These are not the best optics for Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth. They’ve been in NYC for a few days, and on Tuesday, they were photographed enjoying some beverages during a visit to the Soho House. Jim seems to be drinking a glass of rosé while Reese has slurped down what looks like… a gin and tonic maybe? Something with a lime twist, although it could be water (do people order water with lime twists?). It’s one thing to hear about Reese and Jim continuing the party just days after their boozy Atlanta arrests, but it’s quite another to see how comfortable they are (presumably) draining some alcoholic beverages in the middle of the day.

What’s interesting is that before the videos of Reese’s arrest went public, her PR strategy seemed to be “throw Jim under the bus”. Someone leaked to People Magazine that Jim was a big social drinker and that post-arrest he was considering going to rehab. Then the videos came out and suddenly people were like “Wow, Reese is one obnoxious drunk bitch.” Maybe we can just take these photos as proof that neither Jim nor Reese really give a crap about how much they’re seen drinking. Now my idea of their marriage is more Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and less Legally Blonde.

I guess there are some people who like Reese more now that she’s been revealed to be an obnoxious drunk who mouths off to police officers and lets her drunk husband drive her home. I guess her fanbase has grown because of this experience and she feels like she doesn’t have to follow-through with any real changes to her behavior. Which means that chances are, what happened in Atlanta will probably happen again.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

This might be when Reese Witherspoon officially turned into LeAnn Rimes. I’ve never seen a celebrity – aside from LeAnn – so happy to get pap’d at a children’s athletic event. We can debate whether or not Reese called the paps to document this happy-family photo-op, but there should be no debate about whether or not Reese is thrilled that she’s being photographed, and that these photos are part of her “I’m not a crazy, smack-talking drunk bitch” campaign. Let’s call it the “American Citizen” Campaign. She’s just a smiley blonde celebrity at a kid’s soccer game, y’all! At least she’s dressed appropriately for the occasion, which is something LeAnn Rimes rarely is. Reese honestly looks like she stepped out of an LL Bean ad.

Is this also a cleansing pap-session for Jim Toth? He’s a Hollywood professional, and it’s interesting that no one is talking about rehab anymore, like they were just after Reese and Jim’s arrests became public. Maybe Reese and Jim have worked out a new PR strategy – happy family photo-ops to prove that they’re just like us and no one will have to go to rehab for PR purposes.

Meanwhile, Radar reports that Reese just bought another new home in Brentwood (a posh section of LA). She spent $3 million on a ranch-style home with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Reese already owns multiple properties in LA, although she’s been trying to unload her Ojai farm/ranch for about a year. She and Jim married in Ojai, and it was featured in Elle Décor, and just after the magazine ran photos of the property, she put the place up for sale for $10 million. She didn’t have any buyers so she slashed the price again in March. I feel like Reese is trying to make some extra money by flipping properties but she’s actually losing money…?

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Are you ready to feel sorry for Reese Witherspoon? Not yet? Well, it’s possible to think that Reese is a privileged, entitled, lying a—hole AND think that her family situation kind of sucks. Reese’s father, John Witherspoon, maybe-probably has dementia and because of that, he might be a bigamist who married some golddigging hustler named Tricianne Taylor while he was still married to Reese’s mother. There was lots of legal shenanigans about the situation a few years ago, and long story short, this Tricianne Taylor person still refers to herself as “Reese’s stepmother” and she’s selling her story to the National Enquirer:

REESE WITHERSPOON’s estranged stepmom is trying to cash in on the Oscar-winner’s embarrassing disorderly conduct arrest.

The ENQUIRER has learned that 61-year-old Tricianne Taylor- Witherspoon, who is married to Reese’s dad, John, but admits she has never actually met the “Walk The Line” star, is trying to sell a shocking tell-all about how Reese “destroyed” their family – and she’s holding out for a $100,000 payday to expose the actress’ secrets.

