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A-Rod, Christie Brinkley, and the Summer of Tabloid Divorce
Isn't watching families crumble a rather unhealthy form of entertainment?
I don’t think I have ever paid for a tabloid. I scoff at people who pay three dollars to read about Angelina Jolie’s babies or Jennifer Aniston’s breakup. Yet for a few days, I was almost caught up in this Summer of Divorce.
All of my local New York papers — not just the tabloids — have screaming headlines every day about A-Rod and Christie Brinkley and their marriage woes. I’m sure I’m not the only non-tabloid reader who was suddenly interested in some has-been music star meddling in a baseball player’s life, or a has-been model’s very public airing of her family woes.
At first, I told myself I’m reading these stories because it’s summer reading. It’s the time of year when one traditionally puts down the heavy-handed tomes and switches to beach reading, mindless paperbacks filled with thin plot lines and unbelievable romances. And why read — and pay for — bad fiction when I have the real thing spread out before me every day in glaring headlines?
Let’s face it. We are a culture obsessed with our stars. Somewhere around the time of OJ Simpson’s fall from grace, the gossip rags went from generally fawning over lifestyles of the rich and famous to excitedly pointing out their flaws. We have made a culture of watching the unraveling of our pop culture idols. From Star to TMZ, it’s all about pointing out the inadequacies of the elite, be it mental or physical. If it’s not Britney Spears’s mental breakdown, it’s Kirstie Alley’s ballooning weight. Behind every story about Angelina Jolie’s expanding brood of children, there’s a story about Brad Pitt’s supposed infidelity. We’ve created an industry devoted to gloating over the downfall of the rich and famous.
It’s not hard to see why we do it. Here’s someone with more money than we could ever imagine. While we’re struggling to make this month’s mortgage, they are spending $7,000 on a handbag. While we contemplate a vacation in our own backyard, they are jetting off to France for a weekend wine tasting.
For some people, there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing their idols brought down to a more human level. Look, they cry just like us! They have feelings! Their lives can fall apart, too! It’s vindication for us that money can’t buy happiness. For others, there’s a smugness that goes with the stories. You may have millions, but at least my marriage is better than yours. At least my kids aren’t in jail.
I started off my summer reading and tsk-tsking at the stories about A-Rod’s supposed romance with Madonna and Peter Cook’s dalliance with a teenage girl. I was, in a way, bemused by the fact that these were such huge scandals.
After all, people get divorced every day. Marriages fall apart at the rate of about one an hour in this country. I’ve worked across the hall from a matrimonial courtroom, where every single day I heard the sobs and accusations of husbands and wives who felt they were wronged. Imagine if all the details of divorces were printed in the local paper every morning for the whole town to see. Would they be as interesting if there wasn’t millions involved or if it didn’t somehow affect the playing abilities of your favorite third baseman? Not really. One would miss that sense of self-righteousness that comes from knowing your life is better than that of a millionaire supermodel.
The more I read, the more my fascination with the Summer of Divorce turned to disgust. There’s something that keeps me — and probably you, if you read a website like this one — from crossing over into the type that actually buys Star instead of glancing at the cover while in line at the supermarket or the headlines on Google News.
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Michele Catalano lives, writes, and takes photographs on Long Island.
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18 Comments
1. Kristine:I saw a clip of Christie Brinkley on the news walking out of the courtroom and she was wearing a very conservative skirt and a granny sweater set with pearls or some chain crap clipped at both collars of the sweater and I thought, “wow, that’s some serious fakery right there”. It looked ridiculous, her trying to appear like a hapless soccer mom with a hanky up her sleeve. That was for public consumption and all about her; had nothing to do with what was best for her kids.
Jul 10, 2008 - 6:34 am 2. mjk:I’ve completely stopped paying attention to the “gossip” mags and the like when Britney Spears was falling apart. It had crossed the line when it was obvious the woman was heading down a very bad road and watching these magazines and the like celebrate her descent was just obscene.
It’s tasteless and disgusting.
Jul 10, 2008 - 7:24 am 3. Marie:Her kids? Do you think she stopped for one second to think about her kids? If she did, all this publicity would not exist and she would have done it in an adult, not about me attitude. Her kids don’t even enter the picture. It’s all about her.
Jul 10, 2008 - 7:50 am 4. stiff upper lip:I really don’t “care” about celebrities any more than they do aout me. I resent having their personal problems rammed down my throat by the media. Having been forced to pay attention, however, it is sometimes amusing to see them collapse after they have imposed themselves on me so much.
Jul 10, 2008 - 8:01 am 5. Keegy United States - A-Rod, Christie Brinkley, and the Summer of Tabloid Divorce:[...] A-Rod, Christie Brinkley, and the Summer of Tabloid Divorce [...]
