I love wedding announcements. DB and I always read them in the NJ Jewish News, where we swear they are always successful and good looking, like the Kanter-Vaknin couple, whose auf-ruf I attended by accident. See what I mean? Successful and good-looking!
But the love story today in the Vows column of the New York Times struck me today as more than a bit off. If you’ve never seen the Vows column, it’s basically the back story about some fabulous couple that got married in the past week. It’s the type of column that what’s-his-face hated writing in 27 Dresses because he thought it was vapid and beneath him. What would he think of this?
The story is that of TV journalist Carol Anne Riddell and businessman John Partilla. They met while married to other people, fell in love with each other, each got divorced, and married each other this fall.
Here’s my question: If you profess to be pained by the pain you each caused your ex-spouse, why did you agree to an article about your story in the freakin’ New York Times? Even though neither of their names are mentioned, don’t you think they want to hide under a rock today? Judaism heavily frowns on embarrassing others, and while neither Riddell or Partilla are Jewish that I know of, I would imagine Christianity doesn’t look highly on it, either. It looked like a publicity placement for Riddell (who it says is currently working freelance, which = she needs a gig) rather than a star-crossed lovers story.
7 Comments
So true.
Ouch!
Like you were reading my mind!
sad, really.
As a person who DOES weddings for a living, I have to say that I do finished the article with orange juice in my lap. Surely, there were many, many other couples with interesting stories that could have been featured; complete with flaws, with fits and stops, with proverbial spinach in their teeth. Why publish this, a story that cuckolds not only the institution of marriage but the unceremoniously discarded spouses ? It was absolutely the saddest story in the NYT, save the obits.
Patrilla apparently expressed concern that his kids would be “okay,” repeatedly. Having the story of their dad’s marriage-wrecking love affair in the Sunday edition of the world’s most read newspaper should really help them adjust.
My favorite is the claim that they didn’t have an affair. Emotional affairs are affairs, plain and simple. They can be far more dangerous that those of the sex only variety.