“Based on Reese’s behavior in those police videos following her recent arrest, I believe she has a serious drinking problem and needs to get professional help,” Tricianne told The ENQUIRER.

“I think Reese’s father is living in denial about the severity of her drinking, because he insists that the entire arrest was a set-up by police.”

Tricianne, who married John Witherspoon in January 2012, says she believes Reese “was so awful and disrespectful to her father” at the beauty’s March 2011 wedding to talent agent Jim Toth that Reese’s father “almost bailed on her and refused to walk her down the aisle.”

“Reese shows very little respect for her father, and he’s been ostracized by her because she’s so angry that he married me.”

Tricianne is more than eager to tell “her side” for price.

[From The National Enquirer]

Tricianne Taylor also says Reese is “not the sweet, innocent girl next door that her fans think she is.” Yeah. Which you can totally believe while simultaneously believing that Tricianne is con artist and hustler. The reason that Tricianne is “estranged” from the family is because Reese’s mom Betty got a restraining order against her and Reese’s dad admitted in court that he has early-onset dementia. All this shows is that Reese’s image of a Southern good-girl who goes to church and chides other actresses for taking nudie pics is just that – an image. A carefully constructed, obsessively maintained image that has not a lot to do with the real Reese, who has a much seedier and less wholesome life.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

On Sunday we discussed the dash-cam videos from Reese Witherspoon’s arrest – the first videos came out last Thursday, but then on Friday night, even more videos became available. My takeaway is that Reese was either A) drunk, a great liar, obnoxious and bitchy or B) not all that drunk, a great liar, possibly pregnant, obnoxious and bitchy. Reese reacted to the public airing of her arrest videos by stepping out on Saturday wearing an “Atlanta Police Department” baseball cap as she and Jim Toth and baby Tennessee moved through LAX. Personally, I think that move was SO obnoxious. But what makes it worse – somehow – is that the hat is just some cheap knockoff:

The Atlanta Police Dept. tells TMZ … they DID NOT give Reese Witherspoon a free hat after her arrest — in fact, cops say the “A.P.D.” cap she was wearing this weekend is nothing more than a CHEAP, UGLY KNOCKOFF!

We spoke to Senior Officer Stanionis from the Public Affairs office of the APD, who told us point blank — “We did not give her that hat. We have no idea where she got that hat.”

“In fact, that’s an awful hat,” Stanionis continued … “Looks like a patch glued onto a hat and it’s not a good one.”

Wearing a phony police hat??? That is beyond …

[From TMZ]

I actually went to AtlantaPD.org, and I couldn’t find “APD Store” online. Meaning that there’s no way to buy an official hat online. So I guess that’s why Reese had to “make do” with her cheesy fake hat. You know what she should have done (although I probably would have thought it obnoxious too)? She should have made a big, public contribution to the Atlanta Police Foundation. That would have been a better PR move than a dumb fake hat.

But maybe Reese doesn’t need to part with her AMERICAN CITIZEN money. All has been forgiven, at least in Hollywood. Reese is in talks to star in a new film called Three Little Words. She’ll be reuniting with her Walk the Line director James Mangold. According to The Wrap, the film is based on the bestselling book Three Little Words: A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter, and the story follows “a young Florida girl who gets lost in the child welfare system for five years until she’s discovered by an unpaid volunteer (Witherspoon) who must convince the girl’s biological mother to release her parental rights.” It sounds a lot like The Blind Side, right? Reese is searching for some Oscar-bait?

Photos courtesy of WENN and Fame/Flynet.

OK, the Georgia State Police have released more of the dash-cam videos of Reese Witherspoon’s arrest and OH MY GOD. I know various people have brought up this conspiracy theory before, but seriously… how do we really know that Reese was drunk? I don’t think she was. At one point, the arresting officer alludes to the idea that if she had just stayed in the car, he would have allowed her to drive the Ford Focus home. Then when Reese is talking to a different cop, she plays the pregnancy card again and it’s REALLY believable. Like, I now think she’s truly pregnant and she was just being a completely sober, balls-out bitch to a cop. There’s definitely more to this story.

