Britney Spears writing
‘Letter of Truth’

Britney Spears has been spending the last several days writing a missive called “Letter of Truth: I hope you can handle it” — which she plans to post on her fan site.

“It was a life-changing letter for me, and I just want my fans to read it,” Spears told Britain’s OK magazine. “It really states where I am in my life right now. It is making closure with a lot of things and I think this is my ultimate truth.”

The newlywed pop princess says she had some epiphanies after seeing the Broadway production of “Wicked” — a look at "The Wizard of Oz" that’s sympathetic to the Witch of the West, and has worked so hard on her letter that she says, she “feels like I’m at Harvard.”

Backing down?
Kitty Kelley says she’s not surprised that Sharon Bush won’t be suing her.

George Bush’s ex-sister-in-law was quoted in “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” about the president’s alleged use of cocaine, but after the book was published, she said her quote had been off the record and taken out of context. She also said she was “talking with my lawyer” about suing Kitty Kelley, the author of the book.

Last week, Sharon Bush’s lawyer said she would neither sue nor seek a retraction.

“Sharon Bush is backing down from legal action because the statements I attribute to her in my book are accurate,” Kelley told The Scoop through a spokeswoman, who thanked the people who confirmed the comments — we think she mostly means that spokesman — and she added, “my sympathies go out to Sharon who has suffered so greatly at the hands of the Bush family.”

Notes from all over

Evan Agostini / Getty Images

John Travolta kept requesting that the shades be drawn during a junket for “Ladder 49” because, his reps explained, his eyes are super-sensitive to light.  . . . Last week, The Scoop ran an item that studio execs at Warner Bros were worried that “Alexander” was “too gay” and that one of the reasons its release was pushed back from early September to late September was that it was being decided whether to edit love scenes between Colin Farrell and a male co-star. At the time, Warner Bros. chose not to comment. The studio has since changed its mind. “That is completely untrue,” Warner Bros. Pictures President of Production Jeff Robinov said in a statement e-mailed to The Scoop. “Warner Bros. Pictures is proud of ‘Alexander’ and thinks it is an exceptional piece of filmmaking.  We’ve moved the release date, as we said earlier, to position it better for Academy consideration.  We also want to allow ourselves more time to complete some of its ambitious visual effects.  . . . Any speculation that the Studio is trying to cut scenes from ‘Alexander’ based on their depiction of the sexual relationships of the lead character is false and does not accurately represent the content of the film, which portrays Alexander the Great as heroic, and a man of his time and culture.” . . . Gwyneth Paltrow says that being an American who’s living in England right now, she has a lot of explaining to do. “I seem to spend a lot of dinner-party conversations defending my country,” Paltrow told the London Independent. She continued: “We’re in this war, which I don’t understand at all. People are so angry because the motivation behind a lot of the current administration’s decisions seems to be money, big business and putting money in all of their friends’ pockets. So I don’t defend that aspect. But just because this is the position of the current government, it doesn’t mean all Americans are loud, unthinking and self-serving.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC.com

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