Obamas are a dream date for Julia Roberts

Courtney Hazlett The Scoop

You can add Julia Roberts to the list of celebrities who’d like to have dinner with the Obamas.

“For sure, we’re going to start with the Obamas. The girls can play with my kids,” Roberts told Allure magazine of who her dream dinner party would include. (Diane Sawyer, Mike Nichols, Oprah Winfrey, Stedman Graham and Tina Fey also made the cut, FYI).

Roberts, who has her first leading role since 2001 in “Duplicity” is on the cover of the March issue of the magazine, and also talks about the obsession with children of Hollywood stars. “I think it should be against the law to take a picture of a celebrity's child,” said Roberts, who did share the first photos of her twins Hazel and Phinnaeus with People magazine in Feb. 2005.

That said, paparazzi shots of her kids don’t frequently surface. “Fortunately, it’s a rare occurrence for us. My husband and I are very protective of our children,” Roberts told Allure. “We go out of our way to shelter them from the paparazzi and to still live a normal life.”

Rosie O’Donnell sells wares on blog
When Rosie O’Donnell abandoned her 4-year-old blog weeks ago, the page re-directed to information about O’Donnell’s charity organization, Rosie’s Broadway Kids. Now, things have changed slightly.

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O’Donnell isn’t back to blogging per se, but she’s instead using the site to sell her hand-crafted “munny” creations. The $200 dolls sort of defy description, but they are crafted in part with varnish and a Sharpie and the money (pun intended?) goes to O’Donnell’s causes. In her own words:

every munny is hand-drawn by me, rosie odonnell (star of the flintstones)

i do these obsessively
i cant stop myself
i love them
now it is getting absurd
really
like ocd out of control

im also listing other stuff i make — collages, paintings, wire sculptures etc etc

all of it im selling to benefit my new school in NYC
the maravel arts center, the home of "Rosie's Broadway Kids."
100% of the proceeds of every single sale goes directly to the school to benefit the kids.

‘Idol’ producers OK with soft ratings
Season eight of “American Idol” debuted with changes to the show meant to curb the previous season’s ratings decline. Although the show remains number one, the numbers continue to slip according to Nielsen.

Through five weeks, “Idol” has slipped eight percent compared with last season to 26.8 million total viewers and is down 14 percent in the key demographic, adults between the ages 18 to 49, according to data from Nielsen. But Mike Darnell, Fox's president of alternative entertainment, said the network has no regrets about the changes.

“I wake up every morning and I cannot believe that a show in its eighth season is as dominant as this show is,” Darnell said. “If we hadn't done these things, who knows?. We might have been 25 percent or 30 percent off, which everyone else has been over the last few years.”

Courtney Hazlett delivers the Scoop Monday through Friday on msnbc.com.

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