"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular," wrote Adlai Stevenson, a man who tried to be president of the United States.

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The crazy right-wing people down in Texas who stand outdoors shouting that they hate the flag of the United States and want to secede from the Union don’t remind me of the rowdy but gentlemanly Southern boys who gather at Tara to court Scarlett O’Hara just before the Civil War breaks out.

Those characters in Margaret Mitchell’s meaningful book, Gone With the Wind, are militant idealists. They believe one rebel can lick 15 Yankees. They believe because they are determined to keep slavery, they have the right to leave the Union. And, evidently, they all honestly did believe, in real life, that the war would be over in a twinkling of the eye. This conflict was one that killed more than 600,000 military men and probably another 25,000 civilians. The nation has never fully recovered from this war of secession. And the South found out it could not secede.

Does anybody talk to these nuts asking them how they would expect The State of Texas to survive if it could secede? I think those lunatic Texans would come running back in a hurry if Uncle Sam wasn’t there to help them out. Federal aid has been very popular in Texas since the days of John Garner and Lyndon Johnson. And the two Bush presidents gave them heaps of it during their long terms in office.

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Handsome Brody Jenner, star of "The Hills" TV series and constant tabloid/paparazzi magnet, is set to portray his famous dad, the Olympic champion Bruce Jenner, in an ESPN biopic. This movie will cover Bruce’s triumph in 1976 in Montreal’s Decathlon event. It is based on the book Decathlon Challenge.

Daddy Bruce is very proud: "Brody is the same age I was when I won the gold medal and he is in phenomenal shape. I do have to teach him the form for throwing the javelin, the shot-put and the high jump. Those just aren’t things the average 26-year-old does as a hobby on the weekend."

Brody is training hard these days on the UCLA running track.

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Surprise! Surprise! Can’t tell you how many women I talk to who tell me how much they loved and adored Quentin Tarantino’s "Inglourious Basterds" and the Neill Blomkamp/Peter Jackson film "District 9." Both films are crammed with violence, but it all has a point. The aliens in "District 9" are mighty repulsive to our eyes at first, but in the end, you are rooting for them. This is a fabulous cautionary tale about an exaggerated type of "race" prejudice, though it may seem like a sci-fi thriller on the face of it. Again, I am almost shocked at how popular these two movies are with the ladies. Personally, I too was riveted by the talents of Tarantino and Blomkamp/Jackson.

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The Duchess of Windsor believed you could never be too rich or too thin. And who better to identify with that old cliché than our friend Madonna, who is a certified, multi-millionaire. She is also slim and sinewy as a whippet!

So though I can’t confirm that it’s true, the UK tabloids are reporting that Madonna hopes to direct a movie based on the grand affair between the Duchess and King Edward VIII, who gave up his throne "for the woman I love." (We know that this, more or less, turned out badly.)

Madonna hopes to snare Cate Blanchett as the ambitious Wallis Warfield Simpson and Scotsman David Tennant as the once-glamorous Prince of Wales who had to later abdicate his throne. This is intended to be a musical, in the fashion of "Evita" – all singing, very little speaking, like an opera.