THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508020038
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
KERRY SAYS:
Geez, Dave, I get five minutes to myself, sink into a chair and grab the latest Vanity Fair, and what do I find? Carly Simon telling the whole wide world about her parents' seamy sex lives.
It's pretty hard to resist a cover story titled: ``Carly Simon's Mother Lode: Scenes From Her Tortured Family Album.'' I read every word. Had a case of the vapors and had to use the magazine for a fan.
What possesses celebrities to tell all about their families? Do we really need to know that Carly's dad, who founded Simon & Schuster, had a sexual relationship with a woman 18 years his senior, before and after his marriage to Carly's mother? And that they all called her Aunt Jo?
Do we really want to know that Carly's mother was sleeping with a college student when she thought her husband and four children weren't looking? And that she was in bed with him in the same house when Carly's father died?
Someone should tell Ms. Simon that these are what used to be called family skeletons. Skeletons, Carly, as in something you keep in the closet.
Carly never understood that the fun thing about family secrets is discovering them - which is what I always supposed most enterprising teenagers did with their spare time. Sneaking through the attic trunks and old letters, eavesdropping on tipsy relatives at family gatherings.
It's like solving a giant puzzle that ends up being you.
There is an etiquette to family secrets. Once discovered, they should be discussed in hushed tones and only with relatives. You must never forget you are part of an exclusive club.
Carly wrecked all that for her family. They no longer have reason to whisper. Unless it's about that blabbermouth Carly and how she ruined all their fun.
My family's skeletons are delicious secrets. They grow and become more colorful with each telling at reunions or funerals. They're a part of our heritage, what makes us us. Take a good look at those ordinary folk who spawned you - isn't it wonderful to discover that they used to be exciting, daring characters who took risks, squandered fortunes, had love affairs?
I feel sorry for people who don't realize that it's stories and scandals that bind a family in ways that blood never does. But somehow they are cheapened when somebody like Carly Simon puts a welcome mat in front of her family's closet door.
DAVE SAYS:
I've had a peek or two into your closet, Kerry, so I'm not surprised you feel that way.
Any chance you're uncomfortable with all this airing of family skeletons because you are one of your family's skeletons?
Heaven knows, you're not alone. Whoever is left behind will have plenty to whisper about when they lower my bones into a grave. But at least they'll be whispering in private. I hope.
Washing the dirty linens in public is a downside of the incessant need among women to talk about everything under the sun, and a lot of stuff that should never be touched by sunlight. Y'all are forever on us guys' backs to express ourselves, to communicate, to not hold anything back.
Be open, you say.
Then somebody like Roseanne, or Carly Simon, or Nancy Reagan or any of an endless list of others throws the closet door open and look what pops out: Nightmares. Venom. Hideousness.
You rarely see a guy write a book about his mother's secret lovers or his father's noodlings with the upstairs maid. Something about it just doesn't ring right. You have to admit that you can't imagine a magazine article titled: ``Clint Eastwood: Mom's Mailman Love-Tryst Made Me a Bedwetter.''
Sadly, Kerry, it looks like things are only going to get worse. For the longest time kiss 'n' tell was a spectator sport, the players limited to Hollywood types and the British royal family.
But Geraldo and Oprah and their ilk have brought scandal-mongering to the masses. Now, any greasy little hustler can spill the family's beans on network TV, and a public that ought to have more shame tunes in every day and clamors for more.
Let's make a deal, kid, just you and me. We won't rat each other out to the public. Let 'em guess which one of us played professional ice hockey, which one eyeballs the beach with a night-vision scope, or which one of us was arrested for smuggling cash out of Romania.
And wouldn't they be surprised at the answers, huh? by CNB