The day after Bristol Palin announced her engagement to Levi Johnston was off -- again -- she said she wanted her ex to be more like her dad, who "works his butt off."
"It is true that I wanted Levi to be at home, complete his education and get a regular job," Palin told "Good Morning America" in an exclusive statement. "Levi told me he wanted the same thing...."
"I see that Levi's representative said I expected Levi to be more like my dad. Exactly," Palin said in her statement to "GMA."
"My dad works his butt off and always put his family first. Every woman should want a husband like that," she said. "That is what I expected from Levi."
Sweet. Nice jab back at Butler. Oh, and did she only agree to get back together for the money? I think not, considering that Bristol walked away from a 1.5 million dollar deal:
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Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston were on the verge of scoring a huge seven-figure reality TV show deal, but a major reality TV exec tells HollywoodLife.com that they completely walked away from the offer.
Our source, who has created and executive-produced several very highly-rated and well-known reality series in the last decae, reveals that a $1.5 million reality deal was on the table for Bristol and Levi. One stipulation from the producers who made the offer: The couple’s 19-month-old son, Tripp, had to be part of the show.
Once the offer was made we’re told, however, the couple “completely disappeared.”
It turns out the former couple was so close to sealing a deal that the reality TV producer sent an advance producer to Anchorage, Alaska, in order to meet with Bristol and Levi. But as soon as the producer arrived, Bristol and Levi were nowhere to be found. Our source tells us Bristol and Levi “didn’t answer any calls” and it was “completely shocking” when the couple stopped communicating with him.
But interestingly enough, Bristol and Levi’s disappearing act happened right around the time when Bristol told People that she had broken up with Levi once again and that he “played” her.
“The final straw was him flying to Hollywood for what he told me was to see some hunting show but come to find out it was that music video mocking my family,” Bristol told People. “He’s just obsessed with the limelight and I got played.”
Our reality TV executive clears up one thing: Levi had NO interested buyers for a solo reality show, and there have been no takers on his book proposal.
UPDATE:
Sounds like Bristol is just not going to take this garbage anymore. She swung at Butler again to RadarOnline:
“Perhaps I was naive but I really thought Levi was ready," Bristol explained.
Hours after their broken second engagement made news, Bristol is already feeling the sting.
"I see that Levi's people equate me with a Bridezilla. This is not about me,” she added. “This was about doing what was best for Tripp and making us a family......
Levi is “doing well and is upbeat” since the news of their split went public a source close to the Alaskan told RadarOnline.com exclusively.
“They are both giving it space,” the source said.
And the Early Show:
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Betsy Gleick, Peopl's executive editor, said to CBS News, "What Bristol told People is that, on the very day that the world learned they were going to get married, Levi came home and said to her that he may have gotten another woman pregnant."
Bristol said in People that the final straw came when Levi was spending more time trying to get a reality show than being a father. She said, "He's just obsessed with the limelight and I got played."
Gleick told "The Early Show", "Bristol is heartbroken. She described texting him and getting no answer, and then eventually she said Levi said, 'Hey, do you want to be on a reality show?"'
Bristol, however, says she wants no part of Levi's reality show plans....
Glor added on "The Early Show" that Bristol has reportedly moved back in with her parents -- on their orders. As for Johnston, Glor reported he is shooting a music video in Los Angeles in which he plays a lover whose romance is thwarted by his girlfriend's disapproving mother.
On "The Early Show", Bonnie Fuller, editor in chief of Hollywoodlife.com, said the engagement isn't a stunt. The couple actually had a reality show on the table for $1.5 million, she said, and they walked away from the offer.
Fuller said the producer told Hollywoodlife.com that the show couldn't go forward without an entire family -- Bristol, Levi and Tripp -- on board.
"There was no interest in just Levi on his own," she said.
Fuller added the producer was very surprised by the split, saying the producer sent someone to Anchorage to talk to them, and suddenly, Fuller said, "they disappeared."
Fuller said, "Suddenly, he's off in L.A. and his people are claiming that he's got all kinds of other offers on the table."
So, is this the real end of Bristol and Levi?
