[Los Angeles, December 3. Image via Getty]

Us
This cover, showing a beaming Michelle and Barack Obama emblazoned with the words "Why Barack Loves Her," is perhaps part of the subtle image makeover we referred to earlier. Us seems very concerned with portraying the clearly awesome Michelle as a non-threatening soccer mom, and more importantly, differentiating her from Hillary. Says a friend: "[Michelle] is not the least bit interested in being a co-president or participating in policy decisions…Her first priority as a first lady would be that the girls are OK, and to continue to be the outstanding mother that she is." We always go straight to Us for astute political coverage. In other news, Hollywood wags think Katherine Heigl's career will be fine despite her ankling the Emmys. Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee are back together for the umpteenth time. They're like Bobby and Whitney but with exponentially more body modification. Finally, here's some news for all the hipsters out there: supermodel Helena Christensen has been "cozying up" to Interpol lead singer Paul Banks for over six months!
Grade: C (a timeshare in Cleveland)
In Touch
Rut roh! Angelina and Brad's CRISIS AT HOME in huge pink letters! They have a lot of babies, it's exhausting, it's possibly pulling them apart, and so on, and so forth. The only good part of this four page spread is the sidebar where Dr. Drew gives Angelina the business about her whole Mother Theresa routine. "I've never seen anyone remit heroin completely," Dr. Drew said. "Is she in recovery? If she's in recovery, I don't seen any evidence of it, because people in recovery invest themselves in simple, selfless acts of service, not global self-serving acts." Burn!!! On to matters of life and death: Did Mariah Carey have plastic surgery? Survey says: Probs. Her yo-yo dieting is well known and after her most recent weight loss, she has mysterious, Tara Reid-reminiscent ripples on her tummy. The liposuction of Mimi! Bret Michaels bonded with Sherri Shepherd when he went on The View because they both have diabeetus, but he wants to do it with Elisabeth Hasselbeck. "Barbara Walters was pretty hot," Bret admitted, "but Elisabeth Hasslebeck and me, I'm just telling her, if her husband ever falls out of the picture…" Scariest tabloid news of the week: Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt spent $10,000 on guns because Spencer wants to be "prepared for anything." Can't wait for the Branch Davidianish FBI raid on the Speidi compound…
Grade: C+ (an unheated shack on the coast of Maine)
Star
More Brangelina business. Angie has panic attacks due to the stress of her pregnancy and Shiloh's terrible twos. Apparently she's worried about how she's going to handle "two more needy little ones in an already chaotic household." Uh, probably with the army of nannies she already employs. Miley Cyrus reportedly gets thousands of love letters from prisoners, "who claim they've taped her picture up in their cells." Creepy to the max!! Was Matthew McConaughey macking on strange ladies during a recent trip to Nicaragua while his super-pregs girlfriend Camilla Alves languished at home? If the photos are any indication (see Fig. A below), the answer is yes. An amused onlooker tells Star, "He grabbed the DJ's microphone, crawled onto a table and screamed 'I lost my flip-flops!' in broken Spanish!" Britney and Jamie Lynn are none too pleased about mom Lynne's forthcoming memoir, Through The Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, which includes such revelations as Britney bit her nails as a kid. Shocking! And lastly, Jen wants boyfriend of thirty seconds John Mayer to marry her, but he's not down. Hmm, sounds dubious.
Grade: D+ (a metal trailer in Death Valley)
Ok!
Jeebus. Even more Angelina news. This time she's not stressed. In fact, she's so into all her babies, Ok! says, she's looking to adopt another boy. She'll get the lucky young tyke from the same Ethiopian orphanage where she found wee Zahara. Ange wants to "balance the races" in her household and since Maddox has Pax, now it's "Z's turn." Speaking of babies, Britney will charter a jet to Kentwood, Louisiana, the second lil' sis Jamie goes into labor. There are rumblings that Prince William and on-again, off-again flame Kate Middleton will be married next summer. Why did Anne Hathaway stay with scuzzy Raffaello Follieri for so long? Because he's a baaaad boy, of course. "[Women] believe that if we are wonderful enough, beautiful enough or sexy enough, we will cure them of their bad ways, and make ourselves all the more beautiful," Dr. Jenn Berman tells Ok!. Ugh. In other douche-dating news, David Spade says "girls date me because I'm normal." Good to know.
Grade: D- (a motel room on Three Mile Island)


Life & Style
Just when you thought she was getting better, L&S dredges up some old dirt: Britney tried to off herself twice, says a new book. Ian Halperin, an investigative journalist who is writing a bio of Brit tells L&S, "I can't divulge too much, but I will say the suicide attempts are true. I know all the details of both of them>" The book is also about how "sleazy and destructive" her handlers were, and how Britney is obsessed with Marilyn Monroe's tragic fate. The formerly self-destructive Nicole Richie is "back to her old ways" and is losing weight. She and Joel madden are fighting a lot and she's stressed out by baby Harlow. Unlike Nicole Richie, another Nicole (Kidman) is trying to gain weight. She thinks her baby bump is too small and wishes it were bigger. She also wishes that her jugs were bigger. Are Mariah and Nick already on the rocks? "I give the marriage six months, tops," says an insider.
Grade: D- (a teepee in Chernobyl)
Fig. A:

[New Orleans, December 3. Image via AP.]

