Ted Kennedy His Life in New Books

Senator Edward Kennedy is a prolific author and writer in his own right.  He wrote a children's book about
his two Portuguese Water dogs, Splash .  His life encompasses everything from cheating on a Spanish test getting him ejected from Harvard to the shameful Chappaquiddick to rising to become a gifted orator worthy of being the everyman Cicero from Massachusetts to the People's Champion on Labor, Health Care and Human Rights as well as passing the Camelot mantle to President Obama. Ted Kennedy comes form a richly storied and well chronicled family with an interesting take as the youngest son.  It occurs to me that, at times, he must have felt a bit like Ron Weasley minus the carrot top. 

At the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy had had enough of their domineering mother and told Ted to go "call your mother and our sisters." Ted was the only Kennedy who seemed to relish his mother's daily notes about his grammar and appearance. He stopped being the baby of the family only when fate intervened. In the span of less than five years, Ted went from being the "other Kennedy" to being heir to the political legacy of his slain brothers, surrogate father to their children and head of the entire Kennedy clan.

Now his twilight years are upon us as he fights a malignant brain tumor, a number of people, including the remaining scribes at the Boston Globe, are writing their version of his story, Last Lion:  The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.  Lisa Tucker McElroy's version, Ted Kennedy:  A Remarkable Life in the Senate,  is due out in April of 2009.I would love to see in the fullness of time what Caroline Kennedy would state for the record.  

King Family Feud Over Book Deal

The first family of nonviolence is practicing legal judo on each other, hoping for a clear take down of a brother or sister decision. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family have hamstrung and headlocked each other in courtroom combat over control of the King legacy and who has the right to authorize publishing what. The situation keeps boiling over every year. Their mother, Coretta Scott King's death and the sudden demise of oldest sister Yolanda in California, have added yet another breach between two siblings Bernice & Martin Luther King III and their brother Dexter. A very angry Penguin Group paid King Inc, run by Dexter Scott King, $1.2 million for a Coretta Scott King biography to be written by lecturer Reverend Barbara Reynolds, formerly of USA Today. Reynolds is the notorious figure that also shoehorned Reverend Jeremiah Wright into speaking with a surfeit of hubris at the National Press Club which made the Obamas drop him like a hot rock as their pastor.

Bernice, a licensed lawyer, mediator and Baptist preacher, has some of her Mom's private papers she has been shopping around for a separate book deal. About $300,000 of the advance was given to King Inc and split equally while Martin III and Reverend Bernice King say dexter did some wild and crazy stuff with the money that did not include them. Of which Dexter basically called them liars and said here is the evidence to show a split as outlined by Coretta Scott King's last will and testament which left ALL of her papers to King Inc and Bernice doesn't have the authority to get her own deal with items owned by King Inc.

The siblings are feuding over whether the documents should be turned over. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III maintain that their mother no longer wanted to work with Reynolds on the book. They are asking that the documents be distributed among Coretta Scott King's heirs and not given to the publisher.

"He signed the contract, but that's his job," Frankel said. "No one questioned when they got their share of the sale from the King papers whether Dexter had the authority to sign a contract. Nobody complained when they got their millions."

This follows years of feuding from even before Coretta Scott King's death. Word up publishing idiots, wrong book, the better book is about how the King family degenerated to this point and why the legacy is being tarnished by King's children in this way. I even have the title for you as a freebie, The Content of Their Character. Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the seminal biographer of MLK has a few things he would want to say, sure enough about how the King legacy is being handled and that includes Coretta's contribution to this family Armageddon.

Heather Mills More Fiction Tour

Heather Mills is an ex-everything. Now the ex-wife of one of the Beatles is setting her clutches on a keyboard to turn herself into a celebrity novelist. I can't wait for the official ex- on that chapter of her life either as her first try was her now hopelessly out of date memoir.

Once upon a time, Heather Mills, a former semi-working model was married to a knighted multi-millionaire songwriter chap named Paul McCartney after the tragic loss of his first wife and soul mate. That cantankerous coupling sank to the bottom of a spittoon of vitriol as accusations and courtroom theatrics supplied by the ex-Dancing With the Stars on one prosthetic leg contestant used publicity-seeking crocodile tears to weave a fantasy tale of being an abused and neglected wife. Her McCartney excited to get rid of the drama queen settlement of £24.3 million or almost $45 million dollars will not fill the hole in her 10 sizes to small heart. Heather Mills bragged, claimed, boasted that she would finally earn her philanthropic cred by donating most of her ill gotten marriage gains to Adopt-A-Minefield. She's an ex-donor promise keeper now.

