Is Christie Brinkley Really All That?

Trial By Media

Well, the trial has been over nigh these past six months, and judgment has been handed down, and not just by the courts, mind you. The Public has seen all the evidence - or at least all that Christie Brinkley's handlers and Entertainment Tonight wanted you to see - and decided in its wisdom that her ex-husband Peter Cook is a bastard. And not just that, but a selfish, self-centered, egomaniacal, cold-hearted, porn-loving child abuser and near-pedophile. If you followed the whole sordid mess, you know what I'm talking about.

Not to say that he's not all that, but let's take a reality check, shall we?

Back when this whole deal was unraveling with OJ and Nicole style coverage, and after what seemed weeks of unidirectional abuse heaped on Cook by Brinkley and her minions, I confidently expected the counter assault to begin. After all, this was either Husband number Four or Five for Brinkley - depending on what your definition of "Husband" is - and to paraphrase the immortal words of somebody somewhere who declared that "no matter how good looking a woman, somebody somewhere is sick of her shit", at least four other somebodies were clearly sick of Christie Brinkley's.

Take Billy Joel, Husband number three (or two). To put this whole thing in perspective, she was still married to him in 1994 even as she was sneaking around behind his back and cuckolding Joel with eventual Husband number four, real estate magnate Richard Taubman, who proposed marriage to her even though she was still married to Joel, and impregnated her before marrying her. Oh yeah, Brinkley wore a white wedding dress to marry Taubman. Nice touch if you're into irony. Brinkley dumped Taubman in mid-1995, seven weeks after giving birth to their child. Another nice touch. She married Peter Cook in 1996, making it a busy year and a half for the peripatetic supermodel and fornicatress.

Given Brinkley's sordid resume, Cook's first line of defense should have been why he did so much porn and sought out other women, and the only reasonable explanation is that Christie Brinkley is a lousy lay. After all, how bad must you be in bed in order for your husband to need porn - as Brinkley put it - to "warm things up?" You're Christie Brinkley for Cripes Sakes; you've got the whole package. How crappy a lover must you be to not just look like Christie Brinkley but to actually BE Christie Brinkley, and still drive your husband nightly to the spare computer and eventually into the arms of a teenager? Show of hands here, boys: how many of you have asked your wife to splash naked in the pool, recreating Brinkley's most famous movie-turn as the seductress in National Lampoon's Vacation? Nobody? OK, maybe it was just me, but you get my meaning.

Finally, what does it say about Christy Brinkley when her husband has to spend THOUSANDS of dollars on porn every month, when everybody knows you can get unlimited monthly porn for only $49.95? And yet, we were denied even the tiniest detail on their sex life, the rebuttal never came, her hubby meekly played the role assigned to him, settling for a measly 2.4 mill, and I for one felt cheated. He sold himself way short, and I'll predict that the payoff precludes him from writing the tell-all book, a number one best seller if ever there was one. Time will tell.

And you've got to question Brinkley's motives. You may recall that she could have done this all without the cameras rolling. She could have spared her kids - with whom she professes to be so concerned - the glare of the spotlights, much less her daughter having to recount for all the world the sordid tale of a violent Cook jerking her out of the shower naked and putting her head in a bucket. The timing of this testimony, coming as it did on the heels of Brinkley's very long, very public tantrum about Cook's affair with a Teenager, would leave the informed viewer with no other opinion than that Cook was a pedophile.

So, what's her motivation here? Revenge for the public humiliation? A shot in the arm for her fading "brand"? And why would you have your kids reveal such stories to the mass media, true or not, if it could be avoided? Isn't that perverse in itself? Are we allowed to dwell on Brinkley's Dark Side at all? Me personally, I think she's got a Joan Crawford "no wire hangers" streak in her that's a mile long, except of course that she reserves the abuse for her husbands. She's also just a tad away from any Mother Of The Year awards.

Christie Brinkley, Drama and Fashion Queen

Me, I started to question Brinkley's character long before this go-round, but more about that later. This time, her wardrobe is what did it for me. The parade into court each day looked like it could be converted in a snap into a commercial for the Christie Brinkley clothing line from Target. Now, I don't know if she's even got a clothing line at Target, but if not, it shouldn't be too long before she does. Having no sense of shame or for that matter, propriety, is not only NOT a disqualifier from the affections of the merchandise-buying masses, it now seems to be an absolute prerequisite. I wait with bated breath for the Jamie Lynn Spears line of maternity clothes for the discriminating Trailer Park Tart, and let us not forget the Casual Wear line of the ever-tempted Robert Downey, Jr.

Can Christie Brinkley's Grass Widow line be that far away? Voice-over: "It's Monday, and you're due at the courthouse in 45 minutes to confront husband number four. What do you wear?"

The Teenage Connection

So Cook had an affair with a "teenager". Nice twist, that, if you're a Brinkley media sycophant, or are merely nursing the delectable albeit remote possibility that you will one day get into her pants. Cook's mistress was 18 at the time of the affair, which means she was an adult, not that that makes Cook a nice person. Shades of Bill Clinton, who used his position as the Most Powerful Man On Earth to force a 19 year old with the mind of a child to degrade herself under his desk with cigars. I am referring of course, to Monica Lewinsky, whose addled brain managed to keep the semen-stained dress not because it was historically significant, but as a keepsake. At least Cook bought his paramour flowers and paid her lots of money. Morality wise speaking, if we apply the same standard to Clinton that we do to Cook, shouldn't he be divorced, humiliated and reviled as well? Last time I checked, Slick Willy was living large, raking it in and doing Relevant Things. So much for going into Architecture.

The Stage Managed Assault On Reason

Now we must speak of the timing of the whole thing. How many people know that Cook's affair with the teenager happened in 2005, or that Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook separated in 2006? Not many, I suspect. So why was Christie out in public in 2008, acting like these things all happened yesterday? This relationship was not only dead, it was in an advanced stage of putrification, so how is it that Christie managed the fresh tears to compliment the stiff upper lip and more importantly, why did the media play along with this grotesquely scripted version of reality?

So, without putting too harsh a spin on the whole sordid tale, is it a big stretch to portray Christie Brinkley as a selfish, egomaniacal, cold-hearted, porn-loving child abuser and seducer of teens? Or as they say in the commercial "what do you have in YOUR wallet"?