In her new book, Sarah Palin doesn't address the family drama with Levi Johnston, but said on 'Oprah' that she would welcome him to a turkey dinner. Credit: Amazon
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told Oprah that she is willing to bury the hatchet with Levi Johnston, baby-daddy to her first grandchild, and says that he is welcome at her Thanksgiving table.
Palin told Oprah that she's trying to move past the negative and concentrate on life without drama. Johnston, she says, is part of the family and she's willing to "bring him into the fold" and under her wing.
"And he needs that, too, Oprah, I think he needs to know that he is loved and he has the most beautiful child and this can all work out for good," she says in the interview, which is scheduled to run Nov. 16. "It really can."
But it doesn't look like he'll be taking a bite of her sweet potato pie anytime soon, according to Gawker. In an interview he did today with Playgirl, Johnston says of the former vice-presidential candidate's invitation, "You could tell by her laugh she was full of it." So much for that reunion.
The Palin family generates reams of tabloid coverage, and Johnston is among the principal players. From his mother's arrest for drug dealing to the infamous "Vanity Fair" interview wherein he did his best to further tarnish the already endangered reputation of the former vice presidential candidate, Johnston has done a lot to engender Palin's wrath.
You know the saying, "Pick on someone your own size?" Tell that to this reporter from Chicago's WGN-TV, who played a little b-ball with a child and proceeded to dunk on him, yell in his face and make him cry.
He almost redeemed himself. After the boy started crying, Pat Tomasulo said, "I feel like the lowest person on the planet right now." But then, the reporter took it back.
Hey, Tomasulo, we're curious...were you bullied as a kid?
Dlisted, who published the photo, calls for a slap on papa Billy Ray Cyrus' wrists.
Little Cyrus vamped it up for Jamie Lee Curtis' Halloween party -- Curtis was dressed as Mother Nature, according to Dlisted -- but sadly, this grade-schooler turned heads for all the wrong reasons.
Taking advantage of the recent media attention to the story of the "Balloon Boy" (and family the Heenes) and their scientific exploratory flying saucer-missing son hoax, a company in Canada is selling Balloon Boy Halloween costume kits online. For the price of $19.99, the Halloween costume consists of a 38-inch Mylar balloon with a small gondola attached directly underneath. Helium and string are not included. The company's website, Plantraco Microflight, claims it's meant to be politically incorrect and tongue-in-cheek. Posted along with the offer to purchase the costume kit is a warning that a young child may climb inside if the balloon is unattended. Possibly a good last-minute Halloween costume idea, but what about shipping?
Falcon Heene, aka "Balloon Boy," is a victim of his parent's desire for fame. And some experts are saying that the scars of this experience will stay with him for a long time.
By now you have heard about ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips and how he can't keep his bat in his pants. There is another aspect of the story that we wanted to share with you.
Brooke Hundley, the 22-year-old other woman in Phillips' life, apparently sent a letter to Steve's wife Marni about her dangerous liaison, and has allegedly threatened his family. Here is a 911 call that Marni Phillips made when she saw Hundley outside their Connecticut home (via TMZ):
Octomom Nadya Suleman offers support to fellow mom of multiples Kate Gosselin -- and also drops a little flirt: She thinks Kate's soon-to-be ex-husband is "hot."
Suleman told RadarOnline that she wishes everyone would just leave poor Kate alone, and she refused to take sides in the infamous -- and fractious -- public dissolution of the Gosselins' marriage. "I'm sure she trusts herself and that she's strong enough to handle it," she said.
Of Jon Gosselin, Suleman again refused to cast judgment on the current reality television wild child, even when prodded about his public late-night romps with young women. She did, however, admit to having a wee crush on him: "I think he's hot!" she told RadarOnline.
Suleman's chances with Jon would appear to be quite small, indeed, seeing as he recently told ParentDish that he is in love with current flame Hailey Glassman and feels welcomed and valued by his new Jewish tribe.
Despite her amorous feelings for Jon, Suleman told RadarOnline that she won't be dating until her own 14 children -- including her new set of octuplets -- are much older.
We think they doth protest too much -- perhaps there is a new reality show in the works? "Nadya & Jon Plus 22," anyone?
