I think it’s really weird that the press is poring over details of the Stephanie Birkitt/Dave Letterman love affair.¬† I have an idea that Letterman will divorce his wife Regina and marry Birkitt.¬† What do you want to bet.¬† See, here I go, joining the choir.¬† This Letterman thing is far from over.¬† Sure, he did put himself in a good light by coming clean on his show but it is just too juice for the press to ignore. It will not be let go by the wingnuts either.¬† Finally they have something really big on Letterman to invalidate any objective commentary he might have given over the years to help the Democrats.
But Birkitt is in a stew.¬† The only hope she has of making things okay in her life is to write a tell-all book.¬† She is infamous now and perhaps un-hireable (is that a word?) as a result.¬† Her best bet is to make Letterman marry her and they can travel the world together.¬† He’s probably too old now to cheat on her.¬† Merill Markoe famously said that she always thought she would be the only woman Dave ever cheated on.
The weird thing about these women? They all look alike Рthey all have that pointy nose, weak chin thing going on.  They are also probably smart and funny Рwell we know Markoe is funny:
Anyway, I wish the Dave story never happened.¬† I wish he hadn’t pretended to be with someone a long time because it made him look like a good guy.¬† I wish the sweet, honorable midwestern Dave still existed.
On the other hand, perhaps we put way too much on our celebrities to be better than human, better than us.¬†¬† And maybe that isn’t fair, and maybe it is what drives people like Letterman and other politicians to have to lead double lives in the first place; why can’t we like them as they are?
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about this that bothers me. It seems to bother me on multiple levels, which is probably the point behind the union of these two. But it bothers me as an older woman and as a mother.
Full disclosure: I was cheated on and subsequently left for a girl twenty years younger than me, so it’s natural I would feel threatened by younger women. I understand the male urge to be with, mate with, and hang around younger girls. First, I think men are biologically programmed to do that. But second, they especially appeal to men who are children underneath their balding pates. They like feeling the kind of power only a younger girl can bring. Being seen with one is like you have something other men don’t (usually money but occasionally, for girls looking for daddy figures, you just have to be older – and then very rarely there is the mind connection. But, as Jack Nicholson once lays out pretty well in Wolf, the only reason there is a mind connection is because the guy’s are interested sexually).
Men can’t be blamed, women can’t be blamed. When I was a young woman, like as young as 15, it was flattering to have an older man’s attention. In fact, it was the kind of stupid thing young girls brag about to their friends, right alongside “I’m drunk” and “I lost my virginity last night.” It’s just one of those things that seems cooler than it really is at the time.
Get to be my age and it all looks ridiculous. What women realize when they get older is that they were selling their very highly valued commodity very cheap. The ones who marry for money, however, at least cash in on it.
For these two, I’m wondering, what does Evan Rachel Wood get out of it? We know what Marilyn Manson gets out of it, fresh meat – the chance to not get upstaged by his hotter girlfriend (Dita) – the chance to be the more expert lover.
But since I’m a mom of a young girl it is the girls I worry about. If Rachel Wood is really happy playing the adoring one-girl fan club, so be it. But she’s going to wake up from this nightmare and realize she derailed an otherwise decent career. She’s doing the rebel thing but, in my unsolicited opinion, she’s taking it too far. I want to see her going out in daytime, not being repeatedly fucked in a music video (for which she will always ONLY be known), moving beyond the need to rebel.
I used to like Marilyn Manson. I thought he was a smart cookie. Now he just looks ridiculous – clinging to his young prey with the same kind of desperation of an aging lion who has made one final, showy kill to illustrate to his tribe that he’s still got it. He’s got it but for how long? Rachel Wood will soon get bored of the guy, especially once she realizes that underneath the tats and the lipstick and the pseudo scary knives and costumes there is just a scared little man afraid of growing old.
