Queen of hearts

Latifah loves to forgive herself; Jermaine on Jacko: He ain't heavy, he's my bro; Pam and Tommy Lee cash in on sex-video court battle.

By Amy Reiter

Dec 12, 2002 | Don't expect Queen Latifah to still be boohoo-hooing about her arrest for DUI a few weeks back. She makes a point of forgiving herself for the missteps she's made along the way.

"I don't like to think of my mistakes as mistakes so much as steps that I had to take to learn," the rapper and erstwhile talk-show host tells the upcoming issue of Glamour magazine.

And she's apparently taken quite a few such educational steps in the course of her lifetime.

For instance?

"I tried having sex for money once, when I was 16," she shares. "Not in a prostitution sort of way, but with an older man I was seeing. After, I felt disgusted. I had hatred toward myself; I felt nasty and ugly."

But she learned her nasty, ugly lesson.

"From that I learned, OK, you know this is not you and you knew this was wrong from the beginning. It hurts so much to admit that you've screwed up, but you need to do that in order to forgive yourself and move on," she says.

Talk about the school of hard knocks.

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Softballs only, please

"I don't even know, as a totally sober person of 20 years, if I would even like answering those questions."

-- Natalie Cole on the "very invasive" questions Diane Sawyer asked Whitney Houston on "Primetime" last week, on Access Hollywood.

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He meant well

Proof that blood is thicker than whatever's left of Michael Jackson's nose: Jermaine Jackson has stepped forward to defend his much-maligned, baby-dangling brother.

"You judge a person by their intentions," Jackson told Connie Chung this week. "He is a wonderful father. He's a great dad. He's great to our kids, my kids."

And as to what caused his quirky bro to hoist his baby son over the balcony rail of a Berlin hotel room the other week, well, Jermaine supposes it was the adulation of the fans that made him do it.

"He was caught up in the excitement," he said. "But [the media] never showed the 60-some-thousand fans down there being excited about his presence."

I mean, he had to throw them something.

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Juicy bits

Cash for trash: Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee might not see eye to eye on much these days, but chances are they're both pretty pleased with the results of their lawsuit against Internet Entertainment Group, the company that offered the curious masses the chance to see the former couple going at it in a sex tape at home and -- memorably -- on a boat. Because IEG, which marketed the saucy vid through its Web site ClubLove, essentially failed to show up in court and defend itself, Anderson and Lee stand to pocket around $740,000 each in profits from the video, plus full coverage for their legal fees. Too bad they couldn't get IEG to cover their custody-suit legal fees too.

Reports of Sharon Osbourne checking herself into the hospital for exhaustion were apparently greatly exaggerated. Her publicist, Lisa Vega, has told the press that Mama Osbourne's stay Friday at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles was just part of her "usual treatment" for colon cancer. Vega says Osbourne is now back home and "doin' her thing." Swear?

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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.

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