Melissa Etheridge is promoting her new album, This is M.E., which is due for release at the end of the month. She’s got a “What’s In My Bag” feature in US Magazine (Paula Deen got the “25 Things You Don’t Know About”) and a profile in People Magazine. Etheridge’s bag contents are somewhat uneventful, and so is her People profile if you take it at face value.
Etheridge was still very much with her last partner when she got with her current wife, TV producer Linda Wallem. We know this because Melissa’s ex, Tammy Lynn Michaels, blogged about it and then repeatedly complained online about Melissa’s unfair treatment of her. Wallem was a longterm friend of Etheridge and Michaels and was the best woman at their 2003 commitment ceremony. Wallem and Etheridge were legally married this summer.
I mention all this as background to this People profile, in which Etheridge makes it sound like she was split up with Michaels well before Wallem came into the picture. That’s not the way it happened, according to Michaels. Here’s what Etheridge told People:
[Etheridge’s] self-released This is M.E…. chronicles two of her failed relationships – with director Julie Cypher and Popular actress Tammy Lynn Michaels – as well as her current romance with TV writer Linda Wallem, 53, her “best friend” of 13 years, whom she wed in May. Etheridge, who has four children with her exes (Bailey, 17, and Beckett, 15, with Cypher, fathered by singer David Crosby, and twins Johnny and Miller, 7, with Michael), says she and her former wives parent as “a complicated but beautiful village of moms.” Adds Wallem: “It’s just a great group of people that just figure it out and laugh about it.”
It wasn’t always that way. Etheridge and Michaels had a public, contentious split in 2010 that left the singer heartbroken. She leaned on Wallem to help pick up the pieces. “I became a single mother of four, and she came to help me,” says Etheridge. “We got to know each other more, she moved in, and we fell in love.” Fast-forward 4 and 1/2 years, and “all is good” with Michaels, says Etheridge, who used the drama as songwriting inspiration. Her new ballad “A Little Hard Hearted” “came from a place of wanting to heal old relationships,” she says. “There’s no need to hang on to past differences, especially when kids are involved. It’s over and done. Let’s move on.”
[From People Magazine, print edition, October 6, 2014]
I don’t expect Etheridge to talk endlessly about how she cheated on Michaels. It’s not wise for celebrities to pull a LeAnn Rimes, admit they cheated and then play the victim in the press for years. There’s something so sleazy to me about the way Etheridge is making it sound like everything was on the up-and-up though. She wasn’t a single mom and she didn’t wait until her split was over before she got with Wallem. By Michaels’ account, she was blindsided by Etheridge leaving and she was barely scraping by taking care of the twins. She had to fight to get support from Etheridge. (Michaels whined a lot online and not many people see her as a sympathetic figure, but still this isn’t how it happened.)
I hope it’s true that everyone is getting along now, that they’ve put the past behind them and that they’re “a beautiful village” of co-parenting moms. I doubt it, but I hope it’s true.
photo credit: WENN.com
She’s scum
she is.
Yep.
+1
While I think she does have obvious musical talent, she has become the LBGT version of Flavor Flav with her love ’em and leave ’em approach.
LOL..yes this exactly.
The Flavor Flav approach is perfect analogy – you called it 🙂
Pretty much what I was going to say. Yuck.
Lying pond scum! I really believe Melissa is a sick sociopath .She seems to have the same narcissistic personality disorder as my girlfriends ex husband. Melissa,you need some serious psychotherapy.
+1
Agree
exactly to everything you all said! i was going to say that melissa grosses me out. (NOT for being a lesbian though, because i’m all for LGBT rights.) she grosses me out because she cycles through women every few years and doesn’t seem to care how it might affect her children. how much do you want to bet she’ll have another couple kids with her new wife and then move on to a new woman? also, leaving your wife for your “best woman,” “best man,” “bridesmaid,” etc, is just taking it all to another level of low. yuck.
Nope, still not back onboard the M.E train. I’m not buying what you’re shilling, lady.
All I see is a sea of foreheads.
True!
Agreed. It is disturbing.
I followed the story when it happened. Melissa definitely went from hot to cold pretty fast with Tammy, then left her in the cold with their kids.
It’s crazy how often the breadwinners aren’t made to support their family before the courts have time to look over the financials.
Seriousy?? From what I recall, she abandoned her wife and the mother of her children after cheating on her. So this is just a continuation of her egoism, basically, to somehow feel like she was the wronged one or needed sympathy. I will admit there are two sides to everything and everyone needs love at the end of the day, but, she could at least get her facts straight and be honest to herself and the world, abotu what really happened.
Yes, its gross. At least have the courage to admit what you did and take the consequences. She’s a liar and a hypocrite, imo.
Actually….. what she is saying ‘about her wife’ is really just about herself. She helped ME…. instead of saying, she is a wonderful mother, a great partner, she is beautiful, ME is just saying what use her new wife is to HERSELF…. wow…. ok so same old same old…
Exactly! That’s what I picked up on right away. She’s a narcissistic asshole.
lying liar.
I use to like her.. then her I saw another side to her. When you act as if you are one thing and really another.. I say NOPE and bye.
Disingenuous narrative.
I’m not criticizing Celebitchy at all for covering it because I’m more interested in Melissa than most pro athletes or actors. But how many dudes have this kind of baby mama drama and it’s no big deal? Hm. I feel like it’s so accepted that those men rarely get asked about it.
