If you’re fed up with First Ladies being pigeonholed into thetraditional Laura or careerist Hillary box (or, as Timothy Noah in Slate put it, the “victim” or “bitch” box), check out Katha Pollitt‘s sassy, smart and scathing look at media coverage of Judy Dean Steinberg.

After that–if you’re not fed up with all the attention paid to the candidates’ wives–check out the Washington Post‘s Outlook section this Sunday. I’m contributing to a forum (along with Wendy Wasserstein, Danielle Crittenden, Kati Marton and the First Gentleman of Michigan, Dan Mulhern) exploring America’s attitudes toward First Ladies. Are we ready for one who would shun the traditional aspects of the role? I think so.

And on Sunday morning, I’m going to mix it up with Howard Kurtz, David Frum and Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas on CNN’s Reliable Sources.

Topics: Kerry coverage; Dean’s relations with the media (by the way, he’s on for the full hour on Meet the Press this Sunday); and a question I debated last year, around this time, on Kurtz’s show: Could the media have done a better job reporting how the Bush Administration misled us into war? You bet.