Or maybe, in this unending cycle of relentless news coverage, we have already totally forgotten that the Oscars even happened.

If this is the case, well, I’m sorry. I had a dental emergency that left me in an incapacitated narcotic haze for the past two days, unable to eat solid food or even to change out of my To Haiti With Love CFDA T-shirt (which I bought the other day, partially out of sincere concern for the beleaguered island nation and partially for the cheap thrill of at last being able to afford a clothing item at Bergdorf Goodman) and now that I’m conscious again, I want to write about the Oscars. So please bear with me here: let’s all pretend it’s yesterday and we still care.

We’ve all heard of the infamous Oscar curse, in which an actor (often prematurely) wins an Oscar and then falls off the face of the Earth, only to make occasional reappearances playing opposite extremely bright and/or disabled children in  Original Movies or  to be vilified by vengeful ex-spouses in the Huffington Post. So maybe the winners are the ones who could really use my help this week, but that’s just too bad. I don’t like winners, especially not these winners (except for Christoph Waltz, who falls right into the sweet spot in my Venn diagram population of one, where strange, small European men old enough to be my father converge with people who have played Nazis: a revelation about my psychosexual idiosyncrasies that I find actually almost too disturbing to share–operative word: almost–which, for me, is really saying something.)

And while the assorted famous rich people I’m about to boss around may not be losers in any traditional sense, this week, at least, they’re welcome to comingle with all the underemployed and un-beloved who can’t quite seem to get an Internet meme started down here in Loserland.

So Welcome, Selected Losers! This one’s for you.

Best Supporting Actor Losers:

Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones: There’s been a lot of talk this year about how you should have received the nod for your portrayal of the world’s most supportive husband in Julie and Julia rather than your turn as Chester-the-Molester in The Lovely Bones, the most moving film about serial child killers ever directed by Lisa Frank. Maybe so, but you wouldn’t have won anyway. You want an Academy Award, Stanley? Stop playing Meryl’s adorable sidekick. Not only does she get all the press out of every movie she’s in, the woman is Oscar poison (see bottom paragraph.)

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger: Woody, if I were you I’d hightail it to a good endocrinologist because the long bones of your face seem to have grown since your days on Cheers and the kerning between your teeth is looking suspiciously wide. Acromegaly can be treated these days, simply by removing the tumor on the pituitary gland that causes the excess flow of growth hormones, and after your very public struggle with the disease, you can play Andre the Giant in the heart-wrenching biopic and win the Oscar they were going to give to Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler, except that nobody likes him.

Christopher Plummer, The Last Station: Congratulations on being alive, you old bastard! Go straight to the bar and commiserate with Peter O’Toole. He might have an honorary Oscar, but you still have your pancreas, so who’s the real winner?

Best Supporting Actress:

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air: Vera honey, if you’re serious about proclaiming yourself the next Streep, you need to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing to your face, because right now you’re looking less like Our Greatest Living Actress and more like one of those clear plastic Halloween masks that make people look like they have scleroderma. You seem like a serious person. I don’t want to see you in five months playing some asshole’s ex-wife on Entourage.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart: You’re playing a dangerous game, Gyllenhaal. Take a look at Farmiga. You can be a lot of things in Hollywood with a face pulled tighter than Jennifer Lopez’s Disney Princess wedding gown (Lopez, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this: you are a very pretty lady, but if I can see the outline of your bellybutton through the bodice of your dress, GO UP A SIZE) except for a kooky/smug earth mother/indie princess type. Let’s let the animated corpse of Meg Ryan serve as a cautionary tale here. Okay? Okay.

Best Actor

Losers:

Morgan Freeman, Invictus: You’ve played Nelson Mandela. You’ve played the President, you’ve driven Miss Daisy, and you were the omnipotent voice of the Penguins. The only thing left for you to do is to play God himself. Not pretend God like in Bruce Almighty, but the real God, as in God: The Biopic. (And whatever you do, don’t let Jamie Foxx talk you into letting him play “Young God.” He’s already turned the country against Ray Charles. If you let him do the same to the Almighty, we’ll all go straight to Hell.)

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker: A hearty congratulations, Mr. Renner, on the highlight of your career. I’m sure you can expect several very respectable offers after this minor triumph, and while it’s probably too late for you to be Tom Cruise, you can certainly be the next Michael Shannon, or, if you play your cards right, even the next Stanley Tucci–a versatile guy who is instantly recognizable and works all the time. I do, however, want to address some rumours I’ve heard floating around the blogosphere in no uncertain terms: STAY AWAY FROM CHARLIZE. That’s an order. You are at a critical point in your career and the last thing you need is to become Mr. Charlize Theron. Remember what happened to the last promising young actor she got involved with? That’s right: nothing.

Colin Firth, A Single Man: DEAR COLIN FIRTH/MR. MARK DARCY: I LOVE YOU, JUST AS YOU ARE. OKAY, I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT. GOODBYE.

Best Actress

Losers:

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire: Gabby, you are adorable. You are also extremely interesting looking and seem comfortable with that, which is why instead of losing 150 pounds and taking whatever Jennifer Hudson passes on, I think you should turn to the world of avant-garde fashion. No, I’m not having a stroke. Fashion is having a physically extreme moment right now (or is at least pretending to). What Beth Ditto is to Kate Moss, you can be to Alek Wek. I want to see you sitting front row at Paris Fashion Week and telling us about the new line you’re collaborating on with Karl Lagerfeld. And then I want you to tickle Karl Lagerfeld. Tickle him until he screams, screams for mercy, and the world will follow you anywhere. Oprah can’t live forever, you know.

Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia: Oh God, Meryl. I know. How many more fucking Academy Awards can you sit through where some other lady wins, and then spends her whole goddamn speech sucking up about how much better you are then she is, while you have to sit there smiling and nodding graciously like some patrician Lady Bountiful in a fucking John Singer Sargent painting? I don’t know! I don’t know! But I think I have figured out how you can make it to the Kodak Theater stage one more time before you die.

Meryl, you are going to have to play Adolf Hitler himself.

Think about it. It’s the perfect Oscar bait role. Accent? Check. Holocaust movie? Check. Full-scale physical transformation? Check? Reviled public figure to which you can bring a heretofore unseen humanity? Check.

Get Tony Kushner to write it for you.

And if that doesn’t work, then I think you need to stop showing up to these things. Because I don’t think I can stand watching your motherly blush of gratitude in 2013 as a weeping Miley Cyrus gushes about what an inspiration you are. I just can’t.

And here is some advice for you! You can follow me on Twitter at @RachelShukert! I hope you do!

So they’re back on HBO, those wacky polygamist Henricksons, along with their equally wacky entourage of chilling-yet-oddly lovable sociopaths in bolo ties and leg-o’-mutton sleeves. (Seriously, anyone trying to make a case for the heritability of mental illness needs to look no further than the wilderness loony bin of Juniper Creek, a perfect Dust Bowl storm of nature and nurture.)

