I Couldn't Resist Blogging...
...because this is too important: Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey are breaking up.*
It's a shame when any marriage doesn't work—although my fellow Groton alum Curtis Sittenfeld thinks that there's some pleasure in the implosion of celebrity marriages—so I guess I'm sorry to hear that. But here's what makes me laugh: Their statement to the press, which reads, in part, "We hope that you respect our privacy during this difficult time."
This from the couple which starred in a reality television show about their new marriage....
Well, I don't think that the press
is going to respect their privacy. But then, since Nick and Jessica don't respect their own privacy, why should it?
I happened to see the Johnny Cash film, "Walk the Line," last night—Joaquin Phoenix is terrific, Reese Witherspoon perhaps even better—and it presented a fascinating counterpart to the Simpson-Lachey story. Cash's early years as a singer were remarkable: Imagine recording at Sun Studio, then touring small-town America in a rock 'n' roll show with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and June Carter...with virtually no one paying attention. Now, up and coming artists are chronicled from their first steps.
I'm sure that something is lost without the omnipresent video and aural recording. But something is lost with it, too—the ability to develop under the radar as an artist and as a person without the self-consciousness effected by an ever-present video camera. Because as Nick and Jessica have learned, once that camera makes its way into your private life, you can never erase those images.
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P.S. I also laugh a bit that they released this statement the day before Thanksgiving, in an attempt to borrow a Washington trick and bury the news. As if. Moreover, I think there's an argument to be made that this trick just doesn't work any more....and all it does is make us media types work on holidays. Which we don't like one bit.
