Brad Stone of the New York Times has a piece in today's paper on the effects of modern technology on the family, specifically in the morning. Stone note how the addiction to gadgets and social networking are altering the great American family morning rituals. Instead of getting up immediately for breakfast or coffee or to read the morning paper, people are going straight to their gadgets to check email and to play around on Facebook and Twitter. In the course of his reporting, Stone profiles a few families, one of which are the Gudes of East Lansing, Michigan.

Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.

The Gudes' sons sleep with their phones next to their beds, so they start the day with text messages in place of alarm clocks. Mr. Gude, an instructor at Michigan State University, sends texts to his two sons to wake up.

"We use texting as an in-house intercom," he said. "I could just walk upstairs, but they always answer their texts."

Now, the Gude family may be the epitome of the modern, wired American family, but isn't the excerpt above kind of, well, sad. Personally, one of the my fondest memories of childhood was of my Mom coming into my room to wake me up each morning for breakfast and to get ready for school. The thought of being woken by freaking text message because Mom's too busy playing around on Twitter is utterly horrifying! How long before they start IMing each other at the damn dinner table? Ugh.

According to blogs, Sarah Palin and Todd Palin are getting divorced. But according to Sarah Palin, that is "made up." Whether she means "made up" like reports that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession were "made up" (i.e. "completely true") is unknown.

In a brief telephone interview on Tuesday night, Palin quipped that she loves finding out "what's goin' on in my life from the news."

"Do you want to talk to Todd?" she teased. "He's sitting right next to me." But he didn't come on the line.

Hmm, suspicious! Anyway, the internet odds makers say Sarah and Todd are through. But we won't be convinced until the Enquirer weighs in.

In more important breaking news: Sarah Palin ate at Michael's! Gosh, she sure does hate that lying liberal media, doesn't she? Always with the false gossip and internet rumors, also? Always not staying away from her kids? She hates the east coast elite MSM so much she dined at Michael's (the one time we went there we saw Katie Couric!) while in town to talk about her million-dollar book deal.

This is an example of good things coming to those who wait. Back in late 2007—many years ago, in the distant and forgotten past!—Representative Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. was supposed to be the next Senator from Mississippi. And then he rather suddenly retired from the House, because he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Then he divorced his wife, weirdly!

But almost two years had to pass before anyone learned the wonderful details.

Now, Pickering's estranged wife Leisha has filed an "alienation of affection" lawsuit against Pickering's mistress, so that we may all learn all about his terrible affair.

Pickering, of course, lived at C Street, with the Family, all of whom live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus, and all of whom pay below-market rents, because they live in what is classified by the IRS as a Church.

Leisha Pickering alleges that some of the "wrongful conduct" on the part of the woman accused of breaking up the Pickering marriage "occurred and accrued" in Washington, D.C., "at the C Street Complex."

A source familiar with the C Street group said it is difficult to envision a resident carrying on relations with a mistress in the townhouse where he lived with other lawmakers.

And it turns out that Pickering quit the House to spend more time with his mistress, of course.

What is it with C Street? That place is like some sort of Bowery Bawdyhouse.

Bristol appeared on Good Morning America to polish her scarlet letter and to explain, at the behest of whomever, that while abstinence did not work for her, because, you know, she wanted to have sex with Levi Johnston (and who wouldn't!), it is the only option for you and your child. If she had to do it all over again, what would she do? Not do it all over again. She would wait ten years to have sex. Or, she'd wait ten years to have baby Tripp, but she doesn't ever mention those crazy "condom" or "birth control" options so we're forced to conclude that she thinks she'd hold off on doing it until she was almost 30.

Bristol is the "Teen Ambassador" for some group that plans to prevent teen pregnancy by reminding them that having a baby isn't really so bad, you get to have sex and lots of attention and you get to be on TV and your parents will love and support you. The group, "Candie's Foundation," at least mentions contraception on its website, but on the whole they seem to be trying the same fetishization of virginity and motherhood thing that has worked so well over the last decade. Shouldn't the ambassador for preventing teen pregnancy be either some girl who successfully made it through her teenage years without a baby or, alternatively, some poor pregnant girl from a broke-ass family who can't afford fucking diapers?