I’m not going to bother giving any advice to Bill, the venally earnest paterfamilias of the ibn Henricks (as some Muslims are polygamists too–do you see what I did there?) for a couple of important reasons: A) Bill is a complete moron; B) I am a women, and according to Bill’s particular brand of theology, am thus incapable of receiving coherent testimony from God on account of it gets lost somehow in the echo canyon of my vagina, all smudged up and nasty from period blood and baby ooze, and by the time it comes out of my mouth it has all the significance of the comments of an LOL Cat when confronted with a particularly challenging hunk of cheese; C) besides, Bill never listens to anyone but Bill, and Bill is a moron (see A.) But I will say this:  if Bill should be married to anyone on the show, it should be Don. That’s right, Don, his partner in business and God, whose quavering Barney Rubble sycophancy to Bill’s every harebrained scheme belies an deep yearning for some firm fatherly top to take him by the hand and in the immortal words of Duck Phillips (I watch way too much television) give a going over like he’s never had before. Bill and Don are soulmates. If all were right in Utah they’d be happily spending eternity together in the Celestial Kingdom, browsing a heavenly Pottery Barn for tastefully masculine throw pillows and having Alby Grant and that UEB Trust lawyer guy with the big hips over for moonlit backyard lobster bakes.

But unless some HBO exec gets really crazy with a spin-off series, that’s not going to happen. So I’ll focus my energy on the ladies. Some of this advice may conflict, so it’s up to you guys who takes it first. (WARNING: THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD.)

Barb: You know Barb, I know that you wouldn’t like to hear this, with your chipper can-do attitude, but you’re the one I actually feel the sorriest for in this. Your husband–with whom you had what seemed like a genuine normal marriage, not to mention three beautiful children–received testimony from God (otherwise known as his penis) that he needed to suddenly turn back to polygamy after renouncing it because why? Because your marriage was loveless? Sexless? Because you’d had a endless string of affairs and it seemed only fair that he have a chance to play the field? No. It was because YOU BARELY SURVIVED A GRUELING BOUT OF UTERINE CANCER AND COULDN’T HAVE ANY MORE CHILDREN. (Apparently the option of surrogacy or even adoption was abandoned right out of the gate.) I always wonder when Bill told you he felt “called” to start in-wedlock fucking the hot blonde from the compound who was at least fifteen years younger than you and apt to be extremely catty about your fashion choices. I hope he at least waited until you were finished with chemo, because if not, that is an act of fuckwittage of Newt Gingrich proportions. I also always wonder why you agreed to it. I know Mormonism was traditionally polygamist and hugely patriarchal, but so was Judaism. And look at us now.

While you’ve become philosophical about your predicament, and sometimes even appear convinced it’s the right thing, I can’t help but feel that given the opportunity, you’d be thrilled to have things back the way they were.

Barb, it’s time to seize the opportunity. Bill isn’t going to change is mind, but you can work from the inside, undermining his relationships with Nicki and Margene until they leave of their own volition. Encourage Nicki to talk about her feelings for Ray the D.A. Half-heartedly press Margene to quit the jewelry while subtly hinting that she has her whole life ahead of her and shouldn’t sell herself short. Or better yet, take a page out of your friend Peg Emery’s book and encourage them to run off with each other. Book a romantic dinner or a day at the spa that you (and Bill) mysteriously fail to attend, and watch the sparks fly. You know Nicki at least would be up for it.

Nicki: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nicki is my favorite character–I always seem to go for the odd, cold ones that no one else likes. I actually find Nicki possibly the most sympathetic character on the show. Yes, she’s a compulsive internet shopper (full disclosure: so am I.) Yes, she has an interesting relationship with the truth (ummm…..). But look: Nicki has had a HORRIBLE life. She is a rape and probable incest survivor. She was forced by her own father to marry–at fourteen!–a psychopath with NO FUCKING FINGERNAILS, and her mother and her brother are completely out of their minds. Nobody seems to understand the pressures and conflicts that Nicki operates under, and no one seems to care, either. Her current husband even invites her ex-husband/probable rapist over for dinner! I hate using internet abbreviations, but seriously, WTF? And then they get angry because she has the temerity to fall for the first remotely normal, age-appropriate man she has ever known? Nicki, here’s what you need to do. You need to steal someone’s credit card, get on the first plane to New York City, and sell your story to a publishing house for a million fucking dollars. Oprah is going to eat your shit up. And then comes the Dateline special, the follow-up book, the movie and film options, the Ralph Lauren campaign, the house in the Hamptons. Honey, you like shopping from Lands’ End? You have NO idea.

And also, forget Ray the D.A. You fucked that one up and good. Chalk it up to experience and find someone better. I’d hold out for a Yankee or an MSNBC pundit.

Margene: Margie, listen to me. You take all that money you’re making and put it in a closed account that no one has access to but you. You are not legally married to Bill. He has NO legal rights regarding your financial records or income, and not a judge in the world would find it so. And then whatever you don’t squirrel away, you donate directly to his opponent in the state senatorial election. Because if the writers let him win that race, it is going to ruin your life, and you know it. Barb is going down with the ship, and Nicki is so emotionally damaged she’s never going to be a functional human anyway, but you could still get out of this relatively unscathed and lead a normal, successful life. Promise me you will do this. Thank you.

Sarah: I really hope your dramatic loss of faith has led to a newfound one in birth control. Because I’m not saying that you and Scott don’t love each other, or that things won’t work out, but you are 18 and he is 28 and a baby is not the way to go right now. Just trust me on this one.

Teenie: Wherever the hell you are, don’t come back.

I can’t get into Twilight.

My indifference has come as something of a surprise to me, as I am usually a sucker for anything overblown, childish, and ubiquitous.  I tried to read the books, but after I counted something like eight dangling participles in the first three pages, my inner English teacher and I gave up.  I watched the first movie on pay-per-view when I was home sick one day, and I, like everyone in America, developed a pervy old-lady crush on that boy who played Cedric Diggory, so I went to see the second, hoping he might have a shower scene or a bathtub scene or maybe a scene where he stands under a magical waterfall and all his clothes fall off.  (SPOILER ALERT–None of these things happen.)

However, as my regular readers know too well, me not really liking something (or someone) doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions about it.  So think of the following advice as something like fan-fiction, or rather, anti-fan fiction, in which I make Bella Swan act less like herself and more the way I would advise her to act.  And yes, Twilight purists, I know the books are written in first-person, but this isn’t.  Deal with it.

Avant!

Twilight: Newer Moon

Bella awoke with a start.  Her sheets were damp again.  “Shit,” thought Bella, “I hope  I didn’t wet the bed.  That would certainly be an inauspicious start to the day.”  Cautiously, she lifted a sopping length of Laura Ashley cotton  to the delicate nostrils that were located exactly in the middle of her pale, heart-shaped face.  She sniffed, but could detect no pungent urine aroma.  The dampness was just sweat, which was unsurprising, since she’d been having a nightmare about being an old lady, which again, was unsurprising, because it was her birthday.  Bella was eighteen, which is not very old to some people, but is getting up there if you are the girlfriend an immortal teenage vampire or a working Hollywood actor.  Bella was both these things.  She resolved as soon as possible to make an appointment for Botox injections with Dr. Waxman, who was Forks, Washington’s only dermatologist and Jew.  Until then, she would just try to stay out of direct sunlight.  It wouldn’t be that hard.  Forks got less sunlight than any place in the universe, apart from Hell and some parts of Scotland.  And Hell, thought Bella, as she pulled on her favorite snowpants and the Carhart jacket Edward promised didn’t make her look like a lesbian, was at least hot.

