Some Komments on Kim K

While walking in the city the other day I saw a sign on a small beauty parlor: "Have your makeup done like Kim Kardashian!"  I half expected to see a sign on a neighboring church along the lines of, “Get married here like Kim Kardashian!” Followed, of course, by a sign at an attorney’s office: "Get divorced after 10 weeks like Kim Kardashian!"

Eric Felten, the Wall Street Journal columnist on whom I have a writer crush (the man knows his classic cocktails and writes frequently about the importance of having a functioning moral compass... swoon) managed the nearly-impossible task this weekend of adding a touch of class to the chatter about the reality TV star's marital woes. Felten writes, "The divorce was a given. But jumping right to it showed a disregard for the craft of reality TV. Where were the nightclub screaming matches? Where were the inevitable infidelities that would have pushed the tawdry plotline along to its natural conclusion?"

For a certain type of woman, marriage has always been a career move of sorts. In fact, I just read an article that mentions one of the ultimate gold-diggers of our time, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman.  Her life story provides an interesting contrast to Kim K's shenanigans. Sure, Harriman busted up a marriage or two on her way to the top, but she gave back once she became the Grande Dame of the Democratic party. (If you believe that helping to put Bill Clinton in the White House was a form of public service.)

Assimilation used to be the goal of barbarians at the cultural gates. Now, in the age of Kardashian & Kompany, the Kulture is bending to fit the arrivistes.  Is that an elitist statement? Well, we aren’t all terrific actors or painters or singers. I’d like to be able to do even one of those things well, but I don't imagine I could without a lot of effort and more than a modicum of innate talent.  (Heck, even Pamela Harriman probably put in her Gladwellian 10,000 hours of listening soulfully to rich older men before she became Pamela Harriman.)  But it appears that with some skillfully-applied eye makeup and a Bravo TV show (and let's not forget the sex tape that started it all), you can have a wedding that nets $18 million, followed by what will presumably be an even more lucrative (and public) divorce.

Hmm. Maybe I should step into that beauty parlor next time I'm in the neighborhood.