Here’s a CBS video where – at the beginning – you can hear the police officer cautioning Reese the first time to not leave her vehicle and she politely tells him that she will stay in the car. Then as the officer is arresting Jim Toth, that’s when she leaves the car again and starts throwing the hissy fit about being an American citizen.

Here’s the video of Jim and Reese after they’ve both been arrested. At first the officer is talking to her about what she did wrong and Reese spits out “I DISAGREE.” But really this is good because of the conversation between Jim and Reese while the officer calls in to his station, I guess. Jim sounds completely over it. He’s trying to reason with her but she’s still bitching about how she’s an “American citizen”.

Here’s video of Reese telling a completely different cop that she’s “in early pregnancy.” And she plays point-counterpoint with this cop about whether or not a cop has to show her “picture ID” when he’s arresting her. She really doesn’t seem drunk at all. But she’s lying her ass off about what she said to the arresting officer too.

Here’s the full video of the arrest – I feel a wave of sympathy for the arresting officer. OMG.

A lot of you have been having a field day about the subtext of Reese’s “I’m an American Citizen” ranting. I think to dismiss it as “white privilege” is too simplistic, although as I said before, if Reese and Jim were African-American or Arab-American or Hispanic, this whole situation would have gone down a lot differently, and someone probably would have gotten tasered or shot. But I think most of it is just about Reese being a cute, bubbly (white) girl and a movie star and thinking she can get out of anything because of all of that combined.

Reese stepped out in LA yesterday wearing a City of Atlanta Police hat. Whatevs, Reese.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Reese Witherspoon’s GMA interview yesterday seemed to inspire mixed feelings from most people. I think many of Reese’s fans will be able to forgive her transgressions and they’ll eventually see her as the same old bubbly, blonde sweetheart. Maybe the only thing Reese won’t be able to get away with – for a while, anyway – is acting like she’s the only “good girl” in Hollywood. No more simpering judgments about nude photos, no more holier-than-thou interviews where she reinforces the idea that she’s the only sane woman in Hollywood. Never again!

So, as I said in yesterday’s post, Reese’s “post-arrest comeback” plan is immediate and multi-pronged. The interview was part of that, and so is this news – that Reese has already quietly taken care of her disorderly conduct arrest.

Reese Witherspoon’s day in court has come and gone, with virtually none of the drama that surrounded her original April 19 arrest in Atlanta, Ga. On Thursday, May 2, the Oscar winner’s lawyer, Bruce Morris, appeared in court on her behalf to plead no contest to the disorderly conduct charge that had been leveled against her, TMZ reports. Her husband, CAA agent Jim Toth, pled guilty to driving under the influence, and was present for the court date.

Witherspoon, 37 — who famously asked the arresting officer if he knew who she was — will reportedly pay just a $213 fine for her infraction. But Toth, 41, will face a harsher punishment.

While he didn’t receive any jail time for the DUI charge, he has been sentenced to perform 40 hours of community service. Additionally, he must attend an alcohol education program and will be on probation for 12 months.

According to TMZ, the judge told Toth he was lucky the damage wasn’t worse. “Consider yourself fortunate you didn’t injure your passenger and didn’t kill anyone,” the gossip site quotes the judge as saying.

The court news comes just hours after Witherspoon’s mea culpa on Good Morning America. Speaking about the arrest on the ABC show, the Mud actress said she “literally panicked” when she saw the police officer arresting her husband.

“I told him I was pregnant. I’m not pregnant,” she revealed. “I said all kinds of crazy things.”

“I was so disrespectful to him,” she added of the cop. “I have police officers in my family. I work with police officers every day. I know better. It’s just unacceptable.”

