'GMA' advice finalist knows her craft

Author and advice columnist Carla Barnhill is pretty pumped about making it to the final four of the "Good Morning America" search for a new advice guru.

"Down to four from 15,000 applicants. I'm feeling pretty good about it," Barnhill told me Tuesday. But she also confessed another intermittent emotion: terror.

The Minneapolis "mother of three and wife of one," according her blog, themommyrevolution.com, is a book editor and author of three books, her best-known tome being "The Myth of The Perfect Mother."

She's scheduled to meet with "GMA" producers, who will make the final decision, when she appears on the show in a kind of on-air screen test Jan. 27.

Barnhill was on MyTalk107.1 Tuesday with Margery and Ian Punnett when it sounded like Ian offered up his own advice, which seemed designed to illustrate that he's always the smartest person in the room.

"At no time do I give her anything close to advice," Ian maintained via e-mail after listening to this portion of the show.

Reader, you be the judge.

Nope, said Barnhill, that adds an unnecessary layer of conflict. He's a grown man. Ask him what happened, tell him to replace what disappeared, advise him that he can't work there again and inform him that this matter stays between them. If the mom wants to know what happened, tell her to ask her son.

"Excellent advice," said the caller.

Enter Ian: "Can I throw in, I think you need to confront him on what you know for sure he took and [suggest] there might be more."

Was he really not letting the advice guru have the last word? "I said that to the caller," Ian told me on Wednesday. OK.

Before advising another caller, Barnhill said, "I've got to think for a second." Then she gave her advice.

Barnhill took this all in stride: "It's a tough business to tell other people what to do, as you know," she told me. "I try to take a minute -- what are the possible scenarios? -- when somebody gives you the four-second snippet of their life. If Margery thinks it's good, cut and dry, good for Margery."

What was good and entertaining about tooling around on the Web is that the first Barnhill item that popped up was advice regarding the Seinfelding practice of "Mastering Your Own Domain." Laughing, Barnhill, who formerly edited Christian Parenting Magazine for six years, said: "I used to write a sex dating column for teenagers. So that question came up A LOT."

Barnhill was deep into her bailiwick, mommy stuff, on Tuesday as she crafted an advice column for "GMA" that will be posted on its website this week. "I'm writing a little bit about the Mommy Wars. Throwing my 2 cents in on Amy Chua, the tiger mother thing."

Having been raised by a tough mom, I don't have much to quibble about with Chua, from what I've heard in her interviews about her book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."

"There you go," said Barnhill. "I'm writing about why we get so upset that she is talking about this. She is talking about her family. She's not telling me what to do. We get so worked up. Can't she do what she wants to her kids?" Chua's very successful kids, who were not abused.

"I'm really looking forward to meeting ['GMA' anchor] Robin Roberts. I think she is an amazing woman. And I'm a big fan of ['GMA' anchor] George."

The most interesting element of George Stephanopoulos' life is his comedian wife, Ally Wentworth, whose colorful and often off-color behavior suggests that there's another side of George. "There must be," laughed Barnhill.

Deadspinning again

Deadspin.com now claims Brett Favre's inappropriate texting antics were not limited to his time with the Jets.

Stephanie Dusenberry, owner of Therapist of Pro Athletes in Eden Prairie, told the website Favre got creepy on her, even brought her to tears because she was a fan of the Vikings QB, when he reportedly wrote her: You don't know what it's like to not be touched by a woman in three weeks. She complained to an Eden Prairie policeman, although the policeman reportedly told Deadspin that she didn't mention Favre by name.