Lenore Skenazy Finds Her Experts Online, When She Can
The New York Sun's Lenore Skenazy brings her a-game (sorry) to the Alex Rodriguez "busty blonde" story today, making the shocking observation that:
...if you look up "busty blonde" online, you will find dozens and dozens of women thusly described by the tabloids this past year. Look up "Busty brunette" and you will find exactly two. Even worse, the search engine politely inquires, "Did you mean busy brunette?" As if we brunettes, inevitably concave, must be working, working, working all the time because no one is taking us out for steaks at the strip club.
Then there's this bit, about A-Rod's psychology:
The man is a walking poster for New York's two main points of pride: the Yankees and intensive psychotherapy. These are the things we give to the world. And he has brought them low. I'd figured that any man with this much professional help under his belt would have reached the point where he could keep that belt buckled. "Quod licet jovi non licet bovi," Manhattan psychiatrist Harvey Roy Greenberg said. Fortunately, he then quickly translated: "That which Jove is allowed to do, a cow can't." By this he meant that superstars like the Roman god Jove — or the highest-paid Yankee — get a lot more perks than the rest of us. Almost inevitably they develop a sense of entitlement. When and if they stray, that is to be expected.
Wow, what fascinating thoughts! From whence did they spring? Well, there's this query that Skenazy posted to ProfNet (the website where journalists find PR whores willing to say whatever it is they need them to say) the other day:
I volunteered to write something insightful about the Alex Rodriguez situation. Two thoughts are currently struggling toward coherency/relevancy: 1. The Yankee slugger has been in therapy *and* has a brilliant wife with a Master's degree, no less, and yet those aren't enough to keep the home fires burning? (What does this tell the rest of us brilliant wives with hubbies in therapy? All bets are off?) 2. Enough with busty blondes! A Nexis search shows about 50 references to "busty blondes" this past year and two to "busty brunettes." What explains the lure of the busty blonde? Any historians out there who can trace its roots (as it were)? Anyway, any other blazing insights or sidebars or random thoughts on the situation also accepted. And, of course, I'm on deadline. Contact: Lenore Skenazy, xxx@xxx.com
Oh, right, of course. But it doesn't look like Skenazy found anyone, because the psychiatrist she quoted, Harvey Roy Greenberg, is someone she seems to turn to in times of trouble; she quoted him last month in her story about the allure of the Catskills: "'By setting the film in such a family-oriented place, it makes the transgressiveness'— the breaking of cultural taboos — 'even greater,' Manhattan psychiatrist Harvey Roy Greenberg said.'" Guess he's her guy, huh?
