The Writing Life Too

Dawn is breaking in shades of apricot. A few weeks ago I watched Elizabeth Edwards being interviewed on Larry King. Now, I’m not a Larry King fan, but was curious about how he would handle the interview. It was salacious, creepy, garbage-digging, and sad. I know she’s got a book to sell, but yikes, I’m weary of everyone in this country living their lives in public. And was thus thankful when I read the article Join the shame parade in Salon.com by Carino Chocano and agreed with every word.

In part it reads: "Until recently, standard protocol for handling a humiliating personal betrayal in public was to tough it out. This rule applied mainly to public figures who had no choice but to handle such challenges with all eyes on them, like political wives, who were required to stand by their men in purse-lipped silence, hands folded, eyes cast hellward, or celebrities, who were obliged to pretend to work through their painful feelings in public while carefully drawing the line at revealing anything that might jeopardize future career prospects. In both cases, the same general rule held true: The more painful the humiliation, the greater the need to maintain dignity by refusing to stoop to the humiliator's level.

But those days are over. Thanks to the increasingly public nature of our lives, the ranks of people who might find themselves having to deal with private humiliations in public have now expanded to include basically everybody. And a surprising number of people recently have trumpeted their private grievances against the bastards who done them wrong, using whatever means are readily available to them. Ailing wife of the former presidential candidate Elizabeth Edwards, most prominently, used "Oprah," the "Today" show and "The Daily Show" to get back at the tramp who seduced her husband. In January, Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend broke up with him on Facebook. Tony Blair's sister-in-law Facebook-divorced her husband after a fight. A couple of weeks ago, former New Yorker staffer Dan Baum breached the Kremlinesque secrecy of his erstwhile employer when, in the name of transparency, he tweeted the details of his firing while painting a less-than-flattering portrait. And Veronica Lario, the long-suffering wife of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, let her priapic husband have it (predictably with a lot more panache than Edwards) when she publicly accused him of consorting with an 18-year-old and supporting the political ambitions of models and starlets. "The impudence and shamelessness of power offends the credibility of all (women), damages women in general and especially those who have always struggled to defend their rights," Lario said to the Italian news agency ANSA. Sisterhood is powerful, but revenge is pretty sweet, too.”

What do you think?