[From Us Weekly]

That judge sounds pretty no-nonsense. And 40 hours of community service plus an alcohol education class? How easy is that? I bet his lawyer will even be able to work it out so Jim can do his community service hours in LA too. As for Reese’s punishment… only $213 for mouthing off to a cop? Only $213 for refusing a direct order from an officer arresting a drunk driver? I wonder how differently this whole situation would have gone down if Reese and Jim were African-American. Someone would have gotten tasered, at the very least.

Oh, and the dash-cam videos from Reese’s arrest were released and they are a hoot! We already know all of the crap she said, but hearing her say it is pretty awesome/frightening/hilarious. This is how I imagine Lindsay Lohan acts all the time:

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Reese Witherspoon gave her first post-arrest exclusive interview to Good Morning America today. So I guess we now know what path Reese is taking (which I laid out earlier this week): Reese is going to try to “come back” from her arrest immediately, she’s not going to wait a few months. This will probably be the start of Reese’s apology tour. Sort of. The real start was her public statement just after her arrest became public, and continued through last week with some strategic leaks to People Magazine. Now she’s got this GMA interview, and I would imagine there’s a People Magazine cover next week maybe. Or maybe Us Weekly, but probably People. Anyway, here’s Reese’s GMA interview, I’ll have quotes on the other side:

Looking contrite, humbled and wiser for what happened, Reese Witherspoon addressed her arrest two weeks ago at the top of her interview with Good Morning America on Wednesday – calling it “one of those nights.”

“We went out to a restaurant in Atlanta, and we had one too many glasses of wine,” the Oscar winner and mother of three, 34, said, referring to herself and her husband, agent Jim Toth. After their car, which Toth was driving, was stopped, he was charged with DUI, and she with disorderly conduct.

“We thought we were fine to drive,” she said, “and we were absolutely not, and we are so sorry and just so embarrassed.” She added, “We know better and we shouldn’t have done that.”

Blaming “poor judgment” for not simply calling a cab, Witherspoon said, “We made a mistake, and it was something that will absolutely never happen again.”

The police report noted that Witherspoon did not follow the officer’s orders and she got out of the car, and spoke in abusive language to him.

“I was so disrespectful to him,” the actress acknowledged on GMA. “I have police officers in my family. I work with police officers every day. I know better. It’s just unacceptable.” (Adding a note of levity, she also said, “I played a lawyer in a movie so many times I think I am a lawyer. And clearly I’m not a lawyer, because I got arrested.”)

She explained, “I have no idea what I was saying. That night I saw him arresting my husband, and I panicked. I said all kinds of crazy things. I said I was pregnant.” The actress flashed a look of amazement, then said, “I’m not pregnant. I said crazy things. I had no idea what I was talking about.”

Telling her older children about the very public incident, she said, was “the hardest part about it. When you make a mistake, you take responsibility, and we are taking responsibility, and we are doing everything within our power to make it right.”

Among the biggest lessons she learned, she said: “When a police officer tells you to stay in a car, you stay in a car.”

[From People]

Well, what do you think? I think she’s got the best talking points and argument she (and her PR team) could come up with. How many times did she say “panic” and “I don’t know”? She accepted responsibility, she talked about learning her lessons, she acknowledged that there’s no excuse. I came out of this thinking that she might have been blackout-drunk though, especially when she talks about not knowing what she was saying. No offense, but she’s pretty long in the tooth to be getting THAT drunk at what seems like just a night out in Georgia. Anyway, is she forgiven yet? This interview will help, I think.

Photos of Reese in Georgia earlier this week, courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Here are some new photos of Reese Witherspoon at LAX yesterday. According to TMZ, she was catching a flight back to Atlanta. Which is weird because during the media flurry last week, someone said that Reese had finished filming her small, independent film in Georgia. Maybe there are some quick reshoots? Or maybe she’s going back to Atlanta to meet with a lawyer in town and figure out a quick way to resolve her disorderly conduct charge. Is that the kind of thing where you can immediately work out some kind of plea deal? What would it entail? A fine and some community service?