Jacob Black, this neighbor kid who liked to wear a Cher wig, was waiting for her by her truck outside.  “Happy Birthday Bella,” said Jacob.  “I got you a present.  It’s a traditional Native American dream-catcher to keep your bad dreams away.  I got it at Spencer Gifts.  If you don’t like it, you can always take it back and get a Family Guy poster of a set of drinking straws shaped like penises.  I have a gift receipt.”
“Thank you, Jacob,” said Bella sincerely.  “It’s really nice.”  Jacob flexed his pectoral muscles several times.  This was how he showed he was pleased.

When Edward Cullen, Bella’s incredibly handsome and committed vampire boyfriend saw the gift, he was less pleased.  “Why does Jacob Black get to give you a birthday present, and I don’t?”  He drew his red lips into a delicious pout.  Rage, tempered with sexual desire, pulsated through Bella’s body.
“What do you mean, you didn’t get me a present?” she said.
“Well,” said Edward, “you said you didn’t want me to get you anything so…”
“Are you serious?  Are you seriously serious?”
Edward’s amber eyes flashed dangerously.  “You told me not to get anything, so I didn’t!  How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean it?”
“Because I’m a girl!” cried Bella.  “And you’re supposed to be the fucking mind reader!”  Bella wondered if she ought to sit Edward down in front of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the one about Ted Danson’s birthday party and its “no-gifts” policy, but Edward didn’t have much of a sense of humor.  “What is that bald man whining about,” he would say, “doesn’t he know how lucky he is to still have a soul?”
Edward lowered his eyelashes sadly.  A shaft of light bounced off the trophy case and illuminated his truly glorious left cheekbone.  Bella sighed.  He was just so hot.  And there would be lots of time to date interesting, funny boys in college, and later on, when she was travelling the world as a best-selling author and world-renowned bioethicist.  “Look,” said Bella, in a softer tone.  “How about after school we drive up to the Neiman Marcus in Seattle so you can buy me a present, and then afterwards we go somewhere and do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know,” said Bella with a sly smile.  In a manner she hoped was seductive, she slowly moved her index finger through a hole she made with the thumb and index finger of her other hand.  “It.”
Edward visibly recoiled.   Bella tried another tactic.  “Honey,” she said, in her most cajoling tone, “I understand.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  You may look seventeen, but I know you’re really 109 years old.   If you’re worried about…you know…performing, I stole some Viagra out of my dad’s patrol car.”
Edward said, “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
Bella said, “Is this because you’re threatened by my healthily open assertion of my own burgeoning sexuality?”
Edward said, “Yes.”

At first Bella was sad about Edward dumping her, as is natural when someone is rejected or faced with a time of change.  But after a couple of days (okay, maybe a week), she felt much better.  After all, Edward was awfully possessive, and besides, she deeply resented his attempt to shame her about being forthright about her physical needs.  And at least she wouldn’t have to deal with his creepy family anymore, with their weird glazed expressions of fake empathy and hair that made them all look like Van Johnson, even the girls.  Thus cheered, she decided to go ride motorcycles with Jacob Black.  Jacob was a little too happy to see her.  “Sweet,” he said. “I never took you for a biker chick, Bella.  Glad you’ve decided to slum it.”

At first, Bella was doing great on the motorcycle, but then Edward popped up in vapor form over her shoulder. “This is dangerous, Bella,” he whispered.  “You can’t do this.  You’re going to crash.  You’re going to crash.  You’re going to–”

Bella crashed.  Edward vanished.  “Fuck you, Edward,” yelled Bella.  “Of course I’m going to crash if you do that!  Stop undermining me!”  Blood was gushing from Bella’s head.  Jacob rushed over to help her.  He had an entire first aid kit, complete with bandages and tourniquets in the car, but instead he ripped off his shirt, so Bella and the audience could see his chest, which he had been working very hard on lately.  He held his T-shirt to Bella’s bleeding head, so her pale, heart-shaped face was pressed against his taut, tight six-pack of washboard abs.  “I love you, Bella,” said Jacob.  “I want to do it with you all the time.”
“Jacob,” said Bella carefully, a little resentful that he was starting this shit when she was bleeding and had a possible concussion, “I think it’s really great that you’ve gotten into such great shape. Unfortunately, I’m not yet at a stage in my emotional development where I’m sexually attracted to men who openly adore me.  However, when I’m in late middle-age and desperately casting around for a third husband before it’s too late, you will be the first on my list.  Also, your face looks like one of those whales that has its nose on the top of its head.”
“Don’t make me mad, Bella,” Jacob warned.  “Because if you make me mad, I’m going to hurt you, and it won’t be my fault.  It’ll be yours, because you didn’t listen and you made me mad.”
“That is classic domestic abuser language,” said Bella.  “I don’t want anything to do with you.  I have too much self-esteem.  Now get lost.”
“Fine,” said Jacob, and he ran off howling to join his other buff, shirtless brothers who did secret shirtless things with each other in the forest.  The snug waistband of his 2Exist underpants was clearly visible above his cutoffs, clinging to the rising swell of his upper buttocks as he ran.

Later on, Bella was in the lobby of Dr. Waxman’s office, waiting for her Botox injections.  “I don’t know what it is with me,” she complained to the wise old Indian sitting beside her.  “Between the guys who think they’re vampires and the guys who think they’re werewolves, I just can’t catch a break.”
“Maybe you should stop dating guys from marching band,” said the wise old Indian.
Bella was pondering the wisdom of this statement, when Alice, Edward’s annoying stepsister, burst into the office.  “Bella!” she shrieked, in her affected hippy-fairy voice.  “Edward is going to kill himself because he thinks you’re dying!”
“Why does he think I’m dying?” asked Bella.
Alice said, “Why else would you be in a doctor’s office?”
“This is a dermatologist’s office,” said Bella testily, “and I’m here because I need to be able to keep playing a teenager for the rest of this franchise.”
“Anyway,” Alice said.  “He’s going to kill himself.”
Bella sighed.  “This is so manipulative.”
“You have to come to Italy and save him,” said Alice.  “Will you?”
“Fine,” said Bella.  “But I get my own hotel room.”

In Italy, Edward was waiting for them in the apse of some ancient cathedral, dressed up in Juliette Binoche’s dress from the 1997 Oscars.  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was also there, seated on a black marble throne, along with Dakota Fanning.
“Hello,” trilled Tony Blair, flashing the blinding smile that had first swept New Labour to power.  “It’s so lovely to meet you.  Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“This is bullshit,” said Dakota Fanning.  “I’m the next Meryl Streep.  Kurt Russell said so; and I’ve got like five fucking lines.  I only did this stupid movie because I hoped I’d get to hook up with Pattinson.”
“Dakota,” Edward said, lapsing back into his real English accent for a moment, “I told you, you’re underage.  In a couple of years, trust me.  I’ll hook you up so hard you’ll think you were a side of beef.”
“Okay,” said Bella.  “Are we done here yet?”
“Of course,” said Tony Blair.  “You’re free to go, for now.  But technically I’m out of power, so I can’t make any promises as to what Gordon will do.  He’s the most powerful vampire of us all, you know.  And once Cameron and the Tories get in next election, well darling, all bets are off.  But good luck for now.  Cheerio!”