Shoe designer Christian Louboutin is giving Barbie a makeover, an honor bestowed on other fashionistas in the past. But it seems that Barbie has fat ankles. Or arches. Or something.
All heck broke loose this week when Women's Wear Daily reported that a Louboutin spokesperson said that the French designer "found [Barbie's] ankles were too fat." In other words, Barbie has cankles.
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Credit: Pascal Le Segretain, Getty Images
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld lashed out at "fat mummies" when a German women's magazine announced it would no longer be using stick-thin models in its fashion spreads. He even called Heidi Klum, who gave birth today, too heavy.
"These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly," Lagerfeld said in an interview with Focus magazine. The creative director of Chanel went on to add that readers crave fantasy, and that fashion was all about "dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women."
Jon Gosselin with his six of his eight children in happier days for the couple. Credit: Soul Brother, FilmMagic
Jon Gosselin has a lot to say. After ten years of marriage and five seasons laying his family's life out for public view on TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8, he's feeling, and acting, like man who's suddenly gotten a get-out-of-jail card.
Problem is, it's costing him.
His legal battle with his ex seems to grow exponentially every day, which, of course, sends the media frenzy on Jon-dom into the stratosphere. We called Jon for a quick chat to catch up on how this is impacting his parenting and ended up talking about everything else.
ParentDish: So, what's going on?
Jon Gosselin: I'm just trying to be as cordial as possible. I messed up at the beginning and now I want to be a nice guy, make better decisions and do the right thing.
PD: Why? What did you do that you consider bad moves.
JG: Meeting Kate Major [former reporter for Star magazine] and Stephanie [Santoro], the nanny. Those were two things.
PD: What's with you and family friend Hailey Glassman?
JG: Me and Hailey are still together. It was hard for her in the beginning. We are going to stay together. She talks to people. She's so friendly. She just goes up to people and says, 'I love your shoes.'
PD: Are you two going to get married?
JG: We don't talk about getting married. She's seen how messy my divorce has been and she says it makes her not want to get married. She laughs about it. It's so different than it was with Kate. It's so comfortable with Hailey and her family. They are so nice. They gave Kate a free tummy tuck, worth $20 grand. I mean, hello? It's free surgery.
PD: How is Hailey adjusting?
JG: I apologized to Hailey that I shouldn't have been hanging out with anyone else. I love her to death and she could've walked away.
TLC is dropping Jon Gosselin from his family's reality show. Photo: Getty Images
We can't say we didn't see it coming: TLC announced Tuesday that Jon Gosselin will be leaving Jon & Kate Plus 8, and that the show will be renamed simply Kate Plus 8. A source close to Jon told PEOPLE magazine that, "Given Jon's recent antics, there was no way the show could continue to portray him as a doting Dad, not while all this other crap was going on."
Jon's "recent antics," of course, would consist mostly of his very public dating life, which apparently started before he and estranged wife Kate officially separated in June. The couple have been criticized for the way they have handled their breakup, but in recent days Kate -- who had been vilified as the bad guy in the Gosselin house -- has been focusing on her career, appearing as a guest host on The View, and reportedly filming a pilot with Paula Deen. Jon, on the other hand, has been planning his new career as a clothing designer for Ed Hardy, and going to lots of bars with much younger women.
But let's get back to what that inside source said: There's "...no way the show could continue to portray him as a doting dad." We're curious about why that is -- is it because he's not a doting dad? Because viewers don't want to see him as a doting dad? Or because TLC thinks the show will do better if the set up is single working mom Kate and her kids? Whatever the case may be, as of November 2, Kate and the eight will be on their own, at least on TLC.
What do you think -- will you miss Jon Gosselin, or is this just the beginning of the end for the Jon & Kate Plus 8 franchise? Will you keep watching once Jon is gone, or have you already changed the channel?
When President Obama told CBS's 60 Minutes recently that our country is suffering from a lack of civility, most Americans understood that he was talking about Rep. Joe Wilson (the congressman who famously shouted "You Lie!" during his speech), politically heated cable news shows, and of course those "angry mobs" that have been showing up for health care town hall meetings and Tea Party rallies across the country.
