that Jerry Seinfeld may not be the one who’ll bring a fresh voice to relationship comedy?

From the Chicago Tribune:

Ed Loos, a junior at Lake Forest High School, said a common reaction among students to Chris Brown’s alleged attack on Rihanna goes something like this: “Ha! She probably did something to provoke it.” In Chicago, Sullivan High School sophomore Adeola Matanmi has heard the same. “People said, ‘I would have punched her around too,’ ” Matanmi said. “And these were girls!”

As allegations of battery swirl around the famous couple, experts on domestic violence say the response from teenagers just a few years younger shows the desperate need to educate this age group about dating violence.

Yep.

(more…)

From this week’s New Yorker…from 1996. In the Obamas’ relationship, it seems, every day is like the first 100.

Barack on Michelle:

…And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.

Reasons why it’s not that surprising that I teared up at Cody Linley‘s Dancing with the Stars departure Tuesday night:

1. It felt like a breakup. Or rather, two breakups in one: No more Cody and Julianne cutting it up while cutting a rug like the king and queen of the prom; no more, in my wildly dancing imagination, of our weekly threesomes.

2. Hey, I cried when Boner Stabone bid adieu to bestie Mike Seaver on Growing Pains. (I distinctly remember dashing to my bedroom to hide my tears from my family.) I also cried when Garfield said goodbye to his mother in “Garfield on the Town.” Yes, I have a problem.

3. Or do I? According to this recent study (sponsored by me, you’d think) about the health benefits of crying, it’s not a problem at all, which is great news for me.

Almost nine out of ten participants in the study reported improved moods post-weeping, and researchers found that emotional tears (as opposed to emotion-neutral, chopping-onions tears) contain stress-related hormones. So when we cry over stressful situations, such as a breakup, we really are “crying it out.”

Unfortunately, by “we,” I mean mostly women. The report states that men cry an average of seven times per year. For women, it’s a whopping 47 times per year. Also: men who cry out of sadness were “more positively rated” by women, while women’s sad tears made them less attractive to men.

For the record, Cody cried in a previous episode of DWTS while declaring his (platonic?) love for Julianne, so I know he’s the right man-boy for me.

Simon Cowell and Terri Seymour: What is it with American Idol and text-message breakups?

(And with calling me “The [sic] BreakUp [sic] Girl“?)

LiLo and SaRo to get engaged in Paris?

Felicitacions!

Then, we imagine, it’s off to Le Connecticut?

Everyone’s talking about how Vogue said that Jen said what Angie said was “uncool.” (And BG can’t disagree.)

But here’s Aniston’s real (and truly cool) money quote:

“This whole ‘Poor lonely Jen’ thing, this idea that I’m so unlucky in love? I actually feel I’ve been unbelievably lucky in love. I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be any further along or somewhere that I’m not. I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

Here are Team BG’s picks for Obama’s cabinet. There’s still room for shuffling. Your suggestions?

While we remain firm in the belief that men and women can be friends, we will dearly miss Estelle Reiner.

We read (and write) gossip about celebrities because they’re celebrities, but we like and care about a much more select few because they’re, you know, real. Perhaps this leads, in certain grisly cases — even just terrible celebrity breakups — to overly frenzied TMI coverage of someone’s very real pain. But I think the instinct, somewhere, is sincere. All of which is to say that BG has been terribly saddened by the unfolding Hudson family tragedy, but just hasn’t known how to express it. Now, finally, Mark Caro at the Chicago Trib reminds us of exactly what, and all, there is to say.

Update: People Magazine on JH and her mom. Read/weep.