So the old Bristol's occasional lapses into reality-based statements—like, abstintence "is not realistic"—are mostly gone, replaced by the creepy, watchful presence of Todd Palin reminding her, and us, of the party line: wait!!!!

Meanwhile her old boyfriend Levi was on trashier, low-rent CBS to give his side of the story.

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But at the same time, you know, abstinence is a great idea, but I also think that you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don't just think telling young kids, you can't have sex, it's just — it's not going to work. It's not realistic.

Look, when some dumb mook's method of waging a publicity war against his ex's family is to actually make the first reasonable, realistic, and responsible statement on teenage sex of this entire shitshow, well, it says something about America.

She entertains visitors from Chicago. She attends White House dinners and concerts hosted by her daughter, the first lady, Michelle Obama. She dines at local restaurants and delights in events at the Kennedy Center, where she often sits in the president's box and chats with performers.

The Obamas rely on grandma to raise their kids, because the liberal feminist revolution means Michelle works all day, even now, when she doesn't even actually have a job. But now grandma's leading a life of luxury and privilege, attending the theater instead of performing her familial duties, so the Obamas have actually been forced to hire help to watch their little latchkey kids, on at least one occasion.

This is the life they want for your children, America! Watch out for the reeducation camps!

1.) Full House, obvs. What didn't make the list was Taradise — Tara Reid's now defunct travel show — but that's only because I scoured the internet for it and it's NOWHERE to be found. Anyway, here's the rest of the list.

2.) Here's Blossom, and her face.

3.) Bridget's Sexiest Beaches has maybe the worst/best song.

4.) I cannot even wrap my mind around the intro for the latest installment of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I don't know if I should mock them, or applaud them for keeping straight faces during their performances.

5.) Remember when Oprah sang her own theme song with Patti LaBelle? I tried to find the actual opening sequence used for the show, but Oprah controls the world and internet now, so we'll have to do with this.

6.) I genuinely like the theme song for the canceled soap Passions, but it gives no indication that this show involves sorcery and dolls who come to life as little people.

7.) I love to hate staged opening credits that feature cast members doing things, and then stopping and looking at the camera. Case in point: Family Matters

9.) I find Night Court to be guilty of this as well.

10.) Even though Ray Charles was obviously still alive when this Designing Women theme was filmed, it looks like they're all hanging out with him in heaven.

Bonus:I don't know why I loved Zoobilee Zoo so much as a child, because really, I should have been terrified.

Sometimes it's much more firm to watch the Late Show host squirm and make half-hearted self-deprecating jokes than to watch him go on a hilarious tear against someone. (If you're impatient, skip about two minutes in.)

Johnston finally admitted, after Banks pressed him for the millionth time, that he and Palin sometimes fooled around without using birth control prior to Palin's unplanned pregnancy.

Other enertaining moments included a prediction from Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandchild, that he will have to sue the former Republican vice presidential nominee's daughter for the right to visit his child more frequently.

Johnston also discussed how unhappy Sarah Palin was to receive word that her family would forever be joined with the "white trash" Johnstons via the miracle of teen pregnancy, thus ruining Palin's shot at being seen as the Republican Party's leading intellectual voice and arbiter of cultural refinement.

And that's just the Levi Johnston madness, all condensed into the clip above. Below, find samples of Johnston family insanity, including mother Sherry Johnston explaining that if she gets a picture of her grandchild, she promises not to sell it to the tabloids, for meth.

Given that Sarah Palin is one of the few obvious, plausible Republican candidates for president in 2012, MoveOn or some other Democratic 527 is probably splicing the choicest Tyra bits into an attack ad right now. Tagline: "Sarah Palin '12: Bring Wasilla's Family Feud to the White House."

It doesn't (yet) look like O'Neal was actually trying to pass any drugs to prisoners, but he was foolish enough to have them in his trunk while parking at a jail, and to then admit to the cops that he had them. Sigh.