Outside, by the drinking fountain, Edward grabbed Bella’s hand.  “You see, Bella,” he said, “I can’t live without you.”
“You were the one who broke up with me,” Bella pointed out.
“I know,” Edward said.  “And I’m sorry.  But I love you.  Marry me, Bella.”
Bella took a deep breath.  This wasn’t going to be easy.  “Edward,” she said, “you are almost definitely the hottest guy I am ever going to date.  But you won’t fuck me, so honestly, what’s the point?  And besides, I’m only eighteen years old, and I’m uncomfortable with the idea of making a lifetime commitment to someone who frankly, seems to harbor such patriarchal views towards women and sex.”
“Fine,” said Edward.  “By the way, you should really keep the brown contacts in, because your real eyes make you look like a permanently stoned version of Data from Star Trek.  Not that you asked.”

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/unsolicitedadvice/2009/11/25/not-that-you-asked-bella-swan-edition/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/unsolicitedadvice/2009/11/11/not-that-you-asked-joe-lieberman-edition/ http://thefastertimes.com/unsolicitedadvice/2009/11/11/not-that-you-asked-joe-lieberman-edition/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:42:16 +0000 Rachel Shukert http://thefastertimes.com/unsolicitedadvice/?p=76 There are a lot of frustrating things about the American democracy–its relentless focus on cults of personality, its willingness to give a media platform to any know-nothing willing to make an ass out of himself in public.  But probably the most irritating is the sheer disproportionality of representation in our congressional chambers.  Namely, that our elected representatives are allowed to make decisions that effect the entire country without being elected by the entire country.

I’m not sure what to do about this inherent lack of justice in our political system.  At first, I entertained putting forth a system in which each state would have one senator they elected themselves, and the other be elected by nationwide vote.  Then I remembered the sword cuts both ways.  The world in many ways would be a better place if everyone believed exactly what I do (the italics, in this case, indicating facetiousness) but unfortunately that’s not the case.  So I’m afraid we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

Which brings me to Senator Joseph Lieberman of the great state of Connecticut.  Specifically, his threat to filibuster any health care bill that includes the so-called “public option.”

Why pick on Joe Lieberman?  He’s not the only senator that opposes comprehensive health care reform. He’s not even the only senator from a state where I can’t vote to wield an obscene amount of power on a matter of major national policy.  What about Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine?  What about Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska?  What about the myriad of Republicans in both houses of Congress who seem convinced that neither they or their loved ones (some of whom presumably are not covered by the excellent health insurance available to members of Congress) will ever become ill or be hit by a car or have their fingers get caught in a bread slicer?

Well, I’ll tell you: neither of them has threatened to kill legislation using a parliamentary procedure they spent part of 2006 trying to convince us was childish and petty and should be done away with in the name of good governance–the sinisterly named “nuclear option.”  Also, I feel it only appropriate to recuse myself from all public discourse regarding Senator Ben Nelson given the nature of our previous personal relationship; namely, that he refused to buy a raffle ticket from me at the Omaha Children’s Museum fund-raising gala in 1991, on the grounds that he had “already bought two tickets from someone else.” You guys, those raffle tickets cost three dollars.  Three dollars, that’s what it would have cost to keep a ten-year-old girl from sobbing her eyes out in the ladies’ room for an hour after she had spent all evening working up the courage to approach the current governor of her home state, only to have him turn her down flat.  Three fucking dollars, and Ben Nelson wouldn’t pay it.  I guess that’s what he means by “fiscal responsibility.”

The reason I feel particularly qualified to talk about Lieberman, however, is because unlike a lot of people who spend a lot of time attacking the gentleman from Connecticut on the Internet, I am pretty sure I can make it through this post without once alluding ominously toward the senator’s likely membership in the Elders of Zion.  If Lieberman has any kind of dual allegiance, it’s to the Republic of Assholistan, not to what many web forum commentators queasily term “the Zionist entity.”  And besides, what the hell does any of that have to do with health care?  I mean, sure, a lot of Jews are doctors, but so are a lot of non-Jews, like Arthur Conan Doyle and Bill Frist and Josef Mengele.  (I’m sorry.  The constant Nazi imagery in this debate is starting to get to me.  Also, I’ll bet you a million trillion dollars Michelle Bachmann has no idea who Mengele is, despite the her being clearly the result of a grisly medical experiment in which a J.C. Penney’s mannequin was implanted with the brain of a domestic turkey.)

So my advice today is two-fold.  The first is for Senator Lieberman’s consituents (what the hell, anyone in the tri-state area).  If the Senator makes good on his threat to filibuster health care reform, make the Senator himself your health care provider.  It’s time to hold our elected officials responsible for the state of our care.  Swarm his office in D.C. and demand his inexpert medical attention.  I wouldn’t suggest that this is a good idea for serious concerns, but rather the minor, the hypochondriacal, the grotesque.  These should get the point across.  “Senator Lieberman, is this rash on my nipple anything to worry about?”  “Senator, do you think this hemerrhoid needs surgery, or can I just keep rubbing it down with witch hazel?”  “Joe, I have this abscess at the base of my coccyx, just above my anus, which is inflamed and oozing pus.  Could you lance it for me, please?”

And Senator Lieberman, as for you, I suggest pulling your head out of your ass and doing the right thing for your constituency and the country.  Otherwise, I shall be forced to bestow on you that oldest and most beloved of Yiddish curses, which given your well-documented ties to the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, seems particularly apropos:

Oyf doktorim zol du dos avekgebn. You should give it all away to doctors.

Not that you asked.

Their findings were unanimous.

I am Betty Draper.

This came as no surprise to me.

Certainly, we have our differences: Betty is a gorgeous blonde wasp who rides horses and finds it difficult to express her emotions; I am a markedly less gorgeous brunette Jew who is afraid of any animal larger than a breadbox or smaller than a human hand (my most severe terror is reserved for elephants and mice, who intriguingly, are supposed to be scared of each other) whose lack of emotional restraint borders on the pathological.  Betty was a high fashion model in Italy in the 1950’s; I was once a hair model at the Holiday Inn Conference Center in Omaha in 1994. Betty chain-smokes; my compulsive behavior is limited to looking for things to buy on the Internet and consuming tiny pieces of cheese.  But we have more in common than might at first meet the eye.  We both were married at a young age to successful, ambitious, sometimes mysterious men who work in advertising. We both spend most of our days at home, feeling nostalgic for the road not taken, wondering if this is all there is. We both like clothes, admiration from men, and passing judgment on others.  We both drink a lot during the day.

In fact, my identification with Betty Draper is so complete that I recently suggested to my husband that I start a blog about her situation from a modern perspective.  “You know,” I said, “Like, Confessions of an Ad-Wife. Betty Draper 2009.  What do you think?”