Earlier: Brad Pitt's Pretty, Pink, Southern Hospitality

• Maddox Jolie-Pitt is taking classes at the Lycée Français on New York's Upper East Side. Oh, to be at those parent-teacher conferences! [Page Six]
  
• Michelle Williams was seen hanging out in Brooklyn with her girls. "She looked gorgeous," says a source. [Page Six]
  
• Style guru Tim Gunn wrote a book, but he was forbidden from mentioning Project Runway in it. Legal snafus like this make our head hurt! [Page Six]
  
• Busta Rhymes was supposed to be in court yesterday, but he Assistant DA was called for jury duty. Woo-ha! [Page Six]
  
• David Beckham may not play again this season. He still gets the $250 million, though. [Gatecrasher]
  
• Karrine "Superhead" Steffans claims that soon-to-be-divorced Shaquille O'Neal gave her $10,000 on their first "date." [Gatecrasher, 3rd item]
  
• R.I.P Luciano Pavarotti. [NY Times]

• Not-really-that-blind item! "Which actor with a troubled brother might want to deal with some issues of his own? He is constantly drunk on the set of his current film, say spies." Oh snap! [Gatecrasher, last item]
• Sopranos star James Gandolfini wants the U.S. out of Iraq and for you to watch his documentary about wounded soldiers on HBO, or else. [Rush & Molloy]
• Sean Diddy Combs denies fathering a baby in Atlanta but ex-girlfriend Kim Porter says that's one of the reasons she left him. [Rush & Molloy, 2nd item]
• Did Matrix director Larry Wachowski finally get a sex change? [Rush & Molloy, 7th item]
• The View will have two black best friends when Sherri Shepherd joins the show on September 10. Whoopi has already begun! [People]
• The idea of getting pregnant doesn't excite Charlize Theron because she "doesn't really want to look like a whale." [Prince Harry wasn't at the airport to meet girlfriend Chelsy Davy — but the paparazzi were! [The Sun]
• Jenna Fischer, also known as Pam on The Office has separated from her husband after six years of marriage. [Reuters]
• Lily Allen would love a new boyfriend, but says, "I always think that no one is ever going to fancy me." Aw! You're adorable, Lily! Smile! [The Sun]
• Lily also says "I have my problems but they are nothing compared to Amy [Winehouse]'s." Lil has sent Amy flowers and a card. [Mirror]
• Sir Ben Kingsley has secretly wed "a Brazilian babe nearly half his age." Sir Ben says his new bride is "like an ancient mythological princess." We're gonna take his word for it. [The Sun]

Just after noon on March 25, Paula Abdul and a guy who looked a lot like beau Tony Schiena "were carrying on so much I thought they should get a room," says an eyewitness who spotted the duo. "She was rubbing his chest and kissing him," and whispering so loudly that"people were moving away from then because they were so much of a distraction." what's even more shocking is where this make-out episode took place: inside St. Cyril of Jerusalem Roman Catholic Church in Encino, Calif., during High Mass!

Later on, Paula gives new meaning to the term "High Mass" (Ed: If this is actually a term. We are Catholic, and we just called it "mass") by passing out in the arms of her South African beau, sleeping for awhile, then waking up, mid-sex dream we can only imagine, and stumbling out of church. Weirdest fact: it was the second time the pair has been spotted groping in the church. Freaks.
Also, this week's Star:

• Quotes Linds: "My motto is: Live Every Day to its fullest — in moderation!" (Just because she is not large doesn't mean she can't contain multitudes, folks!)
  
• Reports from the frontlines of Brangelina day care facility, where Angie is — surprise, surprise — not the other overprivileged kiddies' fave play date mom, thanks to her supposed decrees that other parents (and their two year olds, we can only presume) not "look" at Angelina or anyway, bring cameraphones. In the same package, an intriguing sidebar asks: "Is Maddox Mad At Pax?" We can think of a lot of demeaning jobs, but writing 300 words about whether a five-year-old stranger is jealous of a three-year-old stranger is, um, up there.

Meanwhile in other magazines:

Life & Style:

• profiles Howie Day, the supposed "beau" Brit met at Promises, is profiled in a piece headed 'Britney falls for another Bad-Boy Musician' — uh... like Jason Alexander? Howie has some sort of police record and allegedly had a hit single in 2005. Yawn. That goes for the rest of the magazine. But it's only $1.99!

US:

• Puts Tori Spelling and puny Spelling spawn on cover. Now there's a newsstand winner. The (fawning, but duh) story is penned by NYT Sunday Styles scribe Monica Corcoran, and it uses the word "frenetic" in the lede.
  
• Boycotts Brangelina — almost, relegating news (Of The World news, so it's sort of like "hearsay", but yeah, whatever) of a fourth "race balancing" Pitt Jolie adoption from Chad to a page 53 "Hot Stuff" item. That'll show em!
  
• Asks the question "So how did Spears transform herself so quickly?" Uh, transform? Apparently, 50% of readers think Britney has "bounced back."
  
• To be sure paragraph: Brit annoyed the fuck out of her partners in rehab.

InTouch:

• Reports Angelina has been losing weight and feeling "asexual," and restless, according to a "friend," by which we mean "frenemy," who also does a good job selling us on the idea that Angie is a bad mom: "She wants to be able to take off when she wants, where she wants, but she can't."
  
• Pronounces "Jen's Hotter Than Angie!" in a sidebar that further suggests that "it appears that she and her ex-husband's partner, Angelina Jolie, have switched places." (Mannn, the Brangelina beat writer ennui is practically beaming off the nine-point serif font of this story.)