You'd think O'Neal would have learned to dodge the cops given what he and his family have been through over the past year or so. A recap:

September: Redmond, son of the actress Farrah Fawcett, was busted for meth possession, along with his father Ryan. Ryan had the meth in his bedroom while Redmond had it on his person. Redmond had a history of heroin problems.

June: Tatum O'Neal, daughter of Ryan and half-sister to Redmond, was busted for trying to buy coke on the street near her Lower East Side apartment. Like Redmond, Tatum also had a history of drug problems, but was in recovery and had reportedly been clean for two years.

June: Redmond pleads guilty to carrying heroin and crystal meth and to driving under the influence in a January incident. He gets three years probation.

February '07: Believing Redmond had overdosed and might awaken only to seek more drugs, his brother Griffin chained him to a staircase at home, TMZ reported. Father Ryan came home and became enraged at Griffin, resulting in a fireplace-poker-swinging confrontation that ended with gunfire. Wow.

Bloggy private eye Joseph Culligan has been sitting on the arrest records but decided to post them to his WebOfDeception.com after a purported tape of Biden snorting cocaine was circulated to tabloid editors, making the tidbit newsworthy.

According to Howard County, Maryland district court records, the vice president's daughter was cited for possession of a alcoholic beverage back in July of 2001, after she had just turned 20. She pled guilty and was fined $125.

In 2002 came the bar brawl, and now the coke allegations. If Biden — now 27 and a social worker, it should be noted — keeps escalating her behavior, she'll make a worthy successor to Jenna and Barbara Bush. As bankers and auto executives sell off their jets and go on the government dole, there would be something oddly comforting about seeing another spoiled child of aristocracy getting intoxicated, confounding her Secret Service detail and embarrassing the White House.

Because, hey, you might be an unemployed credit card deadbeat whose house was repossessed, but you can still sit in judgement of the spoiled little rich girl. Yay?

[Web of Deception]

George David, locked in a messy public divorce battle, insists it's the latter. His Swedish countess wife, Marie Douglas-David, wants a $100 million goodbye package, in part because she said David two-timed her in 2007.

The couple had filed for divorce prior to this particular alleged infidelity. But the wife is saying they then reconciled. Her husband was turned on by divorce, her story goes.

If that sounds unbelievable, how about the husband's counter story: The divorce was very real and enduring but his wife "forced herself" on him against his will during the so-called reconciliation.

One purported rape came during a trip to Sweden. Another occured when, in a lawyer's words, "she grabbed [David] by the arm and pulled [him] to the bed."

The husband is 226 pounds and 6'3". The wife is 120 pounds.

Then again, she does have 30 years on him. You have to be careful with these minxes, plutocrats. They're not all fun and games and shopping sprees.

The Associated Press confirmed the breakup with Johnston, who said it happened "a while ago." How long ago? A People source said "a few weeks."

That's right around the time Palin, daughter of the straight talkin' non-newspaper-readin' former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, sat down for a long interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren and said she'd "eventually" like to marry Johnston, father of her baby Tripp.

Now she's implying Johnston (or maybe his "white trash" family?) did something scuzzy. Via AP:

Bristol Palin said in a statement issued through a spokeswoman for her mother's political action committee that she was "devastated."

"Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to `cash in' on the Palin name," she said. "Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth."

Juicy! Time Inc. has already dispatched a People reporter to Wasilla, Alaska to Hoover up more dirt, we hear.

The New York Times also thinks this is a big story: the buttoned-down newspaper is carrying the Palin-Johnston breakup news on its website, via Reuters, via an anonymously-sourced article in People. Not that we object, but isn't this the same paper that ignored an anonymously-sourced story about John Edwards — an actual politician, as opposed to the teenaged daughter of one — having an affair and love child, and that raised questions about People's ethics? Just asking!

After leaving a reporting job at the Portland Oregonian to move to New York, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger has been set up with a job at the Times' website. He'll be writing and reporting for the City Room blog, part of the paper's impressive Metro desk, writes the New York Observer's John Koblin. He's sitting next to Jennifer 8. Lee and a bunch of editors.