I half-expected him to be overjoyed with the idea of his personal life and career being turned into public fodder in the pursuit of my own fame and fortune, like the supportive, puppyish husband in Julie and Julia whose name I can’t remember. Instead his lips turned an unsightly greyish-yellow, the ominous color of foreboding sputum. “I think,” he said quietly, “that if you did that you might not be an ad wife for very much longer.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated.  I should have known.  Like Don Draper, Ben (if that is his real identity) greatly values his privacy. “Maybe I should just do that other blog I thought of then, the one where I ask homeless people about their sex lives.”

“I think that would be a better idea,” he said.

So Confession of a Modern Ad-Wife is not forthcoming. However, my empathy for the fictional entity known as Betty Draper remains intense and as such, I feel as though I am uniquely positioned to give her hypothetical advice on how to conduct her fictional life.  (If any Mad Men staffers who happen to be reading this would like to pick my brain further, for money, my agent at William Morris stands ready to take your calls.)

(WARNING: The following unsolicited advice contains spoilers.  Proceed accordingly.)

Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. I’m not going to recap your various travails here. I’ll leave that to the experts. But I can give you a few concrete pieces of advice (or plot developments, or whatever) that might exponentially increase your happiness. Ready?

1.    Fire Carla. I know we’re all supposed to sympathize with Carla, as she is a downtrodden African-American forced to suffer through the obliviously racist comments of her employers, but seriously, what the hell is with her constant eye-rolls? Lady, the Miss-Evers-act isn’t fooling anybody. It’s none of your damn business which dashing Republican campaign operatives are suspiciously visiting your boss.  And Betty, having a stable and loving adult in the house with your children may seem like a good idea, but it’s only widening the gulf between what you can realistically provide and what they are coming to expect.  As any good talent agent will tell you, the way to handle your charges is to manage expectations.

2.    Move the Fuck into Manhattan.  You are miserable in the suburbs.  You know it, we know it, even Don knows it. You need to be somewhere with lots of fancy hotel bars and department stores, somewhere where you can get your modeling career going again, maybe, and regularly fend off the advances of lascivious Eurotrash. If Don won’t move, then secretly take on the lease of a cheeky pied a terre with whatever money your father left you, and get some damn privacy for once. To paraphrase famed author and meeskite Virginia Woolf, a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to resist sticking her head in the goddamn oven. You’ve got the money. Get the room.

3.    Sell the Baby to Trudy Campbell.  You have a baby. You didn’t want a baby. Don hates the baby. Trudy wants a baby.  Trudy can’t have a baby. Pete doesn’t want a baby if he doesn’t know where it came from. Pete is in love with Don. Everybody’s happy. Also, if you choose instead to make the baby a gift, say, for tax purposes, this is probably acceptable.

4.    My friend Michael who called as I was writing this suggested that you might invest in some anger-management classes. I screamed that he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about and proceeded to quietly bludgeon a hole in the wall with my granite mortar and pestle set from Williams-Sonoma.

5.    Have the Fucking Affair. Do you know how desperately you need to do this for yourself?  Think about it. Don is very hot; the world agrees. But he is a terrible, terrible husband. I know that suffering in silence is what WASP’s do best (as opposed to Jews, who loudly bitch about how silently they’re suffering) but why not suffer in pleasure?  And if Don finds out, big deal.  He’s not going to divorce you.  He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, and a protracted legal battle might drag some things out into the open that he would prefer to stay buried (Dick Whitman). He might even like it–he sure liked it when those Italians were coming on to you. Worst case scenario, post-affair, you’ll be stuck in a tense deadlock of simmering resentments, which, plus ce change, plus c’est la meme chose. It seems you’ve missed The Feminine Mystique, but it’s ten more years until Fear of Flying comes out, and by then, frankly, the quality of your extramarital prospects may have somewhat dimmed.  Have the damn affair.

6.    If you have to keep the apricot fainting couch, move it away from the fireplace and against the far window in the living room.  That’s just common sense.  Not that you asked.

That said, let’s get down to the business at hand, the troubles of Mr. Roman Polanksi.

Roman, Roman, Roman. All pesky questions of guilt aside, you’ve had enough tsuris during your 77 years for about twelve lifetimes. (I believe your story is known well enough throughout the land that I don’t have to go into detail about this. Or this. Or this.)

And now, having mellowed over time into a benign genius and beloved symbol, the long-dead Hollywood counterculture (some claim it ended with the Manson murders; I personally maintain that it was quietly injected with a lethal dose of silicon administered by the white-gloved hand of Michael Eisner), you were simply on your way to receive recognition for your Lifetime of Achievement (and occasional lunacy) from the Zurich Film Festival, when you were arrested upon arrival, by the Swiss, of all people, on the rape charges you’ve successfully avoided for the past three decades.

On Yom Kippur, of all days! Do you think they did that on purpose? I mean, who the hell do they think they are, the Egyptians?

Unlike many other columnists who have weighed in on these still-unfolding events, I’m not going to trouble myself with the question of your guilt (everyone knows you did it, and I would like to say on the record that it was a TERRIBLE thing to do) or on the rights or wishes of the victim, who has continually expressed a desire to put the whole thing to rest.

I also don’t want to get into a discussion of whether there ought to be different legal rules for geniuses. Obviously, there are different rules for geniuses, which is why I never send back those forms they send asking me to declare myself eligible for jury duty; you see, being a genius myself, I am exempt.

Dear Abby once said that the duty of a good advice columnist (much like that of a professional therapist) is to provide the best counsel she can to the person she is advising, no matter how wrong-headed or unsympathetic. Even if, for example, the person in question is an Academy-award winning director who once drugged and raped a child (which again, we can all agree, is a terrible thing to do).

So here’s my advice. As every good defense lawyer who has ever watched an episode of Law and Order knows, in certain cases it can be useful to try to put the plaintiff on trial. Tease out their half-truths and guilty secrets. Make them implicit in their own victimization. As this technique is most prevalent in rape trials, so it should be familiar to you. You know, like: What the hell was a 13-year-old doing naked in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub in the first place? (And incidentally, where was he in all this? Polanski had his wife murdered by maniacs and his childhood stolen from him by the Nazis, but what’s Nicholson’s excuse? That he can’t see anything with those goddamn sunglasses on?)

Let me be clear: I am in not advocating dragging poor Samantha Geimer though her ordeal again. Rather, I suggest you cleverly flip the guilt onto someone else.

That someone else is the country of Switzerland.

Switzerland. Feh. What have they given the world. Fondue? Please. Have you ever tried to clean a fondue pot? Fondue smells like underpants, specifically the ones on the top of the laundry pile you think you might be able to get away with if you douse them in enough Bed Bath and Beyond Raspberry Body Splash. Skiing? Well, some people might like skiing, but I don’t so it doesn’t count. Yodelling? Give me a fucking break.

The Swiss may be neutral, but that doesn’t make them popular. Think about any time you try to bitch about someone to a person who says: “I’m not taking anybody’s side” and then think about how quickly your anger at the original party is refocused on a desire to punch the high-minded “neutral party” as hard as you can in the face. It’s very hard to feel much allegiance for someone who, by definition, will never be on your team.

