also, they both need the publicity hit. Also: it might be -- might be -- true love. So lay off. (Note: it's probably not true love.) Kanye, for his part, says he fell in love with Kardashian when she was still with Kris Humphries. Kardashian, famously, was only married to Humphries 72-days before busting up. That's about two-and-a-months, which seems awfully quick to fall in love with someone from afar. We're just saying, Kanye. [Page Six] 
 
 Oh no: Mark Bellas -- one of the dancers from Dancing With the Stars -- got into a splendidly screechy couple fight with his girlfriend outside the Playboy nightclub in Los Angeles on Tuesday. She was mad at him for smoking a cigarette after promising her he'd quit. Sources TMZ both parties were "hammered" at the time of the loud, public airing of grievances, something we probably could have guessed. [TMZ] 
 
 Tracy Morgan is a card. To wit: he made s surprise visit at a party for Jaguar executives Wednesday night to unveil the carmaker's fancy-sounding new F-series. Morgan reportedly saw three of the new models parked outside STK Steakhouse and proceded to "mount [the XKR] like a stallion, spreading his stomach onto the hood. 'Look, the Jag put a baby in me!' he crowed." Yup, Tracy Morgan is a real card. [Page Six] 
 
 Some members of the GOP are starting to get cranky about the Republican National Committee's perceived infatuation with Mitt Romney. "The chatter is the fix is in," former RNC chairman Michael Steele told Politico. Steele adds that he's been "very quietly" approach by ten or so elected members of the RNC "about the influence that the Romney campaign seems to have in dictating the terms of what the RNC is going to do and how it is going to follow the rules." Supposedly, staffers from rival campaigns have raised similar concerns, though that can at least partially be written off as sour grapes. Still: intrigue! [Politico] 
 
 John Kerry is back on Twitter, awkwardly talking about sports: yesterday, after the Red Sox blew their season opener to Detroit, the senior senator from Massachusetts tweeted: "Hey Yanks fans: red sox lost opening day 2004 and how’d that work out for ya?" Ugh, what does that even mean, John Kerry? More importantly, who are you even talking to, John Kerry? Nobody gets worked up over opening day. This is latest installment in an ongoing series we like to call 'John Kerry's Slightly Stilted Sports Tweets' -- previous installments have featured him calling Shaquille O'Neal "big guy" and praising Jason Varitek for shoving his glove in Alex Rodriguez's "grill." [@johnkerry via Inside Track ] 
 
 Ted Genoways will depart as editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review next month. During Genoways' nine-year tenure, the Charlottesville-based publication won a staggering six National Magazine Awards. It also made national news following the suicide of VQR managing editor Kevin Morrissey in 2009, who, according to a subsequent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, had complained of "workplace bullying" by his boss prior to his death. An internal investigation of the death, released last year, largely cleared the school of any responsibility stemming from Morrissey's death, but faulted the VQR for "questionable" management. [The Reliable Source] 
 
 Two new additions over at Details: Sheila Monaghan has been hired as senior editor, while Greg Emmanuel is joining up as articles editor. [Fishbowl NY] 
 
 Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at rgustini at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. 
 
 Ray Gustini ||||| Kim Kardashian attends an event in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2012. (Joe Kohen/Getty Images) 
 
 Last weekend, the producers of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” — the NPR quiz show known for its cheeky, wonkish humor — committed a horrible, no-good, sacrilegious faux pas: They booked a particular celebrity for an interview. 
 
 The outrage was instantaneous. 
 
 “My first impulse after her introduction on the show was to question the meaning of life,” one commenter wrote. 
 
 Another listener angrily informed NPR’s ombudsman, Elizabeth Jensen, that they found the show “so misguided and offensive, I fear I will never be able to listen again.” 
 
 “I think three horsemen of the apocalypse are now fully mounted,” a third commented. 
 
 The interviewee in question? None other than Kim Kardashian, television personality, mobile-phone game mogul, selfie aficionado, wife of Kanye, mother of North and apparent harbinger of the end of the world. 
 
 1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Keeping up with Kim Kardashian View Photos A look at the career of reality-TV star Kim Kardashian. Caption A look at the career of reality-TV star Kim Kardashian. Sept. 29, 2016 From left: Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian attend the Off-White 2017 spring/summer ready-to-wear collection fashion show in Paris. Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 By Wednesday, Jensen said that the interview — a 10-minute exchange about herself and another famous Kim, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un — had elicited “hundreds” of angry responses. People were “disgusted” and “disappointed” by the choice of guest. Someone said they felt “contaminated through the speakers.” One accused the “NPR ship” of being “rudderless” and another urged, “NPR, you are supposed to be above this.” 
 
 Sharonn Flaucher of Tuftonboro, N.H., a monthly sustaining donor, wrote to Jensen that she’s thinking of dropping her NPR membership. “I thought NPR had a certain class/values and it looks like we might be heading in another direction that I’m not willing to go with you,” she wrote. 
 
