Obamas Bring Red Carpet to White House

How are regular people supposed to get their Brangelooney fix in all those celebrity-obsessed magazines when everything - from OK! to Us to People -- has become Baramoids. The covers of almost all publications are bathed in the telegenic and charismatic First Family-in-waiting. They've bumped off Jen's baby bump (or not bump), "Stars Have Bad Hair Days Too!" and cultural dilemmas like "Which Hilary is Hottest," and I'm not talking Clinton.

Next we'll see them on Popular Mechanics, the First Lady-elect working on a carburetor while Sasha and Malia hand her the tools.

Fortunately we have In Touch Weekly, where all those stories do appear this week, some on the cover. And the front centerpiece is Ms. Jolie with a screaming headline, "She's Pregnant Again!" with a much smaller "Friends Say" qualifier next to it. We hate it when they have to fudge.

But the swooning Obamoration continues with the kind of old Kennedyesque affection Bill Clinton could only dream about.

In the meantime, the last remaining real Kennedy of the Camelot era, Ted, engaged in an unquestionable act of courage by showing up for the first day of the lame duck Senate session despite the horrors of brain cancer and surgery. The way I see it, Senator Kennedy has been overestimated or underestimated just about his whole life. From cheating at Harvard to a Senate seat first secured by his family, to Chappaquidick to running around the compound in his skivvies while his nephew was being naughty, to a dashed presidential torch-carrying run, interspersed like annoying punctuation into a now very long and pretty distinguished career in politics.

Whatever has happened, he's always been a flawed human being, however noble and "lion-like" his tenure in DC. Which is itself an heroic thing because, as the tabs like to say about celebs, "They're Just Like Us!"

But while Ted Kennedy's stirring speech at the Dems' convention - called all over the press in one of those virally overused phrases of this year's political writing, "full-throated" (which always makes me think of birds, not powerful speeches) - was impressive given his incipient medical problems, just showing up for something as procedural and otherwise mundane as a lame duck Congressional session when you're that ill to me shows real gumption. Hats off (though no other clothing) to Senator Kennedy, for real.

But the biggest rising stars in our world right now, confirmed by this week's latest episode on the high seas, are pirates. I mean, PIRATES, the scourge of the civilized world in 2008. Now that's really a cultural phenomenon with (sea) legs.

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