Sideshow | NBC refuses 'thank the troops' ad

NBC says it refuses to run a TV ad by conservative group Freedom's Watch that asks viewers to thank U.S. troops during the holidays, not because of what the ad says, but because the group's Web site has partisan political content. The network said the site is an issue because Freedom's Watch insists its Web address be included in the TV spot.

"We have a policy that prohibits acceptance of advertising that deals with issues of public controversy," said

Alan Wurtzel

, NBC's head of standards and practices.

Freedom's Watch prez Brad Blakeman said, "Anybody in the world who would look at this ad would come away with nothing other than we should be thankful for their service."

The ad has been accepted by CNN and Fox News Channel and is appearing in various newspapers.

An unidentified bidder yesterday bought a daguerreotype of abolitionist

John Brown

for $97,750, says auctioneer

Wes Cowan

.

Brown's family, which has had the photo for five generations, needed to sell it to pay medical bills, he said.

Only half a dozen daguerreotypes exist of Brown, who raided a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859.

"It's the most important photograph we've handled in our 13 years of existence," said Cowan, who has appeared on PBS's

Antiques Roadshow

.

"I'd do it! I'm still a young guy!" So says the sprightly

Kirk Douglas

when asked if he'd make another movie. Sprightly indeed: The film legend turns 91 tomorrow.

"I would like to make a movie with my son,

Michael

," says Kirk to celeb show

Entertainment Tonight

for a report due to air last night.

Kirk, who has been married to his wife,

Anne

, for 53 years (that's 53

years

,

Britney

, not hours) said he regrets being so "wrapped up in making picture after picture" that he wasn't always there for Michael.

The

Spartacus

star said that despite his fame and family, he had to face down his inner demons in '96 when he suffered a stroke that impaired his ability to speak. "I had suicidal impulses," he said. "Let's face it, anyone who can't talk is just waiting for silent pictures to come back."

Surrounded by controversy over her alleged drug problem, singer

Amy Winehouse

was upbeat yesterday, according to an anon friend who tells People that Amy is "psyched" because she was nominated for

six

Grammys. Guess this means she's a genuine suffering artist and not just a messed-up chick. (Does that really matter, when it comes to real life?)

A farmers group in the Philippines wants the U.N. to send them

Angelina Jolie

so she can witness how folk are being forcibly removed from their lands by the army in its offensives against communist insurgents and Muslim separatists.

"Hundreds of people are being forced out of their homes and farms every month," the group wrote in a letter to the U.N.

Jolie, who is a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has yet to comment.

Keira Knightley

may have posed (almost) nude in Interview mag (wearing "knickers, black stilettos and the flimsiest of tops to cover her modesty," the Daily Mail says salaciously), but she really did it for the interview.

The post-feminist Keira, 22, fielded questions about the subjective objectivity of women's paradoxical relationship with the existential fact of their corporeality (or how girls feel so much pressure to be thin, they grow to hate their bodies).

The Daily Mail asked Keira if she felt responsible for girls who become anorexic - ostensibly because they are enthralled by the actress' wafer-thin silhouette.

"No, because I have no control over it," Keira says. "I can't be anything I'm not," she says, adding that she is naturally thin.

In Touch Weekly has discovered that MTV's reality show

The Hills

, which wraps up its third season on Monday, will come back for a fourth season.