Jul 10, 2008 - 8:04 am 6. Bullfrog:I definitely admit to the guilty pleasure that comes from seeing people in an enviable position experiencing the same problems as us who are not filthy rich or in the spotlight. It is certainly not about education for me, although it does make the obvious point that money does not buy happiness. This is especially apparent in the number of times people are marrying these days. I can’t help but think that anyone who marries time and time again, only to end up divorcing and starting over, is obsessed with the thought that marriage is where happiness is. For the wealthy, there are no financial barriers that give the average person pause when contemplating getting hitched, so it seems natural that they would pursue the “perfect wedding” and marriage multiple times until they get it right.
Jul 10, 2008 - 8:22 am 7. Cletus:Why is this even in the news? Why is this relevant? Why do people care and why are we wasting time talking about it? And people wonder why nothing ever gets done to fix the worlds state of affairs. It’s because idiots are preoccupied with useless BS such as this.
Jul 10, 2008 - 8:32 am 8. Timmer:One thing I remember from my Theater History classes is that the more serious the times are, the more silly the entertainment becomes. Farce became very popular as the Roman Empire fell. Look back at the 70’s and see the popularity of all the disaster movies. People paid to see that their lives weren’t as bad ass those poor people facing an earthquake, or high rise fire, or (insert your favorite Irwin Allen production here).
You wanna know how bad things really are? Keep track of whether there’s more serious and thoughtful entertainment or more escapist fair.
I don’t quite understand how Madonna, A-Rod or Christie have anything to do with my world…unless one of them has a way to bring down gas prices or find me a new job.
And A-Rod? Seriously…the only reason I know his name is because you’ve mentioned your disdain for his salary in the past.
Jul 10, 2008 - 10:38 am 9. Doglington:The Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude, the delight in misfortunes of others. We’re all guilty of it. But, I agree, Christy Brinkley has now gotten on my last nerve.
Jul 10, 2008 - 10:50 am 10. Fred:Isn’t there an Oscar Wilde quote something to the effect that “It is one of the duties of the British upper class to keep the lower classes amused with their outrageous behavior and peccadilloes”? Maybe its just our American celebrities trying to keep up with the British royality.
Jul 10, 2008 - 11:52 am 11. deguello:Who cares about these overpaid,famous for nothing cretins? Stop wasting valuable blogging space on these fools,that’s the job of mainstream of sewage media.
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:06 pm 12. Tony:Good point Fred.
Of course, “lower class” in this instance would clearly mean women and gay men. I genuinely don’t know a single hetero male who cares a tiny jot for this sort of pointless nonsense.
Not one.
Jul 10, 2008 - 12:29 pm 13. legaleagle:How loudly can I scream “I DON’T CARE!!!!!!”
Sick and tired of our celebrity-obsessed society.
Go read a book or pull weeds or cook dinner or something–just do something constructive.
glc
Jul 10, 2008 - 5:56 pm 14. Nunyaa:She might be the “Uptown Girl” but says a lot for her being in the divorce courts 4 times.
Jul 11, 2008 - 7:03 am 15. Travis:I do have to say Christie is SMOKIN’ HOT for her age. I would definitely like to have her as my next ex-wife.
Jul 12, 2008 - 6:47 am 16. Jim:I like celebrities. They’re a part of our collective family. Way too much is made of the negative side of being interested in them. I felt sad for Brittany during her revolt against mortality and hoped that she would overcome as it seems she has. Besides their piles of money, the only difference between them and us is that everything they do is in the public domain. It’s a very hard way to have to live.
Jul 12, 2008 - 11:09 am 17. TalkinKamel:Jim, it’s probably not as hard as being a Chinese Christian, a Tibetan or some poor slave in Darfur. And they do get well paid for it. So I have no sympathy for them.
As for Brittany, J-lo, A-Rod and the rest, I have a family; they’re aren’t members of it. And I don’t know if I “like” any of them or not, because I’ve never met them, don’t know them, and I’m not about to pretend I have some sort of relationship with them, just because I’ve seen their faces plastered all over.
And, really, I don’t see anything to be gained from being interested in them. I try to avoid them as much as I can (not an easy task, since the media seems determined to forcibly thrust them down our collective throats. Gotta agree with the earlier comment about bread and circuses. . . )
Jul 13, 2008 - 5:43 pm 18. ddc:considering all the tabloid magazines, TMZ, E!, etc, apparently the lives of the rich and famous is big business. someone’s buying this stuff. is it right? well, why not? It takes a narcissist to become a celeb in the first place so?
Jul 14, 2008 - 4:26 pm