And also, 400 years of staying out of the way of some of the most ruthless, horrifying conflicts ever visited on mankind, and now they decide to stick their beaks in? In the immortal words of Al Borland from Home Improvement, “I don’t think so, Tim.”

Roman, here is what I suggest. After the Swiss attorneys read out the charges against you for the Swiss judge in front of an audience of Swiss people, request to make your own statement:

“Your Honor, the charges made against me by the defense have long been established as true. On in the night in question, I was inside an adolescent girl in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub (by the way, let’s get Nicholson in the dock! Beatty, too, just for good measure. You know they’re both guilty of something). But Your Honor, Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury, where were you when I was being herded with my parents in to the Krakow ghetto? Where were you, people of Switzerland, when my mother was being thrown into the oven of Birkenau? Where were you while Europe burned? Counting your shining ingots of stolen Nazi gold? Picking out his-and-hers Rolexes in St. Mortiz with Joachim-fucking-van Ribbentrop? But we were neutral, I hear you cry. Alas, people of Switzerland, as the great moral philosopher Martin Buber once said, quoting a bumper sticker he saw in a head shop, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” There is no neutrality in the face of evil. And so, my Alpine friends, my crime, in truth, is your crime. My transgressions are your transgressions. People of Switzerland, J’accuse! Accuso! Ich beschuldige!” (That’s “I accuse” in three out four of Switzerland’s official languages; unfortunately, freetranslation.com does not include an English-to-Romansh option.)

And when the mob comes at you, Roman, neutrality shot to shit, brandishing their army knives, holding aloft their mini-corkscrews and tiny pairs of scissors, braying for your blood, you shall be no longer a venerable but disgraced filmmaker, but St. Roman of Hot Tub, the greatest martyr the world of cinema has ever known.

Or at the very least, there’s no court in the universe that wouldn’t at least give you a mistrial.

Not that you asked.

You’ve been having some trouble with men lately. Just to quickly recap: you got divorced a few years ago. Sometime during this time, you slept with the guy from Maroon 5, who dumped you. Then you gave yourself over to the execrable John Mayer, he with his Blog of Many Feelings and the terrifying guitar face, the likes of which I have only seen replicated on the infrequent occasions that I have had to roughly manipulate a young gentleman’s prostate gland with the eraser end of a number two pencil. Ladies should stay away from John Mayer, the man who penned a hit song about how fathers should be nice to their daughters, presumably so that someday they will be less of a hassle for John Mayer to fuck and never call again.

Speaking of fathers, Jessica, I have a number of theories about the pathology surrounding your relationship with your own. However, as The Faster Times is still in its nascent stages and neither of us has the time or resources to deal with a recreational lawsuit, I will refrain from recounting them here. However, if you or any of my 4-7 readers are curious, email me and I’ll give you an earful. (Or screenful.)

Anyway, John Mayer dumped you too.

Now you just got dumped again. This time, the day before your birthday (awful) by some guy who I’m told is some sort of “football quarterback” a phrase as meaningless and incomprehensible to me as the terms “string theory,” “escrow account” and “social media.” According to the fearless investigative journalists at Us Weekly, you were pressuring him to get married but he didn’t want to marry you. Frowny face!

And so it is through you, Jessica Simpson, famous virgin-until-marriage (a claim that unlike the spurious declarations of one Ms. B. Spears has never been substantively disproved) that we see the full extent of the havoc and destruction wrought by abstinence-only education on the youth of America. Certainly, this back-alley abortion (pardon the metaphorical pun) of an educational policy has been incontrovertibly linked to rising rates of teen pregnancy and STD’s, but it’s true cost is that it has placed a terrifying premium for girls on the transaction implied in the act of sexual intercourse, giving way to a generation of woman who have absolutely no fucking clue about how to deal with men. It’s important to learn early on how completely, utterly, un-earthshatteringly quotidian the sex act can and often should be; that there is more to you, and to relationships, than the permeability of your hymen, that having sex with someone does not mean that he loves you, no matter what Twilight and the Jonas Brothers tell you, and that most importantly: having sex with someone does not mean you have to love HIM. You can fuck a guy because he’s cute, or you’re just in the mood, or because, I don’t know, you’ve always wondered what it was like to do it with an amputee, or someone who can’t read, and then—you don’t ever have to call him again if you don’t want to! I know! And you don’t have to give interviews to every magazine in America about how you’re in love, and have a spiritual connection with this man, and how you eat chili together and are going to make a million babies! You don’t have to want to marry every guy you fuck! I mean, you don’t want to marry your dad, right? Oops! Sorry! But this is why I plan to make it very clear to my hypothetical children that their father and I expect that they will have sex with someone, male or female, at least once before they graduate from high school, or we’re not paying for college.

Jessica, I don’t fault you for any of this: the bad relationships, the humiliating tabloid covers about your heartbreak and your fat jeans. You never should have been put in this position in the first place. Let me explain.

Some people are so exactly right, so perfectly conceived for the position that they have imagined for themselves that to observe this rightness is a thing of rare beauty. George Clooney is an example of this, or even better, that girl Jessie from NYC Prep—she wants to be a fashion publicist, and she is so already a fashion publicist, so finely calibrated to this particular flashy, useless, histrionic thing in this flashy, useless, histrionic industry that it’s almost like a poem.

But sadly, you are not one of these poems, or even one of these people. You, Jessica, were never meant to be famous. You weren’t designed for it. Think about it: the failed Christian music career, the failed pop albums, the failed movies, the failed country music. Then they finally succeeded in making you famous for your marriage, which also failed. You are a very pretty girl, and while I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you sing, I am sure you have a very pretty voice. These two things alone should have more than catapulted you to your true destiny, which was always to be the prettiest former cheerleader trophy wife in an upper middle class subdivision of Dallas. You should have grown up to sing mistily at weddings and fundraisers for Republican congressional candidates, and hang out by your pool. You should be in your gleaming, ultra modern kitchen, looking out the window as your husband pulls into the cul-de-sac in his knee length khaki shorts and coral polo shirt, heaving a sack of charcoal over his shoulder for the big grill outback. You shouldn’t be facing getting older, looking into a sad world of irrelevancy and increasingly desperate reality television, you should be looking forward to fighting with your teenage daughters when their boyfriends flirt with you, and cheerfully undermining your girlfriends by gently reminding them how much their obese husbands would prefer to sleep with you.

The good news is, there’s still time. Go back to Dallas and seize the life you were meant to live. Remember: as fucking a guy doesn’t mean you have to love him; being famous once doesn’t mean you have to try to stay that way. Give yourself a break and live.

Also, stop talking to your dad.

Not that you asked.

Oy. What a year, huh? Your husband’s in jail and your family is destined to live forever in shame and ignominy. They wouldn’t let you keep your fur coat. The guy who does your highlights won’t do your highlights. There’s even a story floating around New York about the saleslady at Bergdorf’s hurling several of the 15 Chanel bags you were attempting to return for cash at your (dull, un-highlighted) head in a violent fit of rage. (Which is not very Chanel like behavior. P.S., if you’re looking for a buyer for any of those bags, I’ll give you up to $500 for a 2.55 classic flap bag in either black, turquoise, or camel. I’d prefer the lambskin, but I guess I’ll take the pebbled caviar leather if that’s all you’ve got. I’ll even throw in the number of the girl who does my highlights. She probably won’t recognize you.)