"There's a coarsening of the culture," the media has collectively and belatedly declared - as if Republican political discontent started a national trend that spread to hip-hop and tennis stars.
News flash! The culture has been coarsening for at least the last decade or two. Sure, popular culture hasn't helped, but rock stars, sports stars, politicians and angry cable pundits are not the source of the deterioration of civility in the culture.
Parents are!
For evidence of the shortage of good old fashioned parenting in this country, look no further than this video of two unprovoked attacks on a teenager just looking for a place to sit on his school bus. Talk about lack of civility. As the boy takes two separate beatings, lifting his hands only to protect his own head from continuous blows, fellow passengers passively watch, cheer on his attackers and only two kids begrudgingly step in to break it up.
The utter lack of compassion displayed by the students as they witness the humiliation and violence that was perpetrated on a fellow classmate is shocking and depressing.
Unfortunately, in this incident, race is being used to deflect from the real conversation our nation should be having about raising kids with character and a conscience. Since the victim was white and the assailants and passengers were African-American, all kinds of allegations are being tossed around. It's being labeled as a hate crime.
For the record, I don't believe in labeling certain crimes as hate crimes. In my view, all crimes are hate crimes, regardless of the motivation or the color or sexual orientation of the victim. When I saw the video, I can honestly tell you that I did not see race.
What I saw was the very sad results of poor parenting.
In both the attackers and the onlookers, I saw parents who failed miserably to instill compassion, a sense of justice and moral courage in their children. Too many parents are failing their kids, shirking their responsibility and making themselves present in their kids' lives only when it comes time to defend their offspring against the school officials, teachers, police officers and judges left to deal with the aftermath – rude, mean, angry kids.
Parents, step up! Stop waiting for celebrity role models, teachers, coaches or after-school programs to do your job. Civility starts at home.
This is the conversation President Obama, the media and the nation should be having.
Little Suri Cruise was spotted wearing heels while shopping with her mom, Katie Holmes. Inappropriate or just dress up?
That's what our sister site, StyleList, wants to know: "We aren't sure if Suri was playing dress up with some new gear or if the mature footwear was part of her actual outfit for a stroll around the city -- we also spied the three-year-old wearing Keds the same day."
Suri was also recently spotted sporting what appeared to be lipstick. Is this just a little role play, or is this little girl growing up way too soon?
Kate Gosselin is not crazy for keeping her marriage band on her left ring finger. She is not an emotional basket case for tearing up publicly a few times lately. And she's certainly not a lunatic to check on who's baby-sitting her young children.
Kate is a mother going through a divorce.
With that misery – be it public or private – comes waves of feelings that need time to process. You don't have to be a trained therapist to understand the upheaval involved in a breakup, especially one that involves children. The initial shock of it all feels like you're swimming underwater. You can see, but things seem fuzzy. You can think, but your certainty can't be trusted. You can stand, but you're always wobbly. And you definitely can't breathe.
What you have are your instincts.
That's what Kate went on last month when she came by the house during Jon's time with the kids. The two – of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus Eight – have a custodial agreement worked out, called a bird's nest in matrimonial-court parlance, where the children remain in the family home and the parents take turns living there.
Back in August, Kate found out that someone she didn't know was baby-sitting her children and she went to the home to eyeball the woman. According to reports, Jon wouldn't let her in the house and the police were called. None of this happened in front of the kids and no arrests were made.
Last week on ABC's "The View," Kate was a guest host and she was called on the carpet by Whoopi Goldberg to defend what she did. Her response was honest, responsible and classy. She said she was uncomfortable not knowing who was minding the kids. She also said she was wrong to do it. Never once did she bash Jon.
Granted, in a legal sense, Kate was wrong. But in a maternal sense, she was as right as rain. If a parent has the feeling that something is not kosher, it's that parent's obligation to check it out. No one, including Jon, has accused Kate of going to the house and acting like a raving madwoman. She didn't pull a wacky move like banging down the door with an ax, or bringing camera crews with her, or make a production of it by involving the police. She went there to find out who's in control of her kids.