 Granted, much of this outrage was expressed in online comments, an oftentimes socially acceptable repository for human frivolity, frailty and bitterness. 
 
 But still, the vociferous reaction seems a little over the top. 
 
 “I’m still not sure what to make of this week’s outrage,” Jensen wrote on the ombudsman’s blog. “She wasn’t a great guest — she had a couple funny lines — but she was gracious. Or at least I think so.” 
 
 Jensen acknowledged that she’s “in the camp of those who have avoided [Kardashian’s] other ubiquitous media projects and appearances,” but she didn’t find the segment offensive. 
 
 “It was only 11 minutes, after all, and now maybe I won’t be so lost at the next dinner party when the topic of Kardashian-mania comes up,” she said. 
 
 This being NPR — thoughtful, inclined toward introspection and organic arugula salads — other reporters offered their own takes on the controversy and its broader cultural implications. 
 
 Emmanuel Hapsis, a producer at San Francisco member station KQED, wrote that a certain kind of person seems to write off popular culture “as a badge of honor,” a way of conveying how smart and untrivial they are. It’s an attempt at cultivating their public persona, much as Kim Kardashian does, Hapsis argued. 
 
 She meticulously crafts how the public sees her (in full face, at all times, mostly) and what they find out about her. In this same way, the people leaving these incensed comments or posting about how they wish Kim would just go away on their Facebook pages are also maintaining some idea of themselves that they want to project or would like to believe about themselves. Kim puts beauty first, others lead with intelligence, but, in the end, it’s ultimately the same thing: a facade. 
 
 Mike Pesca, the ex-NPR reporter (but current Slate staffer) who interviewed Kardashian for the segment, elaborated in a piece for Slate. There’s a history of NPR listeners getting angry about popular or mainstream culture infiltrating NPR programming, one that goes back to the days when stations were moving away from classical music. 
 
 The man who helped precipitate that shift, a researcher and radio consultant named David Giovannoni, had a name for this particular persnickety brand of NPR listener: monks. 
 
 “These types are different from the regular news consumers, the typical news consumers who like debate and ideas, depth and logic. This different type of listener, not so dissimilar demographically, is vastly different psycho-graphically,” he said, according to Pesca. “Sharply differentiated by their needs and gratifications,” monks seek “to escape from the troubled exterior world and seek an interior serenity.” 
 
 People who only wanted to hear classical music on NPR? Monks. People who find Kim K. joking about Kim Jong Un so offensive that they fear “contamination through the speakers?” Also monks. 
 
 Here’s what Pesca had to say: 
 
 There is a type of NPR listener — and it’s a type of media consumer, it goes way beyond NPR—that defines themselves by what they are not. To some extent, we all do this. The bands we like, the foods we don’t eat. But with them, it’s a much huger deal. They’re closed-minded, they use affiliation with NPR or Fox or Christian Broadcasting not to experience a larger outside world but to congratulate themselves on the purity of their own world. Insularity does not wind up being an unfortunate by-product of striving for equality — it is the point of the choice in the first place. 
 
 Later in the piece, he continues: 
 
 A news consumer might not like the vapidity of Kim Kardashian on her e-show — but at least if they are a fan of this news comedy show, might be curious enough to see what a comedy show does with this figure, in the context of comedy. The Monk, on the other hand, is driven by a desire to achieve the inner state that allows him or her to make sense of the world. NPR or whatever media, for the Monk, is an escape from the sullied world. It’s crabby, it’s snooty and it hates the big booty. 
 
 Hapsis, for his part, has no problem with Kardashian. He even keeps tabs on her family and their incessant spats. And, amazingly, it hasn’t made him forget everything he learned in grad school, or prevented him from reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” 
 
 “Kim Kardashian … doesn’t have the power to destroy you or your favorite public radio show,” he wrote. “But she could probably school some of us on how to lighten up.”
– Kim Kardashian West was excited to attend the Broadway debut of The Cher Show, a musical based on the singer's life. Her husband was apparently less so, and he ended up apologizing for his fascination with his phone during the Monday show, reports USA Today. "Hey @kanyewest so cool that you're here at @TheCherShow! If you look up from your cell phone you'll see we're doing a show up here," Tony-nominated actor Jarrod Spector had tweeted during the performance. "It's opening night. Kind of a big deal for us. Thanks so much." "Please pardon my lack of etiquette. We have so much appreciation for the energy you guys put into making this master piece," West responded hours later, noting he and his wife joined hands and sang "I Got You Babe" at one point. "We had the best time!" Kardashian West added in a Tuesday tweet without mentioning West's distraction. "All of the actors were sooo good!" Spector did particularly well, according to Variety critic Frank Rizzo. "Spot-on as Sonny Bono and capturing the man's charm, calculation and nasal twang," he writes of the actor. (Kim and Kanye recently took flak for an "obnoxious" flight.)