Now, they’ve given you your paltry $2.5 million and you can pick up the pieces of your life, get a new place, maybe do some volunteer work. I heard an Internet rumor that you were looking to buy a 1 bedroom on E. 90th, which is disconcertingly close to my apartment for about half a million dollars. Ruthie, take it from me: don’t do it. It’s a bad investment and you’ll be run out of Eli’s on a rail before you can so much look at a package of parmesan crispbreads. Bernie doesn’t need you, the kids are grown up (and in hiding). Get out of town. Start over.

I know they gave your passport back, so you could go to the Cayman Islands or Brazil or some other traditional refuge of the morally bankrupt, but let’s be serious: the language barriers, the food with too much garlic, the waxing—at your age, who needs it? What you need is a nice, quiet refuge with decent supermarkets and a hospital with a good cardiology department, a place where $2.5 million is real money and there’s a couple of thousand of nice, upper middle class, middle-aged Jews who are only dimly aware of your existence who will be willing to welcome you into their bridge clubs and Senior Yoga classes at the JCC with merely a moderate level of enraged hissing.

I think you should move to Omaha.

There are several reasons I have come to this conclusion, and one of them is not that the publicity surrounding your move might lead many people to Google the words “Omaha” and “Jewish” and the name of the person on record for suggesting your exodus to the Midwest might eventually lead them to this. (Okay, that is one reason, but not the main reason.)

First of all, it’s a matter of simple economics. In Manhattan, a $500,000 apartment looks like this. In Omaha, it looks like this. I’m told the shopping there is getting better all the time (there’s a Coach store now! And before the economy tanked, there was even talk that one of the department stores was going to start carrying Louis Vuitton!) but at only 7% sales tax, you can keep unnecessary spending under control. Also important for a woman of your advancing age, Omaha boasts top medical care facilities, like the one where my grandmother died while I was talking to an elderly German dairy farmer with acromegaly in the waiting room.

I’ve found you a friend. My mother has agreed to have you over for dinner on Friday night and generally show you around, provided you are properly contrite, eat fish, and don’t pull any “snooty bullshit” and I’ve even thought of a way you can vindicate yourself (and plow yourself further into my mother’s good graces) through the performing of good deeds.

While I don’t think the ladies of the synagogue sisterhood are quite ready to let you on the committee for the Rosh Hashanah food drive, my grandfather could use someone to fix him his breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner, after-dinner, and bedtime snack. He’s partial to corn muffins, fruit salad (the older and less refrigerated, the better), mushroom barley soup, beef tongue, smoked chubs, pound cake, and kasha. He also enjoys beets and licorice allsorts. When you aren’t busy in the kitchen, your time will be spent in front of the big-screen TV in the family room, watching the entire daily lineup of MSNBC and listening attentively as he rails against the following: Republicans, Fox News, incompetent urologists, the Orthodox, feckless granddaughters who selfishly refuse to get pregnant despite being married to nice, well-mannered, financially stable Jewish boys, and the questionable slaughtering practices of Gentile chicken farmers. I think you’ll grow to like each other. He’s a nice man, he still drives and has most of his teeth, and the two of you have a lot in common: you’re both seniors living alone on a fixed income and your kids probably don’t call you enough.

My grandfather is 88 years old, and given his medical history and general character, rough estimates give him about another hundred years, tops. If you can make it to the end, I think we can all agree you’ll have paid your debt to society.

If I were you, I’d go ahead and book your ticket now. Southwest is having a sale that only lasts another 36 hours, and Thursday is egg roll night at the Shukert house.

Not that you asked.

Before you get too pleased with yourself, you should know I didn’t think of you immediately for column number two.  I was all set to dish out some tough love to poor, benighted Samantha Ronson, but when she and Lindsay (allegedly) got back together for some ex-sex and more in London this week, I figured you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to help herself.

I then planned to turn my attention to the inummerable woes of Jon and Kate Gosselin, who have been on the cover of US Weekly for about twelve years straight (whilst modeling her stunning collection of bathing suit cover-ups — look for an HSN collection soon) but all my advice for them is retroactive — don’t spend three years insulting your spouse and kids on national television, don’t do a reality show in the first place, don’t have eight kids — which again, is not helpful.  Their lives are ruined, as are the lives of all 37 of their adorable Eurasian children, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except to say that this is the best of all possible worlds and it couldn’t possibly be any other way.

Then I thought of Oprah, who it seems has had kind of a rough week, with that Newsweek story about how she’s a quack.  But unlike some people, I know my limits.  He who flies too close to the sun will surely plummet back to earth, his wings melted, his body broken like a twig in the fist of a thoughtless child.

And so, Mr. Ramsay, my gimlet eye has fallen on you.

I shall begin, as always, with a litany of your woes (as I am a lady, restrain myself from using any unnecessary profanity — I hope this doesn’t make you too uncomfortable.)  First, a rather hard-looking woman with an unnerving propensity toward awkward candor, and, shall we say, a healthy disregard for the traditional bonds of marriage claimed to have had an affair with you.  This caused rather a larger scandal in Britain than here — we Yanks tend to save our best sanctimonious hypocrisy for the transgressions of our politicians, and dole out nothing stronger than titillated pity for our fallen celebrities, providing they go directly to rehab and don’t mess with the Jews — but still, it’s rather a stupid idea to skulk around doing poppers in hotel rooms when you’ve built your brand around being a devoted family man, what with your adorable wife and your adorable pigs and adorable turkeys and adorable sheep about whom your adorable British children say adorable things before they are slaughtered (the pigs, not the children).  It might be even stupider when your business partner and chief investor is your father-in-law.

Not that your recent business problems have anything to do with that.  After all, what’s a daughter or two when there’s empire to run?  But an empire is, almost by definition, overextended.  Rome fell when its outposts could no longer hold, plunging the world into the Dark Ages, when people presumably wandered aimlessly around in small bands, foraging for food and occasionally engaging in vigilantism, like in “The Road.”  And while the sun may have never set on the British Empire, that made it hard to see what the natives were getting up to.  In your case, it seems the natives have been serving boil-in-the-bag meals, indulging in the modern miracle of freeze-dried produce, and generally making a mockery of your entire cooking philosophy.

Also, nobody has any money anymore.  Business is bad.  I heard you had to sell your Ferrari to pay off some debt; and now, presumably having cracked under the strain, you launched a bizarre tirade against an Australian journalist in which you called her a lesbian pig and displayed a photograph of a pig woman with three breasts. (My apologies if my characterization of said rant is not precisely accurate; you don’t think I actually have the time to research this kind of thing, do you?)

Tracy Grimshaw, the journalist in question, appears to be quite well-known and beloved in Australia, and given your ubiquity here and in the UK, it’s kind of like if Emeril went on “The View” to tell the ladies just what Katie Couric will do for a bump of speed, then proceeded to scrape a wad of stale semen out of the tip of his penis and feed it Sherri Shepherd.  Sorry, is that too much?  Did I cross a line?  Now you know how Australia feels!

