Wild about Patty!

Time was, you couldn't turn on the TV without catching a glimpse of Everybody Loves Raymond's Patricia Heaton. Whether it was the lovingly gentle photography of her crow's feet in the Hootie and the Blowfish video ads for The Goodbye Girl on USA, her host work on the despicable Christmas in Washington, or her commercials for Pantene (avec hair double), this 21st-century everywoman, the modern sitcom's version of Bob Costas (i.e., an inexplicably successful, mediocre, painfully inoffensive baby-boomer) was inescapable.

So today, while trying to decide whether to spring for the limited edition hardcover ($29.95) or just the paperback edition ($19.95) of the new Everybody Loves Raymond Our Family Album (you know, in that alternate universe where we are PATHETIC IDIOTS), we realized that it's actually been quite a while since we've heard anything about Patricia Heaton. We almost forgot what was so annoying about her. Yes, she was the first in the lineage of recent sitcoms of the annoying schleppy husband/cute clever enduring wife variety, but isn't there something else about her? Oh yeah, she's also the honorary chair of Feminists for Life. Her quote on the group's home page (next to the picture of Susan B. Anthony):

Women who are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.

We're not sure that that's the single stupidest anti-abortion argument ever made. But it's gotta be up there.