Anyway, I don’t have much to say about her right now because there aren’t many stories about her at this point. I was surprised by the lack of Reese stories in last week’s tabloids – some of the lower tier tabloids had stories about her, of course, but she didn’t make any of the covers. Maybe she’s negotiating a People Magazine cover for this week, though? That might be smart. Or maybe she’ll take a different strategy: keep her head down for a month, then revisit the controversy with one big interview (to People, maybe) and a new look or something. I don’t know.

I actually don’t have strong feelings about what her media strategy should be at this point. My guess is that she’s going to talk about it sooner rather than later. Look at this outfit – matchy-matchy hot pink scarf and flats? An accessible mom-tote? Yes. Reese wants you to love her again. She is one of you! She’s just a mom! A mom who had a little too much to drink. She only played the “Do you know who I am?” card because she was so concerned for her poor husband!!

Update: Thanks to Leah for pointing out that Reese isn’t wearing her wedding ring! Well, it looks like Jim Toth is really going to take the fall for everything, right? I’m expecting his announcement that he’s entering rehab momentarily.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

As I discussed in today’s earlier Reese Witherspoon post, the whole “how will Reese comeback from her drunken arrest and pulling the ‘Do you know who I am?’ card?” is still very much in the air. Reese is either going to put herself out there immediately to damage control for her image, or she’s going to wait until the kerfuffle dies down a bit and then she’ll launch some kind of comeback. Part of it might be out of her control though – Reese is supposed to be promoting her new film, Mud, right now. She canceled a bunch of TV appearances last week, but she wasn’t able to pull this magazine interview with Red. Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything bad and she doesn’t talk about getting her drink on. Some highlights:

Giving birth to Tennessee made her mind go loopy: “Ever since I had the baby, I can’t remember anything. Serious, this child stole my brain. I’m losing friendships over forgetting to get back to people. But you can’t keep up with everything. I’ve got a 13-year-old, a nine-year-old and a baby. It’s like CNN ticker tape running through my mind at all times [puts on robotic voice]: ‘Where is Ava? She’s okay. Good. Where is Deacon? He’s okay. Good. Where is Tennessee? Is he okay? Yes. Great. Back to Ava…’ It doesn’t stop.”

The gender pay gap: “Even now, in America, a woman makes 87 cents to every dollar a man makes. If you’re a black woman, you make 75 cents. You’re a latin woman, it’s 67 cents. And this is doing the same job. There is enormous inequality in pay and inequality in the workplace to this day.”

She displays her Oscar now: “Because Lord knows every day is not a success, every year is not a success. You have to celebrate the good.”

Her business sense: “I feel like I know what I’m doing now”

Her girl-next-door personality: “People definitely hug me a lot, and hand me their babies. But it’s better than people throwing stuff at me, right?” she jokes. “I’m always met with smiles.”

She friends with Drew Barrymore & Cameron Diaz: “They’re just as charismatic and fun as you would imagine. It’s nice to hang with Drew because we both just had babies and we can support each other,” she says of Barrymore, 37, who welcomed daughter Olive last fall. “And Cameron is such a funny, bright gal. She’s an incredibly sharp business-minded woman, but she disguises that side of herself. It’s her secret alter ego.”

Female friendships: “I don’t know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn’t had my girlfriends. They have literally gotten me up out of bed, taken my clothes off, put me in the shower, dressed me, said, ‘Hey, you can do this,’ put my high heels on and pushed me out the door!”

[From Us Weekly & The Mail]

You know what I’d like to see? I’d like part of Reese’s “comeback/apology tour” to involve not spending any more time with Chelsea Handler. I was thinking about this last week, as Chelsea Handler defended Reese’s arrest by saying it was “no big deal” – what would Chelsea have said if it was Angelina Jolie who got arrested? Chelsea would have thrown a parade. The tabloids would have thrown a parade. There would have been wall-to-wall coverage of Angelina being a terrible person and a terrible mother. So why does Reese get such special treatment? How does she get defended by Chelsea?