Really? I think that we are pretty consistent about raking deadbeat dad over the coals too.
I agree. Love your username by the way. 😀
i feel like the men get a harder time than her actually
Yes and no. Ethridge isn’t getting slammed so much in the mainstream press because until this she hasn’t had anything to say. And since her scandalous divorce/seperation she hasn’t been news worthy.
In the LGBT community she’s an outcast. How she pushed for marriage. Had a family. And then fought in court hoping because the law currently said gay marriage was illegal she wouldn’t have to pay tammy a dime. Same with how she approached child support. She disgraced everything so many were struggling and fighting for. So, she’s still well known for those reasons on that side of things, but there isn’t much reason to talk about her currently. Unless she’s caught on tape doing something horrible.
FLORC – Yup that’s how I remembered it in a nutshell. She tried to deny spousal support on the grounds that gay marriage will illegal. What a phony baloney.
Thank you i was going to say the same thing @savu . If this was a male musician, everyone would just shrug their collective shoulders and put it off to being a musician. Not defending Melissa Etheridge, i think she’s a womanizing scumbag but i wish we could see how differently this is would be viewed if it was a man
That’s an interesting revision of history…
IKR? Especially the “OMG I’m suddenly a single mom of 4!”
Ugh. Just ugh. Either STFU about it or tell the truth. And then go away.
She became a single mother ? I thought the kids lived with her ex?
Is ME seriously trying to convince the public she was the wronged party? She is hilarious in her blatant stupidity.
Cheaters ALWAYS do that, they blatantly cheat, and then in their retelling, always make the breakup about everything other than cheating. It is one of the most pathetic things, and I have seen in happen amongst my friends many, many times.
Such a sweet fairy tale that she’s concocted behind that large forehead.
Good singer.
But not a good person.
I seem to remember it was
Melissa Etheidge who criticized
Angelina Jolie’s choice to have a
mastectomy.
You’re right. This woman doesn’t know how terrible she comes off as.
I bet this album flops and her attempt to get sympathy in the press backfires terribly.
I’m not a Tammy suporter either. She came off as sheltered, spoiled and greedy. But she’s still the mother of those children. Still had a wife who cheated on her. And she still deserves credit that she is the caretaker and her ex is just skata.
Tammy may be a whiner but she gave up her career to raise the kids and support ME during her cancer crisis. So it’s really a slap in the face when ME tried to cut her off financially.
I”m not believing it, and I’m not buying her new album.
She is such a bouche I just can’t. Tammy Michaels seems like a total nut these days bUT she didn’t deserve the treatment she got from Melissa. So funny how celebrities constantly try to spin things like people don’t know what is really going on
If the custody is shared fairly evenly, you are not a single parent. My parents split when I was very young, and shared custody pretty close to 50/50. They only ever referred to themselves as, “single heads of households”. We knew lots of single parents. If you’re a single parent there is no one else in the picture to help pay for braces, give you regularly scheduled nights off, or pick up a sick kid from school on their day. Women and men who are legitimately single parents (as in the ONLY parent) deserve special recognition for the relentless and isolating responsibility of being the only adult responsible for their children.
That said, this woman is lying, self pitying, revisionist hag.
Wow….what a horrible person. Who does that? I think that after you are in someone’s wedding, then you are pretty much precluded from EVER doing the bride. I mean WTF?!?!
M.E.’s new relationship won’t end well. Their smiling faces make me want to vomit.
Not only did ME leave Tammy pretty high and dry, but isn’t Tammy the one who cares for the children now? Melissa Ethridge has never been a single mother trying to make it on her own, and never will be.
Yes, TLM is the primary caretaker.
She deserves way more money than she gets from ME. She gave up her career and also managed ME’s career AND wrote a lot of her songs. ME tried to gouge her from getting money for the songwriting credits, too.
Didn’t like her when she first came on the scene and all my fellow college-aged lesbians drooled over her. She always annoyed me.
After her stunt of using homophobia to try and stiff TLM of support….
How on earth can she claim she became a single mother of 4?? Tammy did most of the heavy work raising the kids after ME had an affair and bailed. She’s selfish, deceitful and I doubt very much that there is a “complicated but beautiful village of moms”…bet it’s more like a seething pool of resentment.
I think Julie had primary custody of the older kids too.
Julie did.
ME! ME! ME! pretty much sums it up.
I would venture to say Tammy still despises her, and Julie couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Melissa’s shenanigans.
Wasn’t Linda Sara Gilbert’s significant other? She left Sara to be with Melissa? Or am I thinking about someone else. I know Sara was involved with someone famous before.
Eh whatever Melissa. She will dump Linda too eventually and contest spousal support. At least they are legally married and Linda can go after her.
Sara Gilbert’s wife is Linda Perry. Previously Sara was with Allison Adler, and they have two children from that relationship.
Tammy’s blog is completely gone now. I wonder if that was part of a settlement agreement?
I knew Tammy personally & professionally in NYC back in the mid 90s. She was a really sweet, genuine person & I’ve tried to figure out how to contact her to no avail 🙁
Maybe she’s freaked out by your user name? LOL
It looks to me like Melissa’s wife is clinging to her in every picture.
And to think this ******** threw shade at Brad Pitt!!!