GOSSIP GLORY DAYS
What a week to be in the celebrity biz. We’ve got it all: burgeoning bellies, obvious addictions, juicy divorces and, oh yeah, the mystical bond between a certain singer and All-Star slugger.
Star is on the rehab beat. First, it picks on pint-sized twin Mary-Kate Olsen after she topples over outside an LA club, then it takes bad boy Brody Jenner to task for drinking. The mag also reports that Christie Brinkley is talking about husband No. 5 after an epic divorce battle from cad No. 4, Peter Cook. That’s strange considering Brinkley told The Post last week that getting married again would not be “a very intelligent thing to do.”
If you’re sick of celebrity baby bumps and births, skip this issue of People. We figured that Nicole Kidman would never stoop to selling baby pics to OK!, but she and country crooner hubby Keith Urban did tell People they are “delighted” to have a wee one. There’s also a story on Matthew McConaughey’s boy and yet another on the “pregnant man.”
This week’s Life&Style focuses intently on celebrities and their often equally famous offspring. Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Richie, Nicole Kidman, and Salma Hayek are just some of the A-list new moms recently profiled by the magazine. But the motherhood coverage seems cliched, with nearly every star saying they “wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
OK! magazine brags this week of an exclusive with teen mom and former “Zoey 101” star, Jamie Lynn Spears. But the interview is so glowing you might think you were reading Parenting magazine. According to Jamie Lynn, the pregnancy was “perfect,” the delivery was “perfect,” and everyone is “blessed.” Blech!
Like two ill-fated starlets who show up at a premiere in the same evening dress, Us Weekly and In Touch magazines hit the stands this week with nearly identical covers of A-Rod and Madonna facing off. Looking to figure out why A-Rod calls Madge his “soul mate,” Us Weekly offers a sidebar on Kabbalah, the mystical religion that has allegedly lured him to the pop queen. A-Rod, once “a devout Catholic,” has been gobbling up Madge’s Jewish mystical kick, and “the soul is meant to fit perfectly with another soul,” a rabbi tells the gossip mag. But we’d guess there were other factors at play.
InTouch, meanwhile, argues fatuously that the “soul mates” both do charity work and write children’s books. On the other hand, we were impressed by In Touch’s assertion that its “insider” has confirmed that Madonna and hubby Guy Ritchie “haven’t slept in the same bed in months.”
The week’s New York magazine is full of goodies for just about everyone: politics, culture, religion – and A-Rod. The cover story profiles a 23-year-old Jewish mom who decided to leave the Hasidic world of her mother and return to the more secular New York embraced by her grandparents. Now she’s fighting in the courts to get full custody of her daughter, who was snatched by masked members of the religious sect after she fled the community. On the race for president, the mag draws interesting comparisons between the campaigns of John McCain and Hillary Clinton. She lost, remember.
Even the New Yorker delves into the A-Rod story, although in its typical intellectual way. In the “Talk of the Town” piece, Ben McGrath catches up with Yale literature professor Harold Bloom, who is currently at work on a book that involves Kabbalah, the religion at the center of the gossip world today.
Time Editor Rick Stengel pens this week’s cover story on the legacy of Nelson Mandela as the South African leader approaches his 90th birthday. Stengel has a close personal connection to Mandela and spent a year-and-a-half with him in South Africa working on his autobiography. That closeness comes through in the piece, in which Mandela reflects on his life of service and offers eight lessons for leadership.
A praying Obama graces the cover of Newsweek, which has a big package on the presidential candidate and his religious beliefs. He has spoken often about the importance of religion, but questions remain on what he actually believes.