Tabloid update: "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!"

If you don't do your own grocery shopping, you are missing out on a lot of entertainment.

Yesterday, for example, America Wants To Know was unloading a grocery cart in the checkout lane at a local supermarket when suddenly the Globe tabloid jumped right out of the rack and into our hands.

"Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!" the cover shouted in big yellow letters, "Bush buys wife Dallas mansion where she'll live ALONE."

Naturally we tossed the Globe onto the conveyor belt, where it rolled with the tomatoes toward the cash register.

We noticed the customer in line ahead of us tilting her head as if she was trying to read the cover sideways.

"Are you buying that magazine?" she asked.

"Yes," we answered without apology, "Gotta read all about the big divorce."

"Who's getting divorced?" she asked.

"George and Laura Bush."

The woman nodded. "She's probably sick of him," she said, "like the rest of us."

On to the story.

The Globe reports that President and Mrs. Bush have reached a "super-secret pact" to end their marriage in all but name. Mr. Bush has agreed to buy his wife "a palatial Dallas-area estate" and pay her $35,000 a month for living expenses. Mrs. Bush has agreed to drop her plans to file for divorce.

"The deal is done and finished," the Globe's source said. "She gets the home. She gets the money. She gets rid of him."

He gets the right to say he's still married to her, with the side benefit that he won't have to marry whoever's been giving him side benefits.

The Globe hints that it's Condoleezza Rice but will only say the president has a "close relationship" with his Secretary of State which "reportedly" was a "key bone of contention" in the marital split.

The First Lady, insiders tell the Globe, was absent from the White House for almost two months until aides "lured Laura back" by promising to negotiate a divorce settlement.

The Globe says the agreement calls for Mrs. Bush to appear by the president's side at "selected public events" after he leaves office.

The public will be told that George and Laura Bush are living in their new house in Dallas while he writes his memoirs and "acts as an elder statesman," the Globe's source says, "But they will NEVER, EVER live under the same roof again."

America Wants To Know suspects there's a little bit more to that non-divorce deal than the Globe thinks.

We don't believe that a house and $35,000 a month are nearly enough to persuade Laura Bush to stay married and quiet. We think she has plans to run for the U.S. Senate. Given a choice between being Mrs. George W. Bush and writing a tell-all book for millions of dollars, she'd rather be Mrs. George W. Bush.

And, we're betting, so would Condoleezza Rice.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with the 2006 post, "All right, let's dish," the 2007 post, "'Laura's Secret Divorce Diary,'" and the 2008 post, "'Laura Claws Boozing Bush.'"

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