Control is the keyword here. As the stay-at-home parent who was always in control of her kids, Kate is now going through a very normal withdrawal phase. Her precious brood is now under someone else's care part of the time. We don't know how she found out that a stranger was watching her kids and what lead up to her knocking on the door. I'm going to venture a guess: I'm thinking that she called Jon and he wasn't particularly forthcoming with the information. Or, he offered up the name of the baby sitter and it raised her antennae. Any good mother would be concerned.
Since the court papers are sealed, no one is privy to the custody agreement. But I can almost guarantee this much: There's a provision in there that says something about joint decision-making over the kids lives. If Kate was not part of the decision on choosing that baby sitter, she had every right to check it out. Period.
When news of their divorce hit back in June, Jon said, "This will be a difficult transition for all of us ... We are no different than other couples and parents who are facing a crossroads in their marriage."
Exactly my point. This goes on every day with parents in passage out of their marriages. Let's stop beating up on Kate. She may be a reality-TV mom, but she's also a human being.
Sorry, Kate, This is About The Law, Not Your 'Instincts'
The hardest things to do in a divorce where children are involved is to cut through emotion and deal with reality.
This is especially true when the children are the two people getting divorced.
Listening to reality-show parents Jon and Kate Gosselin snipe at each other, you just want to pull the car over and tell them to forget it. No one gets ice cream today.
These people need to seriously grow up before they can be truly functional parents to their eight children. Kate appeared on ABC's "The View" last week to, among other things, explain why she violated her agreement with Jon by showing up at the house on the day he had custody of the kids. She wanted to know who the new baby sitter was. This made Kate's spider sense tingle. She drove over to the house, she said, and sobbed at the gate. She says she knows she was wrong. She says she learned her lesson.
Not really.
She still maintains a mother must listen to her instincts, that both parents should be equally involved in the hiring of baby sitters. This isn't about her relationship with Jon. Oh, by the way, did she mention he is a no-good %#@?
The facts are, like it or not, you give up a certain amount of control over your children in a divorce. You have to trust that the other parent will make good decisions. As long as the person is not physically or psychologically abusive, butt out.
That applies to hiring baby sitters. Kate never met this woman. She had no reason to feel uneasy other than her "motherly instincts."
Sorry. Not good enough.
If she had serious misgivings, she could have -- should have -- called in outside authorities to investigate.
The fact that she ended up sobbing at the gate proves she was operating on emotion rather than reason. Loving instincts are important. They separate Mary Poppins from Cruella De Vil. However, you don't throw reason out with the bath water.
At some point, you have trust your ex is not going to eat your young. Don't second guess the parent on the front lines. The first commandment of being a noncustodial parent is, "Thou shalt not futz around with the agreement."
You turn over control when you turn over custody. So does your ex. Custody is a matter of law, not instinct.
Anne Heche will be getting some help from a parenting coach. Credit: Getty Images
Anne Heche and her ex-husband have been ordered by a judge to retain the services of a parenting coach.
Officially termed a "parenting plan coordinator," this person will attempt to get the former couple to act like civilized adults with regard to their 7-year-old son, Homer.
According to TMZ.com, the "coordinator" will earn $375 an hour and be responsible for:
1) Coaching the parents on effective co-parenting
2) Helping the parents make joint parenting decisions
3) Resolving disputes between the parents concerning the court-ordered parenting plan
Heche and her ex, Coleman Laffoon (that name!), have agreed to work with the coach. It has been reported that Heche is now living with actor James Tupper, and that they have an infant son, Atlas Heche Tupper. No word on whether or not anyone in that household needs someone to teach them how to change a diaper.
TMZ implies that the coach's job will be a tough one. Heche has displayed, shall we say, erratic behavior in the past, including attacking the father of her child on national television. They say divorce is hardest on the children. That is particularly true when Mom insults Dad on "Letterman."
Laffoon has accused Heche of bad mothering for wanting to bring their son with her on movie sets rather than enrolling him in kindergarten. Ouch. Heche has accused her ex of being a chronic masturbator. Whoopsie. It's a parental train wreck.
But here's something I just don't get: How is it that a judge approves a parenting coach at $375 an hour? I know plenty of shrinks who work for less than half that amount and can still, shockingly, do a great job helping families get their acts together. What ridiculously expensive planet is this judge living on?
Would you pay $375 an hour for a parenting coach?
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