His colleagues are thus far impressed. "When I looked at his clips, I said ‘Oooh! This guy ain’t bad!'" one anonymously told Koblin. "Eager to please and humble," said another. Those are pretty good reviews for a writer presumed to owe his job, in large part, to his father, grooming him to perhaps take over the paper. In the wake of the Times' first-ever mass layoffs a few months ago, one might have forgiven Sulzberger's newsroom compatriots a dose of resentment for the nepotism.

For all his professional good fortune, relative to other ink-stained wretches, Sulzberger is in a tough spot, relative to past Times scions. Amid a scramble for cash and falling revenues at the paper, there's persistent talk of its failure. As unlikely as that might seem, it's a scenario being taken far more seriously than it would have been just a few years ago, to say nothing of a few decades ago.

Then there is the separation of his parents, announced less than a year ago, and the rumors about his dad. Just as dinner-party speculation about Pinch Sulzberger and Caroline Kennedy settled down, gossip about his purported three-year relationship with a woman named Helen Ward hit the tabloids. That sort of chatter cannot be easy on Arthur Gregg Sulzberger's mother Gail, with whom Arthur Gregg is said to be close. Even before the gossip, Gail was reported (again by New York's sources) to be "really hurt" and "taken aback" by the split.

It won't be easy, in all likelihood, for Arthur Gregg to work for his father while trying to provide some comfort to his mother. But if he can navigate that near-term challenge, he at least has a shot at getting the Times past all the threats it faces in the long term.

Bristol scheduled an interview with mom's pandering BFF Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. But she didn't tell mom until 24 hours before, probably because she was planning to personally insult Jesus, and the former Republican vice presidential nominee would not like it.

After describing the difficulty of being a teen mom, Britsol told Van Susteren abstinence is the best policy, but is not realistic because it's not the 19th Century any more, not even in Alaska.

She said she didn't "want to get into detail about" other reasons abstinence is unrealistic, though we're guessing it might be because Bristol failed to control her teenaged hormones and, being without ready access to condoms, got pregnant at 17 to an ill-tempered failed hockey player  who has yet to finish high school or, judging from what Bristol told Fox, secure employment of any sort, other than doing odd jobs for his father.

Still, Bristol wants all teens to try really hard not to have sex of any sort, because you'll end up like her, sitting across from Greta Van Susteren and explaining that "eventually" you'd "like to get married" to your the father of your child, to whom you are supposed to be engaged. And that you'd especially like to get married to that person if someone in your family needs to run for a federal office of some sort. (OK, she never said that last part. But it was implied.)

Everyone laughed because Hillary is obviously now over her husband getting the oral sex from Monica Lewinsky, having attained her lifelong dream of being a secretary to the president, a man, who defeated her. And she has Bill's performance on the campaign trail to thank for that wonderful position she finds herself in, in someone else's cabinet.

Which is why Hillary acknowledged she owes Bill for a life of "extraordinary richness." As rich as, say, a dark and bitter cup of coffee, which keeps you awake all night, trembling.

Hillary is going to get along with her former presidential rival Barack Obama just fine for the next eight years, because she'll sublimate any and all anger about her election humiliation into quiet fury at her husband. (He can take it.)

(Thanks to intern Danny Groner for the clip.)

Maybe if this young woman had been donating her eggs to buy groceries Ms. Kuczynski would have understood that all this reproduction-for-hire was a product of her billionaire-centric world as surely as the Blahniks and Versace she used to trill about — that college and surrogacy are available to people like Ms. Kuczynski and not to others because that's how our system works.

Instead she tells us, very sincerely, how much she enjoyed spending the last few months before the child arrived "by white-water rafting down Level 10 rapids on the Colorado River" — presumably Level 10 rapids are really quality rapids — "racing down a mountain at 60 miles per hour at ski-racing camp, drinking bourbon and going to the Super Bowl." She also does a lot of "Bikram yoga," which is presumably a really quality form of yoga.

What she doesn't tell us is even more revealing. Of the story's nearly 8,000 words, there are only three quotations from the surrogate mother. Ms. Kuczynski does not describe this remarkable woman's clothes or, really, tell us her thoughts about much of anything. About Ms. Kuczynski's own feelings and fears and cravings we get paragraph after maudlin paragraph. The one who does the labor is almost completely silent.

