My wife was recently given the strange gift of a two-year subscription to US Weekly. (The gift was made even stranger by the fact she has no idea who gave it to her.) Which means that not only do I now know who Josh Duhamel is, but I also know about the allegedly rocky state of his marriage to Fergie owing to an Atlanta stripper's claim that she and Duhamel had a fling. But I digress.
The most interesting thing I've learned reading Us is that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has got some pretty glamorous friends. I know this because in Us's story about a new unauthorized book by celebrity trashmonger Ian Halperin, Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Aneglina Jolie, the magazine repeatedly turns to Kristof to rebut Halperin's contention and Brad and Angie are headed for splitsville. To wit:
Their love was on display at an October 27 West Hollywood dinner with their friend, Half the Sky coauthor Nicholas Kristof. "They're attentive to each other. They listen, they're respectful and sometimes finish each other's sentences," Kristof tells Us. "When we walked into the restaurant, Brad kept turning around to make sure Angie was OK."
[snip]
Whether they're taking their kids trick-or-treating or shopping at the Gap, Pitt and Jolie are hands-on, devoted parents. "They're both proud of their kids and clearly care a lot about them," says Kristof. "Angie talks about how she and Brad juggle their schedules so somebody is always looking after them. She is incredibly attentive of how their careers will affect them."
[snip]
While Halperin says he feels he's watching "a fairy tale in reverse," Kristof predicts a happy ending: "They're a great couple. They are both very down-to-earth and very funny. They like to just talk about their family. Every time I see them, they're just very close."
I suppose if the Times can give Bono his own column, it's only fair that a Times columnist gets to play the role of character witness in a celebrity tabloid. The new issue of Us has yet to arrive in our mailbox, but I'm really looking forward to the article in which Krugman vouches for TomKat.