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While the males that drift into and out of her life—her father, the manager who forced her into rehab even though she totally doesn't have a problem, y'all!, the agents who scoff at her lack of focus—reliably disappoint her, troubled tabloid ubiquity Britney Spears can at least feel safe in the knowledge that she once again has a woman on retainer that's always got her back: recently rehired superflack Leslie Sloane Selnick, the tireless, for-hire protector of her virtue. Spears' retention of the publicist is already paying dividends, as demonstrated in her response to today's Page Six item in which dad Jamie comes to the defense of his daughter's manager for taking the intervention bullet on behalf of her family:

Britney told us via her rep, "I am praying for my father. We have never had a good relationship. It's sad that all the men that have been in my life do not know how to accept a real woman's love. I am concentrating on my work and my life right now."

A pal of Britney said the pop tart "had no drugs in her system when she was admitted to Promises - they [tested her] and there was nothing. She was embarrassed she had to go in there when she knew she was suffering from postpartum depression, not a drug or alcohol problem."

It's truly a masterstroke of PR: Not only has Zelnick deftly reframed the familial conflict as a power struggle between a controlling, dick-swinging patriarchy and the good women who just want to love them, she's also depicted Spears as a helpless victim of postpartum depression, sent to rehab jail for the crime of trying to love her babies even when her disease wouldn't let her, and whose all-night partying was fueled by mania, not narcotics. With Zelnick back on the beat, the tabloids aren't going to have Britney Spears to kick around anymore—at least not without some imaginative and well-crafted denials to contend with.