Now The Sun has uncovered Mills hasn't handed over a penny, since receiving the windfall six months ago.

A source revealed to the paper, 'They have waited in vain for their millions. She's had plenty of time but sadly it's yet another untruth by the queen of lies.'

Heather Mills ex-PR flack suffered suffered a long delayed attack of the Revenge of the Rented Publicity Flacks conscience, stating Heather made the stuff up about Sir Paul to get on American TV. Mills untruths hawked by Michele Elyzabeth proved so cha-ching tempting to Heather that the gray ethical line imprisoning her from speaking of her ex-mate magically disappeared with her agreement to imagine a fictional treatment of her ex-wonderful life that supposedly will just wow us huddled masses into paying for book tripe masquerading as truthful fiction from a really rich hanger on who lied to a charity and was basically called a liar by a British judge.

Parenting Advice From Britney Spears Mom Shapeshifts to Memoir

Spare me. Save trees. Do not expend brain cells on the pageant of irony that a bound non-comic book, distributed through a Christian bookstore, about parenting from Britney Spears' Mom would bring a reader. The aptly named cotton candy of how to parent books, Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame, Family in a Tabloid World, streaks onto the stage amidst a seeming turnaround from her eldest daughter's serial tragic life. From being a ten year old Disney Mouse person, pop princess, a 55 hour Vegas marriage, annulment, KFed & his prior baby mama drama, marriage, Madonna kiss, babies, divorce, custody fight, ticket, child welfare investigation, rehab, baldness, rehab, court, tickets, fender bender, the saddest TV musical comeback followed by a besotted brainless press corps acknowledging her appearing normal as a ditsy receptionist on The Office. She is only twenty something and her father is her court appointed conservator. Britney is bouncing back.

Mommy Spears learns in the midst of Britney's drama saga, that her other Disney daughter is preggers at 16 and she delivers a baby girl, Maddie, at 17. Lynne gets a new granddaughter and it is deemed safe to release the book before anything else happens. Now it's a doorstop masquerading as a memoir rather than a tome on parenting after all that success. We are so in for a prank, Pulitzer or fireplace fertilizer starting on September 16, 2008.

The One Time Only Tell All Tall Tales

For goodness sakes, since time immemorial the wannabe parasites have sold bits or anything that wasn't nailed down of others lives to interested third parties since the invention of people.  For the person being done up like a cherry-topped Christmas ham on paper, that doesn't make it easier to swallow.  It goes to who do/did you trust for all the good, bad ugly and indifferent reasons.  Filthy lucre beckons maiden and maven alike.  It spends the same.  That certainly isn't going to make the four time married Salmon Rushdie quiver with excitement or Madonna to name a children's hospital after her trash talking brother or get Princess Di's butler off the cooking sherry.  The tell all you can while you can book can only be written once, so avaricious publishers hype the hell out of them when they score one.

Not sure if the best selling Satanic Verses author would rather have a fatwa or give one on his ex-bodyguard once removed.  Said bodyguard may have been around for the Salmon Rushdie breakup with wife # 4, Top Chef Palate Princess, Padma.  Or maybe, Madonna just forgot to give a handsigned A-Rod baseball to her brother before he decided dishing on Life with Madonna paper was his path to the Ritchie riches.  The butler to Princess Diana lied at her inquest and wrote two fawning books to honor her as the world never imagined during her royally twisted ménage à trois marriage that everybody knew about because Andrew Morton got her version down on tape.  Can't imagine the Queen staying up late reading that one in bed with a flashlight.  But Her Majesty might note this:

The book, On Her Majesty's Service, published this week, claims the was locked in a cupboard while the officers went to a pub for a drink because they were "so fed up with his attitude".

It also claims that Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" because of his unkempt appearance and that the author billed the police force £40 a night for putting up officers in his home. "We were paying, or rather the taxpayer was paying, Rushdie to protect him," the book says.

Some times the vipers are family or faux friends or household help.  But in today's book market, there is some sort of obsession with the inside scoop about the lives of people who garner some level of success.  Call this book genre what it is: payback gossip.