I am the product of a famous family and the product of a famous divorce. I have seen it done well and fairly and lovingly and I have seen it become a war zone with PTSD results.
If my parents lived in the age of Twitter and TMZ and 24/7/365 media coverage I'm sure there would have been a maniacal media stake out and photos and videos of my father and his 17-year-old girlfriend and images of me and my sister and our mother as we tried to conduct ourselves through our days as we grappled with our new reality and the loss associated with it.
I am, of course, concerned about how we all are fixated on the children. Looking for expressions of anger and hurt in their sweet faces that the adults have caused them. I'm sure the news media that first posts the images of these children we are hearing about will get rewarded by millions flocking to see if there is a resemblance. We should all be ashamed of ourselves. They are children. They are innocent. We are damaging their lives by our curiosity.
What adults do confounds me. In daily life, politics, globally. We are human and therefore flawed. All of us are flawed. What happens between adults is none of our business. What is our business is how we discuss this with our own children and I hope how we can leave the children of these public and private people alone.
I have had traumas. If I had had traumas and cameras pointed at me all day long as I went to school, walked my pet, had lunch with my parent I don't know what toll it would have taken on me but I do know there would be a toll.
That intrusion is a minefield and we are placing the mines with our prurient interest.
All of my friend's children were born in love. They are all love children. Why do we only use that term for children born out of wedlock? Aren't all children born from marriage born from love? Are we still so locked in the past that legitimacy is determined marriage certificate? What about DNA?
I urge us all to leave them alone. Let them tell us what they want to tell us when they want to tell us what they want to tell us, if they want to tell us.
I for one am going to urge the HuffPost Family to make celebrities' children off limits or I may have to make HuffPost off limits to me.
I suspect not yet the children of stars often find themselves shuffled into that rarified world of privileged income and lifestyle as if they deserve to be there by virtue of being the kid of some actor. These kids are all going to be able to choose careers in the spotlight or behind the camera if they wish. it seems to me that t is a two edged sword.
That having been said, I am not curious about it and will not contribute. Adult behavior is indeed between adults! I especially like the comment that all kids are love children--
We are so quick to speak of family values yet even quicker to attack the innocent for the parents transgressions.
However, there's a category where what a person does in private means something to their public responsibilities. It is called "character". The same analysis and world view a person employs to make a muck of their personal life is the same world view which could easily make a muck of their public responsibilities and take us down with them. They don't have to be Stalin or Hitler to do massive damage.
Yes, we're a flawed species. But it is difficult to have adult conversations when adults still don't know how to behave as adults. If we weren't, how do we otherwise explain our on-going assault on the planet upon which we depend for our very life? It’s like disrespecting our parents after all they’ve done for us.
But we're also "self-aware" and if we weren't, how do we otherwise explain the tremendous leaps of consciousness helping us bridge the gap between the caves and the stars to which we're headed in the space of about 10,000 years? We're supposed to learn from our mistakes and maybe that's the mistake.
Or maybe we do learn; we just don't master our lessons quickly enough. Learning is one thing, mastering the lessons of life, another. Being self-aware allows us to keep our eye on the ball rather than denying our own, individual hand in our personal and species-wide undoing. We tend to do a lot of the latter to our personal and planetary undoing.
It is the HYPOCRISY that eggs us on.
It is if they are public figures, particularly politicians who may not be living life according to the platform they publically profess.
About the affair? He tells us that it was the weight of his public responsibilities that caused the infidelity. And he wants to be President and thinks he's the guy for the job?
Speaker of the House is a romp thru Epcot Center compared to the stress of being President of the United States. Greater, more statesmen-like people; even being President, have had affairs inside the White House!
But in a culture where the press is free, and, almost desperate in their quest for viewers/readers (because that determines their income)....how are you going to stop the gossip stories from flowing out of the usual outlets.
And the the public? Well....we know what hordes of them will do when a provocative by line is served up to them (think Palin or Trump or Sheen).
Jamie, you are absolutely right. But the media and an indiscriminate public simply can't resist the urge.
Thank you. I find your blogs sensible and heartwarming, empathetic and compassionate. Children warrant privacy protection from today's voyeuristic culture. No claims of journalistic 'freedom' should be allowed to set aside the best interests of children.
BUT hypocritical PARENTS are fair game!
However, I strongly disagree about the actions of the adult guilty of the transgression. In particular, if the adult in question has publicly taken a stand attacking others for their moral values or pretended to be a paragon of virtue, or denied others rights based on some moral justification, or supported deniers of rights--the hypocrisy must be made clear.