Ahh, Hollywood. Jeremy Piven, the actor who plays Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage (a character that just so happens to be based on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ari), has been locked in a battle for months with the producers of a Broadway play he bailed on last fall. At the time, Piven claimed he was sick from mercury poisoning because he had been eating tuna sushi several times a week. That excuse, not surprisingly, was met with wide ridicule and prompted several jokes about thermometers and bad sake that your Gaggler just doesn’t have the heart to repeat here. To say the least, the play’s backers weren’t at all amused, immediately calling on Piven to pay up for abandoning the show.

On Wednesday came word that the dispute will head into arbitration this summer. But just like Ari Gold, Piven has signaled he won’t go down without a fight and took his sushi defense one step further. He officially played the Obama card. According to a statement Piven released to BroadwayWorld.com Wednesday, the actor said that he was looking to testifying in the arbitration so that the “truth comes out” about the dangers of mercury exposure “which the Obama administration has recently described as the world’s gravest chemical problem.”Oh yeah? Your Gaggler didn’t recall any recent White House statements on sushi, so she, well, Googled it, and what do you know? Up pops a February article from the Associated Press: “The Obama administration reversed years of U.S. policy Monday by calling for a treaty to cut mercury pollution, which it described as the world's gravest chemical problem.” Couldn’t have come at a better time for Piven, who, according to those always right tabloids, still enjoys a dish of tuna tartare now and then. Will Piven call an EPA official to the stand? We can’t wait to see.