The Unknown Candidate: Ring-a-Ding-Bling

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Ring-a-Ding-Bling

It would be easy to make fun of Mr. Spears. Too easy — shooting tuna fish in a can, as they say.

In his “A Star Is Not Born” moment making his big-time singing debut on Fox’s “Teen Choice Awards,” introduced by his wife, Britney, in Maxim magazine maternity wear, Kevin Federline managed to be even more deliciously atrocious than anticipated.

He looked like someone doing a really bad Eminem or Vanilla Ice imitation on YouTube. Even YouTube chatterers were stunned at this rap version of Norman Maine and Vicki Lester, one of the most recycled plots in Hollywood history, the story of a perilously uneven marriage, a star married to another entertainer whose career is in a downward spiral.

“OK,’’ wrote one YouTube viewer, “this is definitely a sign of the end of the world.”

The hip-hop community reacted with amused disdain, particularly since K-Fed rapped about popping Cristal, ignoring the hip-hop Cristal boycott, and about his wife. “Don’t hate because I’m a superstar!’’ he rhymed. “And I’m married to a superstar! Nothin’ come between us no matter who you are!’’

Jermaine Hall, editor of King magazine, told The Associated Press: “The thing that really hurts him is the fact that he’s perceived as Britney’s second — I don’t even want to say second in command, but — he’s like the Britney Boy. He’s like Mrs. Spears.”

Willie Geist, a producer and droll commentator on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show, agreed with me that K-Fed’s rapping and pop-locking was too shocking for mocking. “He’s a hero to men everywhere,’’ Mr. Geist said. “Go back five years. He was sitting in his basement in his wifebeater, probably playing video games. And now he’s married to Britney Spears, a multimillionaire. He came from nothing to something by doing nothing. I think that’s his sole purpose for existing, to mooch off of her.”

And that is the beauty of K-Fed. In a world where many women now outearn their husbands, it’s rare to find men who can be such blissful and unself-conscious marital moochers. “My album’s gonna hit the pop market because of my wife,’’ he bragged to GQ.

Men can be prone to the insecurities displayed by David Duchovny’s character in the new movie “Trust the Man.’’ Duchovny plays an advertising executive who becomes a house husband when his actress wife (Julianne Moore) takes a starring role on Broadway. Swaddled in maternal duties, resentful of his wife’s lack of attention, he reasserts his manliness with a meaningless affair.

Government statistics show that nearly a third of married women now earn more money than their husbands, and nearly a fourth of women in unmarried-partner households make at least $5,000 more than their guys.

Kate White, the editor of Cosmopolitan, went on CBS’s “The Early Show” last week to give potent women tips about avoiding the Hilary Swank syndrome. “He’s got to feel like he carries the weight in the relationship somehow,’’ she said. “So if he’s not the main financial provider, he’s got to be the protector, or maybe he’s the really social one. When you have dinner parties, or get-togethers, he’s the one who’s really the dominant social force. You’ve got to let him know he has a big role and you can’t talk about ‘my money.’ It’s got to be ‘our money.’ ’’ (Which brings to mind the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode in which Larry David told a friend’s non-working wife she could not refer to their money as “ours,’’ since the husband was making it all.)

A woman with more renown and money, Ms. White continued, really has “to work hard to make sure he has his own notoriety and success in the relationship. And in that scenario, also the husband may become, like, a stay-at-home dad. But you can’t let his fame be traditionally feminine things, like, ‘Oh, you help so well,’ or, ‘You’re such a great dad.’ You’ve got to give him something with masculine overtones he’s really good at.’’

Besides K-Fed, there is one other guy who seems perfectly content to play backup dancer in his superstar wife’s national tour: B-Clint. “Now the choreography is reversed, and it is Hillary’s time to take the lead,’’ Karen Tumulty writes in this week’s Time.

Other men in that spot might struggle with emasculation issues, as Geena Davis’s husband did in “Commander in Chief.’’ But somehow you know that, as First Lad, Bill would have the time of his life in the time of his wife.

Photo credit: Maureen Dowd. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)