A couple I know, married for years, decided recently to separate, and possibly divorce after years together and grown children. At work, we were all a little stunned.
And no, I don't mean Al and Tipper Gore.
There's a piousness applied to gossip that I always find a little absurd - "It's none of our business" applied, after the fact, to stories we've thoroughly examined and discussed. "We shouldn't speculate" followed by... well, bald speculation about things where little is known. "No judgements"... when all we do, really, is judge others.
I don't really have an opinion about the Gores deciding to separate, specifically. We don't know what the reasons are, or the discussions were, or much else. I do think that when you send an e-mail to "friends" who also happen to be some of the most prominent media personages in the country and "ask for privacy"... you have a number of problems: mostly about what passes for "friendship", still; but also a pretty rough conception of privacy, too.
A lot of what strikes me about this recent spearation, and others, like the couple closer to home, other celbrities and such, is both generational and cultural. I think a lot of what's playing out, in this moment of crumbling relationships says a lot about the economic crisis and how it has, in many ways, up-ended life as we all know it. My Mom pointed out that economic hardships clearly lead to marital problems, and that's certainly true; but I think the seismic shift in our cuture hits even the financially secure. There is, in many ways, a new seriousness; and I think that seriousness leads to a reexamination of almost any life, to ask what you are doing and why.
Cheesily, in fact, it's the Oprah effect: all that stuff about "your best life" and finding your "true self", but I think there is some relevance to it - problems that could be neatly avoided, for years, with consumption and glitz and toys and focusing on personal comforts can fall away with the realization that things are not good, the world is not right, and there you are, standing beside a relative stranger.
On top of that, though, the cynic in me (who finds Baby Boomers exasperating, generally), does think there's an especially Boomer-ish component to all of this: the relatively late life breakups lately suggest a restlessness and self invoolvement that has dogged the Boomers all along in their best "Me Generation" behaviors. In the past, a couple like the Gores, well moneyed and possessing multiple homes, would have simply, privately, decided on mutual distance. Lord knows, with houses in DC, Tennessee and California, surely the two of them could have "an arrangement." That they instead found it necessary to broadcast their updated domestc arrangements, coyly dictating what can and can't be discussed, speaks volumes to the kind of generational attitudes they have about celebrity and interpersonal relationships. It's about what they need... and that's what's important, right?
Finally, I'd add this, mostly in response to the general "I always thought it would be the Clintons" type snark that's crept into the discussions of their breakup: while I didn't think they'd divorce, I have to admit I think marriages and opulent diplays of affection (THAT KISS!) that get paraded around in public are always to be looked at with healthy skepticism. More than a few of the examples of the "deep bond" examples in the Gore marriage possess a kind of inherent doubt - sharing of private, intimate details that probably should remain between the couple, and a kind of "us versus everyone" approach that seems less about a bond than about a battle.
A lot of it, of course, has to do with the failures of that 2000 campaign, when the Gores decided that they had to run against the Clinton marriage, rather than on a positive platform of Democratic ideas. And in that, from my biased perspective, I think I share the Clintonian view of marriage more than the Gores: the stuff that keeps you together is no one's business; the stuff that could pull you apart, and how you deal with that and stay together, is the stuff that people need to see. Staying together, really... that's the hard part. It's the people who try and pretend to make it look easy, I think, who can't be trusted, who will get the solution to leave it tomorrow. Whether that's the irght solution, well, that's for them to know. But as long as we're watching, let's not pretend we don't see it.
Comments