Winner take nothing

Christie Brinkley has declared victory. If that is victory, we would like to see what defeat is. She really is wasting her efforts. She ought to be hired by the campaigns as a spin doctor.

Let’s look at the facts. The trial started. At the start of the trial, she was Mary Poppins, and he was a certified lowlife. The entire world knew he had two teenage girlfriends, a married woman (unfortunately married to somebody else), and paid the teenager $300,000. Then Ms. Brinkley made her first mistake – an enormous one. She wanted the trial to be made public. Cook’s lawyers, and even the children’s law guardian were against this, but the judge had no alternative but to open the courthouse doors to the media because the prevailing law obligated him to do this. However, back in the real world, if all parties to a case like this (and here, even the law guardian requested it) wanted a sealed courtroom, virtually never is the courtroom open because of the obvious fact that, with everyone’s consent, there is nobody to object to it (other than the media). This is certainly so when there are small children involved. There was not a single commentator, columnist or interviewer who said she did the right thing. What she did was expose the couple’s dirty laundry to her own children, her children’s friends, their parents and her neighbors in this relatively small community. Her sex life became the topic of water coolers, barroom jokes and comedians. And then things descended downhill.

Then there was the daily “perp walk” with her strolling in and out of court, smiling, waving at the rest of us poor mortals, giving interviews, etc. She didn’t get it. This was a show that was to be played to the only person who matters – the guy in the black robe. She seemed to think that it was more important to play to a television audience. Irresponsible? We say yes!

Back to the real world again. Mr. Cook was seeking custody, but there was never a chance of this. Basically, what it was all about was Ms. Brinkley trying to prevent him from having any visitation or at least supervised visitation. The theory was his immorality so permeated his being that he could not even have any contact with the children. Her dilemma was there was no evidence to make this connection. Also, there were interviews during the same period of time that he was partaking of porn where she said he was a great father. This sort of takes the wind out of her sail.

And then the testimony came out about their sex life: that not only did he watch dirty movies, but she did as well – that before they had sex they had to watch pornography.

Then the court-appointed psychiatrist testified that they both – that includes Ms. Brinkley – should be seeing psychiatrists or psychologists.

And then the case is settled. Mr. Cook gets his visitation and additionally receives $2.1 million. It’s hard to see how Ms. Brinkley can even continue to live in that small community. There must be trails of whispers, teenage boys snickering and all sorts of gossip in that town.

Mr. Cook can continue chasing girls, and his business will probably prosper since a person would hire an architect on the basis of whether he builds a good house or not, and not whether he watched dirty movies the night before.

Now, who won?