So Gordon, my advice to you, you wrinkled fucking sack of Scottish turds, is to pull your fat fucking head out of your bunghole, put your willy back in your fucking trousers and sort your shit out, yeah?

Translation: go on television.

Luckily, you’re already on television. This will make my suggestion much easier.   Swap out one of your million shows where you fix people’s restaurants (I suggest the American one — Americans, for all their bluster, are a trifle delicate for your approach) and do one where you fix your own.  Healer, heal thyself.

Network executives!  May I present to you: “Gordon Ramsay Slags Off, Bullies, and Ultimately Redeems Himself” or “Gordon Ramsay Sorts Out Gordon Ramsay.” How’s this for a pitch:

Using the technical wizardry employed in such beloved classics as “The Parent Trap” (or depending on budget, a simple hand mirror) volatile, world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay descends on the failing restaurant of volatile, world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay, and through his trademark mix of creative profanity, bullying, and insistence on “classic British flavors” (for example, haddock) pulls the venture from the precipice of bankruptcy and warms the hearts of all.  ”Gordon Ramsay is right,” says a grateful Gordon Ramsay, “I’m a sniveling overgrown fuck-muffin with a head full of rotten fucking cauliflower, but if I can just get down to the bloody fucking fish market once a day to buy some fresh fucking mackerel all my problems will be solved.”

“Good on you, Gordon Ramsay,” says Gordon Ramsay, removing his damp chef’s coat to reveal his artfully tanned and highlighted torso.  “Quit being a fucking twat.  Don’t use frozen vegetables, and save your best insults for when you’re getting paid, don’t fuck women with fucking books to sell, and you’ll be fucking sorted, all right.”

And then, with nothing more than a manly nod, Gordon Ramsay strides away.  A small boy from a third world country materializes at his side, and they begin to kick a football playfully between them, as Gordon Ramsay stands on the threshold of his newly saved flagship, squinting bravely, and a little tearfully, into the blinding English sun.

Cut, and print.

You see, Gordon?  You don’t need me at all.  The answers, my son, are all in you.

Not that you asked.

Congratulations!  You have been chosen as the inaugural subject for “Not That You Asked…,” my new advice column offering unsolicited relationship advice to famously lovelorn/inept celebrities.

Obviously, you didn’t ask for my opinion, or I’d have to call it something else.  I don’t know you, apart from what I have learned from various magazine profiles, tabloids with dubious fact-checking capability, and things I’ve heard from friends of friends of friends of people who claim to have worked in your gynecologist’s office/given you a facial/had sex with you in high school.  To be honest, I’m not even a huge fan.  So how, to paraphrase Tevye the milkman upon his expulsion from Anatevaka, have you come to deserve such an honor?

Easy.  You are by far the Queen of the Hollywood Lonelyhearts.  Nobody even comes close (Cameron Diaz is, at best, a distant second0.   It’s been almost five years since you and Brad split up, and still, nobody can stop talking about it, or stop talking about why we’re still talking about it, and just when we think we’re done talking about it somebody brings it up again.  The covers of tabloids still say things like “Poor Jen” and “Jen’s Pain!”  This column without you would be like Romeo without Juliet, the Bee Gees without that guy that looked like a lion, bulimia without Entemann’s.  Plotless, wrong, and maybe impossible.

I hope you’ll find it refreshing to hear that I don’t feel sorry for you.  Not one iota.  Why should I?  You’re rich and successful.  You don’t seem to have any malignant tumors, you were never forced to be a child soldier in Africa, and  you can buy any purse you want.   While I’m sure you can be a needy, insecure pain in the ass at times (and I’m one to talk) you haven’t been carried out of your house in a straightjacket or gone to rehab or proved that becoming a lesbian does not make you sane.  Also, I think it’s fine that you don’t want kids.  I understand you have to go on Oprah and say that you do, the way politicians have to pretend they believe in God, but we all know the truth, and that’s fine.  I don’t want kids either, probably for the same reasons as you: I’m obsessed with my career, I’m selfish, and I don’t want to get fat.

A few weeks ago I read a Cindy Adams column in the New York Post on the subway (somebody left it under the seat, in a mostly evaporated puddle of what I hope wasn’t urine) where she advised you, in similarly unwanted fashion, to settle down with a nice Jewish boy.  Now, Cindy hasn’t dated since the time when you had to marry whoever you got caught riding in a buggy with after 5 o’clock, so I guess she must have missed the memo: Jewish boys aren’t all so nice anymore.  After two thousand years of hardship, they  figured out that they actually aren’t that ugly, and many have proceeded to become even bigger gaping assholes than…well…than John Mayer.  (No offense.)

You want my advice?  You’re a Greek.  Go to Greece.  Lay off the Pilates for a few months and go to your gorgeous blue and white ancestral village, where you can stay with your long lost grandmother/great-aunt/shapeless woman in black who doesn’t speak English and loves you unconditionally.  Then, one day, sitting in the dock sketching some fishing boats, you’ll accidentally fall in the water, and the leg of your perfect jeans will get caught on something, and be saved by a bronzed and muscular apparition.  As he leans over you all concerned and shirtless and dripping water, he’ll be so solicitous and beautiful that you’ll think he must be gay.  Jen: this guy is not gay.  Do not attempt to set him up with the guy who gave you the “Rachel.”   He is just a simple fisherman, like Santiago and John Lurie. If all goes well, the two of you will meet that night at a taverna under the stars, and make tender yet animalistic love to each other, and then it will turn out that his family is mortal enemies with your family because of some blood feud involving 2000 year old goats, but it won’t matter because you are Jennifer Fucking Aniston, bitch.  Will everyone be jealous?  Yes!  Is this the plot of “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants?” Yes!  But look how well that movie worked out for America Ferrera and Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel is very pretty and Amber Tamblyn is…dating David Cross.  (You may take that ellipsis any way you wish.)

Will it last?  Who knows?  There’s always more fish in the Aegean, if you get my drift.  Instead of being “Poor Jen” or “Jen’s Heartache!” you can be Jen with all the hot young Greek boyfriends.  You’ll get older, and they’ll get younger and you’ll start wearing a lot more sequins, (or “sequin” as the fashion people call it) and dresses with one enormous shoulder, and a wig, just like Jessica Simpson.  We may already have identified this generation’s Elizabeth Taylor (I don’t want to name names, so lets just say she’s probably planning to have lots more black babies with someone that you used to have sex with), but the slot is open for her small screen equivalent.

You can be the new Joan Collins.

Think about it.  Who’s really the better long term prospect?  Elizabeth Taylor, who is wheelchair ridden and rises from the crypt only occasionally to refute rumors of her death?  Or Joan Collins, who swans around cocktail parties in Mayfair with her thirteen-year-old husband and may or may not be stalking the Queen of England and like you, never seems to age?

I realize going full gay icon is a big  step.  But you’re at least 40, and the sun is not kind.  Think about it.  If I were you, I’d be in my Pucci caftan on the next flight to Mykonos with a glass of champagne and my wigmaster on speed dial.

Not that you asked.