Fuller said, "They are 19 and 20 years old, very young. You know, teenagers get together and break up all the time. And I think he particularly is very immature and he's in love with fame. He's in Hollywood right now, talking to people, at parties, filming a music video -- supposedly mocking her family -- though he's denying that, but he did film it."
Child psychologist and "Early Show" contributor Dr. Jennifer Hartstein said, "One of the main victims is Tripp, is this little boy whose dad is in and out and in and out of his life. There is no stable presence. It's very confusing for a 19-month-old to understand what that's like. That's really going to be confusing for him down the road. ... They'll have to find positive people to be in his life to take the place (of his father)."
"Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill pointed out Bristol told People magazine she feels trapped.
Hartstein said, "Absolutely. She's 19. She's isolated. She's working. She's taking care of this child. What friends of hers are in the same place? Who has kids like she does? She can't go out and just hang out. It's a really tough position. She's not in the same typical 19-year-old position as her girlfriends and friends may be."
Fuller added, "I think (Bristol) does feel trapped and she looked at this as an escape. The fact Levi didn't sell a show and came back into her life, she was looking to create a stable family. Then she made money by selling their engagement story to the magazine. And there was all this other money. It was an escape, a way out. Now she's moved back with her parents."
Hartstein said Bristol is looking for someone for support and help her.
She said, "Why do we always go back to old relationships? They don't always change but we go back because we know them. The devil we know is better than the devil we don't. She needs to learn to grow out of that need and be self-reliant and find the best person for her."
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Looks like I'll probably be updating this particular post with any more developments. Sorry guys. Tabloid day here at Barbaricthoughts. I'll try to post something more "thinky" tonight. :)
UPDATE II
Politico has more:
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As the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston relationship drama has unfolded in the public spotlight these past few months, People and US Magazine have duked it out for exclusive interviews and scoops on the Alaskan couple.
People reported on July 26 that Bristol was "taking Levi Back;" US followed up and advanced the story up with its "We're Getting Married!" cover and interview with the couple.
For a moment, it looked like US had won the war. But it was People who triumphed in the celeb-weekly battle with its Tuesday confirmation that Bristol had called off her engagement with Levi. (The National Enquirer and other sites had been buzzing with rumors to that effect in recent days.)
We asked People's Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, who got the break-up scoop, why she thinks Palin went to her magazine — which has also run a number of stories on Bristol's mother Sarah Palin — for the latest in the saga.
"The reason she came to me on Monday, when we spoke by phone, was because she felt like she could come to me," said Westfall. "She did tell me that announcing their engagement on the front page of a magazine [Us’s late July cover story] was Levi's idea, and she only found out about it two days before it happened."
“In her own way,” she said, “she was trying to do the right thing."
"This is one of the most contentious stories I've covered," Westfall continued. "These are very bitterly estranged people."
Following this line of reasoning, it does seem that there's a clear line in the sand: The Palin camp prefers People while the Johnston camp goes for US. (We’ve reached out to US for comment, and will update if and when we hear back.)
Westfall recognizes the competition between the two magazines over the story, but says "I'm not sure that I've spent a whole lot of time on lobbying" for exclusive news bits and interviews.
"I do feel like every interview that we've gotten with the Palins — whether it's Sarah or Bristol — has been because of our record of fair and dignified coverage," said Westfall. "Just [Tuesday] night after we posted the Bristol break-up story online, I got an email from someone in the Palin camp saying, 'Thank you. Once again you were fair and dignified.'"
Now the big question: Is this the last we'll hear of the off-again couple for a while?
"All I know is what I heard from Bristol and she said she knows now that Levi is never going to change. That to me sounds very final," Westfall said.
But don't think for a second it's the last we'll see of Palin and Johnston, individually.
"It's obviously not the last we'll see of Levi. He already has plans to make this music video and he's going to be at one of the awards shows with the singer," said Westfall. "And Bristol will, in the fall, have some speaking engagements where she is doing her advocacy for teen moms and teen pregnancy prevention, so she does not intend to go underground in any way."
Westfall added: "[Bristol] said the spotlight is on her family either way, so she might as well use it to get her message out. But she has no plans to appear in her mom's reality show, she does not want to do any kind of reality show with Levi, so I think she would like the soap opera of her personal life to die down. But we will still hear from her in her role as an advocate and an activist."
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