The list of reasons to admire Barack Obama is longer than Pennsylvania Avenue. But please, and I’m begging here, let’s not hold him up as an exemplary husband simply because he takes his wife out on a date.
On Sunday, the New York Times did just that, with a story headlined “If They Can Find Time For a Date Night…” The gist: if the Obamas — with Mom committed to her various causes and Dad trying to save the free world — can still find time for each other, hey, lame husband sitting on the couch watching sports, time to step it up. /snip/
Yes, daily down time and date nights are cathartic and healthy: my wife and I, working parents with two young children, have strived, with varying amounts of success, to find the right moments to put out an APB for a sitter. But in the relationship department, no husband or couple should ever wonder why they’re not meeting a standard set by the Obamas.
Did you catch that NBC special on the White House? The Obamas happen to have some of the world’s smartest people working tirelessly on the dirty details of governance. Think those staffers working ’til midnight and grinding away the weekends spend a ton of blissful time with their wives? Chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel is killing himself while his wife and kids are stuck back in Chicago. Now there’s a guy I can relate to. /snip/
Air Force One makes romantic evenings in Paris a lot more possible.
The thing is, Obama is the first to acknowledge his enormous leg up when it comes to family life. He’s obviously working hard, and you can’t blame him for taking advantage of his situation to eat dinner with Michelle and the kids. I would do the same thing if I were President. But I’m not. And I’d thank the world to stop reminding me of that little fact, especially on date night.
And yeah — much like this story on Tango’s website muses about the onstage-only heat that’s generated between Dancing with the Stars’ two-stepping twosomes — I three-quarters wish that Shawn were dancing in the sheets with Mark Ballas. Despite the whole, you know, potential ick factor of her being underage and all.
*Translation: Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, all of 16, won this season’s Dancing with the Stars mirrorball trophy Tuesday night. She was considered a way-underog behind French-fried throb du coeurGilles Marini, who qualifies as an aforementioned “star” because he gave us all a peep at his pecker in the Sex and the City movie.
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you are not totally caught up with Dollhouse, or you will have to have a treatment. (Not counting the elusive — but coming! — episode 13.)
Perhaps my all-time favorite EVER feature on BG.net, almost TEN years ago, long before the advent of the KutcherTweet, was: Glam-Quest 2000. Teams in NY and LA fanned out to report celebrity sightings, which in turn were judged and tallied — as fickly as fame itself — by our own Gregoire.
And now this, from our own Amy in SF (former NY captain), which merits at least a Conversation Multiplier x Humor Bonus x BG Imaginary Boyfriend Gambit. In other words, Amy WINS.
i was at a restaurant and I saw him come in — but I couldn’t quite believe it because I NEVER see celebs in this burg — i asked the hostess “is that alan tudyk?” and she said “that is the name on his reservation, but who is he? why is everyone asking me that?” and so I marched up to his table with my wee daughter and said “i don’t usually do this” and he said, “you’re giving me your BABY?”
he was with a willowy blonde — and I started babbling about the last 2 episodes of Dollhouse, how I knew he was funny and great but his *physical* work was so precise and amazing, I said he must have studied mime or clowning or dance b/c it was really really good [well, he did go to Pirate Camp! — BG], and I wasn’t even a major Whedon-fan but I was so impressed yadda yadda, and he was just all “thank you! thank you so much!” very charmingly and talking to Penelope who was giving him big blue-eyed smiles, and he said the character of Alpha was just really fun to play, and I said we were all pulling for a 2nd season and good luck, and then I wet my pants.
We assume Amy will have another kid to replace that one.
Seems the memes are changing on cheating. As writer Wendy Atterberry points out in a recent post on The Frisky, the simultaneous media blitzes for Elizabeth Edwards’ book and Kate Gosselin’s TV show have thrown infidelity into the spotlight — but for perhaps the first time, harsh glares are being cast on the cheated-upon women as much as the philandering men.
The question being asked: not “Why did she stay?” (and “How can she get through that press conference with that poker face?”) but rather (in the case of Edwards) “Why did I like her UNTIL she went on Oprah?” and, in general, “What did she DO to deserve that?”
Zoink! “If we’re going to point fingers at men behaving badly, we have to take a look at the women’s behavior that may provoke it,” Atterberry writes. Provoke?! She is not even talking about Rihanna. “Most issues — especially those within a relationship — are rarely ever black and white with a clear-cut victim and oppressor. People cheat for a variety of reasons, very few of which are strictly because they’re horrible human beings.”
OK, but you know what? People also cheat in relationships with delightful spouses. And people’s wedding vows to be faithful didn’t come with an asterisk. (*”Unless you’re a beeyotch.”)
We’re not saying women, including but not limited to Kate Gosselin, are always above reproach. But saying — in the name of some sort of new “equality,” as Atterberry does — that they somehow asked to be treated poorly…huh, where have I heard that? That they asked to be beaten? Asked to be raped? This is not enlightened. The only thing lamer than cheating is suggesting that someone drove you to it. Neither spouse, no matter how hellish to live with, should be blamed for the full and adult (or juvenile, depending) choices made by the other.
Now I’m going to go watch Jon & Kate and pretend none of this ever happened.
May all karaoke bars observe a moment of silence for actor Andy Hallett, who played BG’s favorite character on Angel, which is saying a lot.
Of course, we prefer to think he’s gone back to Pylea to open a FANTASTIC club.
“They have no music there. It doesn’t exist. Do you know what that’s like? No lullabies, no love songs. All my life I thought I was crazy, that I had ghosts in my head or something… simply because I could hear music. Of course, I didn’t know it was music. All I knew was that it was something… beautiful and… and painful and right. And I was the only one who could hear it. Then I wound up here and heard Aretha for the first time.” — Lorne the Host
According to The Telegraph, Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer broke up because of his “Twitter obsession!”
The source added: “Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn’t have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates. Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he’d update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like ‘He has time for all this Twittering, but he can’t send me a text, an email, make a call?’.”
Sounds easy enough, but you see, girls require more than 140 characters at a time.
e-mail to a friend in need
Sean Gregory at Time.com:
Writing in today’s 
