A troubled marriage is a crap situation for any and all parties involved; the couple themselves, any children, friends, extended family. And many people will agree with me when I say that the only people in the world who know what goes on in any relationship are the people within the relationship.
Yet over the course of the next few months, you and I are going to be buying the rag mags and reading all of the internet gossip, and ultimately discussing the Matthew Broderick/Sarah Jessica Parker scandal as if we’d talked extensively with the party’s in question. We should not feel shame for this. To feel sympathy for our neighbors while judging them and gossiping about them behind their backs; it is the American Way.
Not only do we have the parallel of SJP’s marriage being publicly scrutinized just as alter ego Carrie Bradshaw finds true love, but who would have believed that a guy as square as Matthew Broderick would turn out to be an adulterer? How did this happen?
They were the toast of Manhattan, mega-stars of stage and screen, our American Posh and Becks (with a higher I.Q.). Did we idolize them too much? Did we, their people, put them on too high of a pedestal to the point where the only direction left for them to go was down? One cannot help but wonder: Was the pressure just too great?
With a breaking news story like this, after what seemed like such a pure, truly happy relationship, tabloid headlines might do less damage if they simply take the couple in question, nail them each to their own respective crosses, and stick them right in the middle of Times Square (replacing, perhaps, the naked cowboy?).
After all, with success like the Parker/Broderick establishment, it would be unsurprising to learn that the press has been looking for a juicy tidbit of news to crucify the couple with for years. And no doubt, the same ones who exposed this affair are out there right now, following TomKat, Brangelina, and any number of megastar couples waiting to find a scandal to expose that would bring all of these castles in the sky crumbling down to our world below. People have pondered this dilemma for years: Would Hollywood marriages have a higher success rate if they were simply left alone?
But while we await the news of TomKat’s split (we are all assuming that’s in the bag, right?) and all the rest like them, while it is in our nature to have opinions and concerns about people that have nothing to do with us, we’re surprised to still possess an inkling of hope. Afterall, we still have Russell and Hawn, Affleck and Garner, Cheech and Chong. In our mind’s eye, a Hollywood Ending is still possible. But why is it that we root for some more than others?
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