Rihanna: Don't Call Her A Role Model.. Don't Tell Her She'll Love Again. But This Baby Needs Some Back (She Thinks)

"THERE ARE people on the right and the left who think that if you compromise you're a coward, you're a facilitator, you're an appeaser. People are more interested in fighting with each other than they are in getting the no-brainers done and governing." This comes from GOP representative Steven LaTourette of Ohio who is leaving the House because he "just can't take it anymore." He is dropping out after nine terms and this is a big loss for America.

• Meanwhile, it appears that the relatively new Gail Collins book "As Texas Goes" is more pertinent than ever when it comes to the Lone Star State's offering a Tea Party favorite (Ted Cruz) who has a great chance of going to the Senate. Mr. Cruz is a cut spending-shrink-government-repeal-Obamacare-abolish-the-IRS kind of guy. Columnist Collins notes that he is worried that Democratic financier-philanthropist George Soros is a threat; a man who wants to abolish golf courses. (As usual, Gail is funnily serious!) You thought Governor Rick Perry and his Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst were far right kind of guys? Wait till you get a load of the conservative politics of Ted Cruz from Texas.

• I DON'T believe the readers of this column are the driven-harried types of moviegoers who sit around waiting for boxoffice figures before they buy a movie ticket. But I confess I was cheered by some statistics that turn up this week in The Hollywood Reporter. The action movie I liked recently was "Battleship" (filmed mostly in beautiful Pearl Harbor) and I was roundly made fun of by my peers because I liked it when the cognoscenti said it didn't have a chance. Now I see it ended up grossing $303 million worldwide and it did $65 million domestically. (This means there won't be a sequel, but who cares?)

• THE SINGER Rihanna is on the cover of Harper's Bazaar for August, looking gorgeous, as usual. She is only 24, but is right up there in the world of pop icon-hood, giving even the likes of Beyonce and Lady Gaga a run for their money. Gaga herself is only 26, but somehow seems much older. Maybe it's the outfits. Rihanna, most notorious for the violent breakup of her relationship with Chris Brown, doesn't want to be seen as a role model for anybody. When somebody recently tweeted and said: "Rihanna probably is one of the world's worst role models," she responded: "There's no such thing. You are either a role model or not." (Lot's of people think it is their business whether or not Rihanna reconciles with Chris Brown, despite the battering she received at his hands. Look, people don't even want Rihanna to be civil to him. She has pretty much ignored what others think is best forher.)

Although she has a "bad girl" image, this is something of a pose: "Rebellious through my music, in my tattoos, in fashion. Conservative in my love life," she insists to writer Laura Brown. How's that? Rihanna replies, "Well it is pretty much non-existent...when I was in love, I fell so hard. I was really, really in love. And in the blink of an eye, my whole life changed. Everything that I knew was different. I never thought I'd feel that pain again in my life. I'm afraid of feeling it again."