Blonde on Blonde: Food Tricks, Circumcisions, and Riddle Time

Imus introduced this morning’s edition of Blonde on Blonde by noting that Lis Wiehl is a Harvard-educated attorney, and that his wife Deirdre attended Villanova University, where she “batted her eyes at the professors, and got all As.”
 
Regardless, both women are mothers, and well-equipped to address whether the Agriculture Department should spend $2 million determining ways to encourage kids to eat healthier at school. Brilliant ideas so far include hiding chocolate milk behind regular milk, placing fruit in “pretty baskets,” and moving salads closer to the checkout register.
 
“It’s a total waste of money,” Deirdre said. Lis agreed, but made the grave mistake of declaring that her motto with her kids’ eating habits is “everything in moderation.”
 
“It doesn’t work,” Deirdre said. “We don’t do anything in moderation in this country.”
 
Schools should offer healthy foods and health foods only, and any kid who has a problem with that can starve, Deirdre joked. “Because you know what? They’re not going to starve,” she said. “They’re going to eat the apple, they’re going to eat the banana, they’re going to eat the grapes.”
 
Staying on the subject of children, a recent study showed that only 65 percent of baby boys born in this U.S. are now being circumcised, down 20 percent from the 1970s. Globally, only 25 percent are getting their foreskin lopped off.
 
Deirdre’s reaction? “I’m wondering how that’s going to affect the porn business,” she said. Charles noted that an uncircumcised penis is “the God-given natural condition,” but Lis pointed out that not taking medication is also a God-given condition.
 
Lis ticked off statistics indicating the health benefits of circumcision, but Charles, again, for some reason, intervened when nobody had asked for his opinion. “Excuse me,” he said. “Poppycock. All one needs to do is practice proper hygiene.”
 
Or, as Imus put it, “Wash your wiener.”
 
Someone who probably should have followed that advice is former Sen. John Edwards, whose estranged wife Elizabeth died of breast cancer yesterday at just 61 years old. Deirdre and Lis both admired Elizabeth, whose public struggle with not just her health, but with her husband’s infidelity, garnered her support from women of all stripes.
 
Unfortunately, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann painted a less than flattering picture of Elizabeth in their book “Game Change,” portraying her as a vastly different person privately than she was in public.
 
The logical extension of them depicting her in such a way, Lis observed, made it seem like her husband’s philandering was understandable and acceptable. 
 
Impressed by her point, Imus noted, “That’s why Mark Halperin has never been able to make a commitment to the woman he lives with! He’s the one who was trying to take down Elizabeth Edwards, who is now, tragically, dead. And her blood is on his hands!”
 
Nobody agreed with this maniacal viewpoint, so Imus declared it “riddle time,” and asked the Blondes who Glenn Beck would save if he saw Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity drowning, not in their own egos, but in actual water.
 
“He might not see them,” Deirdre said, alluding to Beck’s recent vision problems. Imus then wondered who Hannity might save if Beck, O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh were all drowning.
 
Deirdre believes Hannity would let them all go down. Or, he’d bring Sarah Palin along and have her club them like she did that fish on her “reality” show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
 
-Julie Kanfer