Oh snap! Way to stick it to those plutocrats! They might be able to have their way with the Times, but they'll get no love from the Wall Street Journal opinion section!

Wait, what?

Oddest. Newspaper. Class war. Ever.

First, Campbell Brown, who's really pushing her likability with this irritating "NO BULLSHIT" thing (is she a Mamet character, CNN?) delievered a special comment full of rhetorical questions that all danced around the simple point that Rendell, though well-meaning, would not have made the same comment about a man of any familial persuasion. (Brown is married to Republican strategist and frequent cable news guest Dan Senor.)

Then secret best Times opinion columnist Gail Collins got involved! She damns Rendell with genial, light-hearted ribbing, as is her wont. She points out that Rendell was engaging in the back-handed justifications of someone who got passed over for a plum job. ("'For that job, you have to be able to drink those salesmen under the table and Ted’s an absolute lush.'") She called him for comment and allowed him to dig his hole deeper by contradicting his first statement in his defense of it (Rendell, too, is a workaholic, despite having a family). And then she called an expert in people who discriminate against single people, or something, which also allows her to get a couple digs against Chris Matthews in. (Gail Collins is married to CBS News senior producer Dan Collins.)

We still haven't heard from confirmed bachelor Napolitano herself, but presumably she's very upset with this mildly sexist remark from a loudmouthed old white guy. But we feel she's perfect for the job too, because she's probably a cloesteded lesbian, and they're very industrious.

Kuczynski, 40, is married to Charles Stevenson, a rich investor 20 years her senior. I.V.F. failed the couple and natural pregnancies ended in miscarriages. They switched their attention, then, to surrogacy. Specifically, to gestational surrogacy, in which "the surrogate mother is carrying a child genetically unrelated to her." Alex encountered, during this process, the class system! "We encountered the wink-nod rule: Surrogates would never say they were motivated to carry a child for another couple just for money; they were all motivated by altruism. This gentle hypocrisy allows surrogacy to take place. Without it, both sides would have to acknowledge the deep cultural revulsion against attaching a dollar figure to the creation of a human life."

But:

We had the money to pay. My husband is a very successful investor; I have made a healthy income for a writer. We were lucky in that we could afford to do what most infertile couples cannot. The questions for us were philosophical. I suppose I could have decided that it was my destiny to remain childless, that it was somehow meant to be. But I hate the phrase “meant to be,” loaded with its small, smug assumptions, its apathy and fake stoicism. I believe that where things can be fixed, they should be fixed. In our case, reproductive technology could make it relatively easy for us to have our biological child.

And, at that moment, having a biologically related child felt necessary. What began as wistful longing in my 20s had blistered into a mad desire that seemed to defy logic. The compulsion to create our own bloodline seemed medieval, and I knew we could enjoy our marriage — our lives — without a child. Yet I couldn’t argue myself out of my desire. A child with our genes would be a part of us. My husband’s face would be mirrored in our child’s face, proof that our love not only existed, but could be recreated beyond us. Die without having created a life, and die two deaths: the death of yourself, and the death of the immense opportunity that is a child.

Thankfully, they found an eminently qualified woman to carry the baby. Cathy is married to a VP of marketing for a credit union! She is intelligent, and her answers to the surrogate questionnaire "were not handwritten in the tiny alloted spaces." She wrote a really good essay. Not just any biologically competent womb can carry a Kuczynski. Despite the fact that all the involved genetic material came from Alex and her husband, surrogate mother Cathy's husband's college degree comes up as an important factor. As does the couple's "renovated mill house on a creek in a suburb of Philadelphia."

Things went sour when Cathy went to Las Vegas, and the unborn baby learned the horrors of commercial air travel and gambling, but everything turned out fine in the end, and they have a beautiful baby boy with a slightly ridiculous inherited name (Maxime), and good for them. Alex still has terrible nightmares about how she didn't deliver the baby all by herself, but hey, at least it is genetically the product of her and her husband, and not some dumb adopted baby.