Photos courtesy of Red, Fame/Flynet.

Reese Witherspoon was photographed yesterday. We don’t have the photos – you can see them here. I guess she knew there were cameras and she made sure to smile her big Southern-girl smile. “Who me? I would never play the ‘do you know who I am?’ card!” What I find interesting isn’t that Reese and Jim have returned to LA after a liquor-soaked trip to Georgia that ended in dual arrests. No, what I find interesting is that Reese is only now “reuniting” with her kids…? So, were Ava and Deacon with their dad this whole time? And where was baby Tennessee James? Luckily, People Magazine has a rosy, sympathetic story to go along with Reese’s return:

Reese Witherspoon is getting back to life as usual.

“She is happy to be home with her kids again,” a source says of the actress, 37, who returned to L.A. on Monday after her April 19 arrest in Atlanta for disorderly conduct and her husband Jim Toth’s DUI arrest the same night.

Her older children, 13-year-old Ava and 9-year-old Deacon, had been staying with their father, actor Ryan Phillippe, while Witherspoon was on location in Atlanta shooting the drama The Good Lie.

“She didn’t feel good about being away from them after the news of her arrest broke,” says the source. “Her kids are everything to her.” As PEOPLE reports in this week’s issue, a worried Witherspoon called her kids to tell them what had happened after the arrests. Another source close to Witherspoon says she remains “mortified” by the incident, and several who know her well say they are surprised she let the situation get so out of hand.

“She’s a fun girl who likes to have a good time and let loose every now and then,” says another source. “What’s shocking is she didn’t rein it in enough to keep herself out of trouble. It was a really bad decision on both their parts and trust me, they’re evaluating that and they will make damn sure it doesn’t happen again.”

As for Toth, 42, the high-powered CAA talent agent is widely known as “a big social drinker,” as an insider tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.

But the couple, who are parents to 7-month-old son Tennessee, “are seen as very solid,” says an industry insider. “They’re very well-liked.”

On Wednesday, Witherspoon sipped water with her salad at a business lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, while Toth returned to work at CAA. The pair are due to appear in court on May 22 in Atlanta, where a typical plea deal in a DUI case such as Toth’s would involve fines, 40 hours of community service and 12 months of probation, says Ben Alper, an Atlanta criminal defense attorney who is not affiliated with the case.

Witherspoon, who has wrapped the Atlanta portion of The Good Lie, would most likely face community service and a small fine, says Alper. She has already issued an apology, admitting, “I clearly had one drink too many and I am deeply embarrassed about the things I said” to officers.

[From People]

I didn’t even think of what kind of punishment would be handed down in Georgia. I’m so used to California Justice, also known as “Fun Times Party #YOLO” where you can drive drunk and smash into babies and the judge will give you a friendly pat on the firecrotch for your trouble. Georgia is a lot different. There will be some consequences. Admittedly, they won’t involve jail, but it will be interesting to see what happens there.

I like how the “sources” are framing and re-framing the issue. Reese is just a good girl! She just got a little bit drunk! She’s so embarrassed! She won’t ever mess up again! She’s such a good mom! You know what I wonder? I wonder what Ryan Phillippe told Deacon and Ava about their mom’s arrest. And what I’m getting from the People Mag article is that Tennessee James was in Georgia with his parents and they still went out drinkin’ and drivin’ and hollerin’ at cops. Interesting.

As for the tabloids… let’s see. Star Magazine’s sources say Ryan was the one to explain everything to Ava and that he assured her that “mommy will be fine.” Their sources also say that Reese initially thought Jim’s drinking was cute, but she’s grown irritated by his three-martini lunches. And when Reese drinks, “she’s an angry drunk… she’s very nasty and uptight – not very sweet at all.” The Enquirer has a story about Reese boozin’ it up because her parents’ divorce situation is full of drama, but that story bored me.

Here are some photos of Jim Toth on Wednesday in LA:

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.